Critical+Literacy

=Critical Literacy=

Many scholars of children’s and adolescent literature suggest literature as a means to teach a critical stance. Nonfiction, especially that of a historical or global nature, offers access to the issues that might employ a critical stance. Often, the author invites such a stance through the information about a person, culture, or event that is portrayed. Such texts often beg answers to questions such as, “Whose voice is missing?” “Whose perspective is represented and are others needed for a balanced picture?” (Continue describing using reviews.)

Books
Mandy- Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Socail Justice-Would it go here?

// Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice // by Phillip Hoose Rosa Parks is often given much deserved credit for launching the civil rights movement with her brave refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. However, there was a teenage girl who engaged in the same form of bravery nine months earlier, yet did not receive similar recognition. Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin did what many adults could or would not do to stand up for social justice prior to the civil rights movement. In this hidden story brought to life, the reader steps back in time to Montgomery, Alabama during the 1950s and 60s where Jim Crow was the unattested rule of the land. We can see this world through the eyes of a young black girl growing up and questioning the accepted injustices around her. Claudette Colvin wanted to make a stand for social justice and did it publically, not once but twice. First, she ignited the idea of a bus boycott by refusing to give up her seat on a bus and therefore being brutally dragged off by police, held in an adult jail, and convicted of a crime. Second, she risked her very life to be the youngest of four black women to sue the city of Montgomery for its unjust bus policies in Browder v. Gayle which led to the eventual desegregation of the city's buses and much persecution for the leaders in the movement. Complete with many actual pictures of the Jim Crow laden South and historical figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Phillip Hoose brings the era prior to and the initial stages of the Civil Rights Movement to life for children and youth who cannot even imagine such a world. Claudette Colvin herself voices much of her own story which is interspersed with quotes from other known and less known figures during that time that played key roles in changing America. // Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Social Justice // not only gives us a voice that is rarely heard in historical accounts, but also empowers young people that they too can stand up for social justice regardless of their age, background, or social status.