Children's Literature

In the Adult Literacy and Language Classroom

Example: Alphabet Books, Picture Books and More

If you've had reason to peruse the children’s collection in your local library or bookstore lately, you know what a treasure trove of engaging writing and artwork it is. If you haven’t, you have a treat awaiting you. Among the collection of picture books, for example, you will find stories, some real and some imagined, that convey important truths about the way we live in a complex world. You will also find stories culled from the pages of history that need to be told and retold to succeeding generations. Or peruse the nonfiction section, where you will find books that explore and explain fascinating facts of science and nature, described and illustrated in ways that whet your desire to learn more. Works of poetry abound in the children's collection. Sometimes selected from the works of the great masters and sometimes presenting a range of contemporary voices, poems found in children’s books offer words and images that describe the familiar or explore the unknown, elicit howls of laughter or sighs of longing, evoke memories or inspire new perspectives. In short, exploring the world of children’s literature as adults, we find that “children’s” books offer the very same elements of literature that draw us to the books we love to read in our grown-up world, books that answer a need, indeed a hunger, for a satisfying reading experience, be it factual, emotional, spiritual, or just plain enjoyable.

Given this rich resource of literature, it is worth perusing this collection wearing our ABE and ESL hats, searching for books that might afford our adult literacy and language students the same opportunity to find that kind of rewarding and enjoyable reading experience.

Are they really appropriate?

Mention children’s literature in the context of materials for adult literacy and language students and the obvious question that arises is, “Won’t such books be demeaning to the students?” Certainly, many books intended for children, however well written or beautifully illustrated, will not be appropriate for adults. But many will be. Consider, for example, the many picture books that are in essence brief memoirs of the author’s own childhood, written with the perspective and wistfulness only an adult looking back can appreciate. Or consider these features of many nonfiction books: they explain their subject in clear and direct language, use appropriate vocabulary documented in a glossary, and provide pictures and graphic illustrations that add depth to the information as well as aesthetic appeal to the reading experience. What's more, many nonfiction books, although marketed to children, do not specifically address children in their text. Perusing poetry books on the children’s shelves, we find many poems originally written for adults that are simple in language but not simplistic in style or meaning. Even some alphabet books, a genre rarely thought of outside the realm of childhood literacy, offer possibilities for use within adult literacy and language classes.

Whether telling stories accompanied by beautiful illustrations, acquainting us with fascinating people and events of history, explaining our physical world in understandable but engaging language, or teaching the basics of language in clever wordplay, many “children’s” books are truly appropriate “for readers of all ages.”

In the next few entries in this blog, I would like to discuss some specific titles and suggest some possible language lessons, using various kinds of children's books. With this entry, I will begin, appropriately enough, with alphabet books!

Alphabet Books for Adult Literacy Students

Alphabet books – Really? Yes, really. While it is true enough that alphabet books are almost universally associated with teaching children to read, the genre has become quite sophisticated in recent years. In concept as well as in style and difficulty of language, recently published alphabet books range from the simple to the complex, and from the predictable to the amazing.

The concept of the alphabet book is simple: teach both the shape and the sound of a letter by associating it with a picture. A is for apple; B is for banana and so on. Variations on this basic theme are numerous; they are also clever, amusing, surprising, creative, sophisticated, complex, and appealing to a wide range of tastes, styles, and audiences.

I’ve listed a few of my favorite examples below, along with some ideas for lessons to use with these or similar books. I’ve ordered them according to the broad reading levels of beginning through advanced new readers , although many of them can be used with students of different skill levels.

Beginning Level Students

ABC NYC by Joanne Dugan. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2005.
Description: Traveling the streets and neighborhoods of New York City with her young son, photographer Dugan was inspired to create an alphabet book using objects familiar to children growing up in an urban environment. Subway stations, department stores, billboards, and even graffiti on walls provide the letters in a fascinating variety of fonts, locations, and writing styles. Like most alphabet books, ABC NYC conveys much more than the shapes and sounds of letters. In her photographs of New York, Dugan depicts scenes and objects that reflect the variety of cultural and personal life styles inherent in any large modern city, while at the same time conveying a certain geographic uniqueness. Anyone who has ever visited New York will appreciate how she has captured the flavor of that city with her use of tiled subway lettering and iconic objects such as “B is for Bagel. As a native New Yorker, I laughed out loud at the entry “M is for Manhole Cover.” Perfect!

There are alphabet books available for every state in the U.S. and for some countries as well. Some will be more appropriate for adults than others, but even those that are childlike in appearance can be examples for the two lesson ideas discussed below.

Ideas for Lessons
1. Develop a class project to create a geographical alphabet book. It may be based on a location as large as a country or as small as a neighborhood. In a class of students from several countries, it could become an exercise in helping them discover their new environment. For English speaking adult literacy students learning to read their native language, it offers an opportunity for students to incorporate their oral language skills and knowledge of their surroundings into a reading lesson.
2. Reverse the alphabet book concept by having students create lists of things from their environment: street names, favorite foods, articles of clothing, objects related to sports and games, etc. These word lists can then be used to reinforce a variety of skills, such as practicing alphabetical order, learning initial consonants, breaking words into syllables, and recognizing common letter clusters such as consonants blends.

Beginning to Intermediate Level Students

T is for Touchdown: A Football Alphabet by Brad Herzog. Illustrated by Mark Braught. Chelsea, MI: Sleeping Bear Press, 2005.
Description: As each letter introduces a term related to football, it offers a brief explanation, in rhyme, of some aspect of the game. Thus, the basic entry for the letter “B” tells us:
Leather stitched together,
the brown ball is our B
A perfectly thrown spiral
is quite a thing to see.

In addition to this simple verse, a more descriptive sidebar offers additional information, explaining, for example, that the ball is oval and made of pigskin, and that as the ball changed shape from its early rounder version to the current oval ball, the forward pass became a more important part of the game. The sidebar then goes on to explain how to throw a spiral, which it describes as a perfectly thrown pass. Thus, on one page, this book has given beginning level readers a simple poem to read associating the letter “b” with the brown ball, while more advanced students have learned a bit of history and some basic facts about the ball and the game. In an international class, this book could also lead to conversation practice about sports in general or about the differences between American football and the game that the rest of the world knows as football but we call soccer. That’s a lot of information for an alphabet book! Even better, this publisher has produced a number of books using the same format. Some focus on sports as in J is for Jump Shot: A Basketball Alphabet (2005, written by Mike Ulmer and illustrated by Mark Braught); others discuss a wide range of topics such as D is for Democracy: A Citizen’s Alphabet (2004, written by Elissa Grodin and illustrated by Victor Juhasz).

Ideas for Lessons
1. Sports is a topic that offers many opportunities for conversation practice. At a beginning level, have students as a class create a demonstration language experience story in the form of a dialogue, with the two speakers in the dialogue talking about their favorite sport, the team they root for, and a few particulars about that sport or team. Student pairs first practice reading the dialogue the class has composed. Then, with additional help,the student pairs can create their own version of the dialogue, talking about their own experiences with sports.
2. At the intermediate level, use sports as a context to talk about verbs. For example, find some newspaper articles about sporting events that are close to the students' reading level, or, if necessary, rewrite the articles in a simpler form, but keeping the verbs used in the original. Read the articles with the students, and help students identify all the words that describe the specific actions of the game. Create a list of all the words that are verbs. As an ongoing project, it would be interesting to start a list of all the verbs that are used to say one team "won" over another, and have students add to that list anytime they come across another such verb they find in a newspaper or even hear on TV or radio.
3. In a class with international students, create a class chart, listing all the countries represented in the class, and the sports played in each of those countries. Lead a class discussion about the different sports. What is common among them? What is different? Keep a running vocabulary list on the board. For a subsequent lesson, find books in the local library that discuss each of the sports on the list and bring them to class. Ask each student to choose a book about a sport that is not played, or not very popular, in his or her home country, then write a brief report about that sport, including a sentence or two about how it is different from a sport the student is more familiar with.

Intermediate Level Students

Winter: An Alphabet Acrostic by Stephen Schnur. Illustrated by Leslie Evans. New York: Clarion Books, 2002.
Description: In this alphabet book, the word for each letter is presented in a simple but descriptive acrostic. For example, this is the entry for E :

E is for Ears:

Even under caps, they
Ache and turn
Red in the
Stinging cold.

More than just an alphabet book, these clever acrostics introduce many words associated with the theme of the book. And, of course, the simple but creative word play will challenge students to use their developing language skills in playful but instructive ways. This author has produced similar books for all seasons.

Ideas for Lessons:
1. Have students try to build acrostic poems by first creating a list of words or ideas related to a chosen theme and then selecting words from their list to create the poem. Sample themes might include items in a classroom, favorite foods, or articles of clothing. The words needn’t represent all the letters of the alphabet.
2. Introduce students to other kinds of word puzzles such as crosswords, word finders, and jumbles. Books containing various kinds of puzzles at all levels of difficulty can be found in many bookstores and even on the Internet. Local newspapers also offer daily examples. Once the students become familiar with these activities, have them try to create some puzzles of their own.

Gathering the Sun: An Alphabet in Spanish and English by Alma Flor Ada. Illustrated by Simon Silva. English translation by Rosa Zubizarreta. New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1997.
Description: In simple poems celebrating migrant farm workers and the bounty of the fields they pick, Ada reviews not only the twenty-eight letters of the Spanish alphabet but also the lives and long struggles of those families who make their living putting food on the tables of the countries in which they find seasonal work. Each verse is then translated into English. The poems range from the descriptive to the metaphoric to the philosophical; their meanings are deepened by and echoed in the vibrant illustrations. Here is the English version of “carrots.”

Carrots

The carrot hides
beneath the earth.
After all, she knows
the sun’s fiery color
by heart.

Ideas for Lessons
1. Simple as they are in their language, the poems in this book beautifully illustrate the very nature of poetry as an attempt to express the essence of something, be it a physical object such as a carrot, a concept such as honor, or a way of life such as that of the migrant workers. With these poems as examples, have your students choose something from their immediate environment – a piece of furniture, an article of clothing, a holiday, an event in the community – and then have them brainstorm words, phrases, ideas, people or experiences that come to mind when they think about the chosen topic. Encourage a range of contributions and list them all. Then ask the students to choose just a few of those words or ideas from the list to write a brief poem that condenses, indeed crystallizes, that object, idea, or event for them.
2. In a class with students who speak Spanish as well as English, ask the Spanish-speaking students to translate literally the Spanish version of the poem, and then discuss with the whole group how the differences in language do or do not create differences, however slight, in meaning.

Advanced level students

Jazz ABZ: An A to Z Collection of Jazz Portraits by Wynton Marsalis. Illustrated by Paul Rogers. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2005.
Description: With entries from A to Z, this title qualifies as an alphabet book, but it is really an introduction, in words and stunning portraits, to the great jazz artists of the twentieth century. For each letter, Marsalis has written a poem in praise of a jazz musician, from Louie Armstrong to Count Basie all the way to DiZZy Gillespie. The poems fit the artist they describe: a beat poem, a blues poem, a limerick, a haiku, and so on. Some are easy to read, others quite difficult. Explanations of the forms appear at the end of the book, as do biographical summaries of each musician that will help readers decipher some of the more obscure meanings or references in the poems.

Ideas for Lessons:
1. This book is, in essence, a documentary on the greats of jazz. Discuss the idea of creating a documentary history with your students. What are some topics that they would like to explore? List some of their ideas, and then have them form groups to write about a select few of the topics. Encourage them to gather artifacts such as photographs, maps, family heirlooms, or real objects related to their topic. Suggest that they visit the library to find books on their topic or search the Internet for information, and that they interview several relevant people if possible. Discuss with each group the best format for their documentary.
2. Have students create a “how-to” book. Examples might be a cookbook in which they list ingredients and give detailed instructions about how to follow a particular recipe, a step-by-step explanation of their favorite game or sport, or a list of things to do to become acquainted with a new neighborhood or a new country.

These are but a few of the many fascinating alphabet books you will find at your local library that may be used with adult literacy and language students. If you have any titles to recommend, I would love to hear them.

Health, Wellness, Libraries, and Literacy

Issues of health and wellness, illness and disease, surround us in our everyday lives. Television advertisements promote drugs for specific diseases, always ending with a long – and quickly spoken – warning about all the possible side effects of the drug being promoted. News reports are filled with stories about drugs being pulled from the market and drug companies being sued. Celebrities stricken with cancer and other diseases discuss their situations publicly, sometimes promoting particular kinds of therapies. Politicians debate the merits of various levels of health care insurance and who should pay for it. In the midst of this flood of information however, finding informative and clearly written materials about health issues specific to you as an individual can be a daunting task. Even those among us who consider ourselves highly literate can have difficulty finding useful information about a specific disease and the various therapies recommended, or how one drug prescribed for us will interact with others we are already taking, or what is or is not covered by our insurance plan – if we are lucky enough to have one. We can well imagine, then, the steepness of the learning curve that confronts our adult literacy students as they try to acquire information vital to their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

Fortunately, the issue of health literacy – and the need to address it – is gaining prominence. The most recent survey of adult literacy conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics included, for the first time, a component specifically devoted to health literacy, which they defined as, “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions.” The report is available through the NCES web site at http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006483.

There is also increasing evidence that the health care community is taking note of the many ways in which poor health literacy effects not only their patients but their own success as health care providers. They recognize that poor outcomes are often due to patients’ inability to understand and follow the instructions of their physicians or the directions on the medications they are given. To help improve the understanding and thus the compliance levels of their patients, hospitals and health care facilities are increasingly looking for patient education materials written at accessible reading levels and in several languages. Some hospitals have even established health information libraries specifically designed to serve patients and their families.

What Public Libraries Offer to Support Health Literacy

Simply put the library offers access to Internet resources and a wide range of books and other printed materials that offer health information. Many of these materials will be accessible to ABE or ESL students, especially if they have the assistance of a tutor or librarian to help them discover the materials. Let's look at a few examples.

Resources on the Internet: When looking for any kind of information in this online world, most of us turn first to the Internet. For many of our ESL and ABE students, however, that is simply not an option, as many of them have neither access to computers nor the ability to use them efficiently for information needs. Fortunately, almost all public libraries offer computer access to library card holders as well as staff to help those unfamiliar with the technology.

Gaining access to a computer is the first step, but navigating through the plethora of information available, and deciding what is worthwhile for your particular purpose, is another issue entirely. In the area of medical information, the best place to start, in my opinion, is a service provided by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called Medlineplus. It’s web site is: http://medlineplus.gov/. Medlineplus offers information about more than 750 diseases, conditions, and wellness topics; extensive information about specific drugs as well as drug policy related to Medicare; directories of physicians and other health care providers by specialty as well as geographic area; discussions of current clinical trials; and news items about important research. It has always offered information in both English and Spanish, but recently it added information in forty (yes, 40!) languages. Equally important, Medlineplus is not a commercial product. It does not allow advertisements and does not promote specific drugs or procedures. It is based on or links to authoritative and reliable materials produced by NIH and many other professional organizations dedicated to the dissemination of accessible and understandable medical information to the lay public.

Medlineplus is a free service, provided by the government. Many other useful and reliable resources are not free, however, but are made freely available to the public through the public library. These include databases such as Health Source: Consumer Edition and Health and Wellness Resource Center, both of which provide information written in lay language and intended for patients and their families and care givers. Check with your local public library to see if they have access to these or similar databases.

Books for ABE and ESL Students: Books presenting facts and discussing issues related to health and wellness constitute a significant part of the nonfiction collection of most public libraries. For ABE and ESL students, the children’s collection will contain many books which address their topics in a straightforward and informative style that will be both helpful and appealing to adult literacy students. These collections offer books covering a range of topics, from general information about health and the human body to detailed discussions of particular diseases and conditions. The books range in style and readability from the picture book format to highly illustrated atlases to textbook-like works on particular topics that offer excellent practice in reading scientific or technical information for students preparing for the GED. Let’s look at a few examples, some of which are appropriate for adult students and others which are suitable for family literacy programs.

Chris Hawkes’ book, The Human Body: Uncovering Science (Firefly, 2006) is one example of a book that can be used by students on several levels of reading ability. Although the text is written primarily at the intermediate-advanced new reader level, much information can be gleaned from the extraordinary diagrams and illustrations that draw the reader in and inspire a host of reactions. With exquisite overlays such as the internal organs over the muscular system over the skeleton, and magnified diagrams of organs at the cellular level, these illustrations provide many opportunities for students to match information from the printed text with the illustrated examples, even if that printed text is read aloud to them. Another book with great read-aloud-for-discussion potential, is Donna Jackson's In Your Face: The Facts About Your Features, (Viking in 2004). Moving from our evolutionary origins in creatures of the sea to the modern technology of face recognition as a means of identification, Jackson examines many aspects of the human face. Rich in fascinating facts, this book also suggests numerous language lessons, especially for ESL students. There is a wealth of vocabulary in the names of all the parts of, for example, the eye: iris, pupil, cornea, eyelash, etc. There are cultural discussions as, for example, when it is proper to make eye contact with another person, or how and why various cultures adorn faces with make-up or tattoos. And there are idioms associated with just about every part of the face: “all ears,” “won by a nose,” “face the music,” and the title itself, “in your face.”

We’ve talked in earlier entries about picture books that can appeal to readers of all ages. Simon Seymour’s The Heart: Our Circulatory System (William Morrow, 1996) is an outstanding example of this category. The “pictures” in this book come from such devises as scanning electron microscopes and computer enhanced imagery. The text precisely details the path of human blood through arteries, capillaries, and veins, and discusses topics such as how white blood cells fight infection and how cholesterol builds up in arteries. This clearly written factual account then ends on a poetic – even reverent – note, describing the “sixty-thousand-mile voyage” of blood through the body as “a journey as strange and wonderful as any journey to the stars.” In a similar vein, Simon has produced several other titles in this series of picture books, including, Eyes and Ears, The Brain, Bones, and Guts.

Several publishers have produced series of books covering health issues that will be of particular interest and appeal to the audience of adult literacy students. Heinemann Publishers of Chicago, for example has published a number of series at different reading levels. The series “Just the Facts,” written at the intermediate new reader level, covers a range of diseases. Their entry titled Aids (2003) is typical. It discusses the symptoms, treatments, complications, and risks associated with the disease. But it also goes beyond the medical facts to examine some of the social, political, and legal ramifications of this epidemic, thus suggesting avenues of discussion that will be of particular interest to adults. It introduces readers to Ryan White, for example, the young hemophiliac boy who contracted aids from a blood transfusion and was ostracized by his school community but eventually became an eloquent spokesperson for the rights of aids patients. Emphasizing the importance of knowledge, this simple book debunks prevalent myths about the disease and treats a difficult subject in a respectful, matter-of-fact manner that respects readers of all ages.

A genre of books popular for the children’s market could loosely be described as picture dictionaries or atlases. DK Publishing has produced a number of such titles that are visually appealing across age ranges and offer information through illustrations as well as text, making them accessible across reading levels as well. One excellent example is Human Body: An Extraordinary Look from the Inside Out (1997) from the series Inside Guides. Written by Frances Williams, it offers a comprehensive yet accessible atlas of the human body in which all the body systems are presented by handcrafted models of extraordinary detail and many shades of color. Microscopic photographs offer a look at the cellular level and clear text explains the function of each body section. Although marketed to children, many libraries will have additional copies in the adult collection.

At the intermediate – advanced new reader levels, some series offer an almost textbook-like format that will be helpful for students preparing for the science reading section of the GED. Lucent Books, for example, offers a series titled Diseases and Disorders in which individual books discuss a range of diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, breast cancer, epilepsy, autism and dyslexia. The chapters in each of the books discuss the nature of the disease or disorder, how it is diagnosed, what the standard treatments are, some possible alternative treatments, and day to day problems. They also offer an overview of potential research developments as well as a list of organizations to contact for additional information.

Books for Family Literacy Programs: For family literacy programs, public libraries offer a wealth of materials for adult literacy students to discuss and learn from along with their children. In Caroline Arnold’s The Skeleton System (Lerner Publications, 2005), for example, part of the Early Bird Body Systems series, each chapter opens with a question, the answer to which can be found within that chapter, offering opportunities for adult and child readers alike to practice finding specific pieces of information within a larger text.

Part of The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library series, Tish Rabe’s Inside Your Outside: All About the Human Body (Random House, 2002) offers a whimsical, rhyming tour of the human body. Along the way, readers are introduced to lots of vocabulary as well as “fun facts” such as the size of the bones in the inner ear. Children and adults will laugh at the antics of The Cat, and they will learn a lot as well.

On a more serious note, Bee Peta’s Living with Asthma (Steck-Vaughn, 2000) follows the daily routines of three children as they learn how to control their environment so as to minimize the effects of their disease. Books such as this one which feature an instructive and positive view of children coping with difficult medical conditions remind all readers that knowledge and a positive attitude are essential aspects of all therapy.