Children’s Literature in Education

     Children’s Literature in Education, established in 1973, is a quarterly published journal by Springer publishing. This journal is accessible to TTU students through the Education Full Text database and goes back to the year 1997. This journal is an excellent resource for teachers, parents who homeschool their children, librarians, writers, and students alike. Children’s Literature in Education also invites submissions from those who hope to have their article(s) published in this journal

Each issue features articles on fiction, prose, poetry, picture books, and interviews with children’s literature authors. The interview with Roald Dahl for instance, can be found in the June 1990 issue. There are also critiques of classic and contemporary children’s literature. In the March 2012 issue, there are various articles that focus on young children’s literature such as “Revisiting the Relationship Between Text and Pictures” and “Reading Picturebooks as Literature: Four-to-Six-Year-Old Children and the Development of Literary Competence.” Also included in each issue of this journal are reading project articles for teachers who can utilize the strategies outlined in the article in their own classroom to get their students engaged in reading not only contemporary children’s literature, but also classic children’s literature. One example of an article of this sort can be found in the 1979 issue entitled “Presenting Literature to Children.”

Overall, this journal includes a broad range of topics in children’s literature and also a variety of articles, such as the ones mentioned above. This journal has been serving teachers, librarians, students and writers for over forty years. Children’s Literature in Education is not only free to users, but also a helpful teaching aid that helps teachers get students engaged in reading contemporary and classical children’s literature in an enjoyable yet constructive way.

ALAN Review

The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English produces the ALAN Review. This journal only publishes in the fall, winter, and in the summer and mainly publishes articles on literature for adolescents and the teaching of adolescent literature. Submissions include: research studies, papers presented at professional meetings, surveys of the literature, literature critiques, articles about authors, studies that include how different genres and/or cultures affect literature, articles that propose different ways to teach adolescent literature, and interviews of authors. Steven Bickmore, Jacqueline Bach, and Melanie Hundley are the current editors of this journal.

Many of the individual members of ALAN are middle, junior, and senior high school English teachers. University faculty members in English and Education fields, adolescent literature researchers, librarians, authors, publishers, and other related areas that involve reading teachers and teachers are also readers of the ALAN Review. All 50 states and some foreign countries have ALAN members in them.

This journal has a very particular style in which they want authors to write. The ALAN Review suggests that every author’s topic possess a clear topic and contain scholarly information about that topic. They also strive for practicality because they ask that each article be useful in a classroom setting or while studying adolescent literature. The ALAN Review’s website lays out its guidelines so that if an author is interested in publishing they know the proper protocol.

When searching for this review via Google, the first two websites that appear are the most helpful. The first website allows a researcher or reader to look up old issues, while the second website provides background information. The second website also shows where the guidelines are located.

Examining titles and articles readers have a better understanding of this journal’s primary audience. The summer 2010 issue has a few articles discussing graphic novels and also contains an interview. Looking through most of these issues, it appears that authors want these articles used as teaching aides, which suggest to readers that this journal is adamant about publishing articles specifically with an audience of grade school teachers in mind.

Reading through these articles, readers would not encounter too many jargons. It appears that the authors of these articles aim to reach a wide range of audience. The articles do not necessarily use an informal style of rhetoric, but rather a very comprehensible one. Anyone from a high school junior to an instructor at a college would be able to understand these articles. This wide range of comprehension allows this journal to be successful because not only does it reach a wide range of people, more specifically it reaches a wide range of educators.

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/

http://www.alan-ya.org/the-alan-review/

English Journal

The English Journal publishes out of Urbana, Illinois and is a print journal although it can be found through Tennessee Tech’s online library and through Google. This particular journal is a part of the National Council of Teachers of English, which is a publication that devotes its time to the learning of English and the English language at all education levels. Julie Gorlewski and David Gorlewski are the main editors.

Although Tennessee Tech’s library will allow you to access this journal by searching specifically under the journal tab, I believe that this journal is more accessible with the help of Google. After hitting enter, clicking on the first link will take you to the English Journal’s homepage. After doing this click on the small link below the journal’s picture in the middle of the page, it should read access back issues. This link will allow readers to access previous articles.

Anyone can submit to this journal as long as it reaches certain guidelines. Any topic can be discussed as long as it has the “foreground of classroom practice and contextualize it in sound research and theory.” People who review these manuscripts preferably teach 6^th grade through college. As well as publishing manuscripts, they also publish original photography and original cartoons. This journal promises that each manuscript will have at least two reviewers and a response within three months. Clicking on the call for manuscripts link, readers can see what upcoming themes are as well as a section for general submissions.

Digging through previous issues I decided to examine the November 2008 issue, which addresses the issue of does homework help. The table of contents provides readers with scholarly articles and selective poems. I read through the article “Doing Our Homework on Homework: How Does Homework Help?” and found the article balancing scholarship and entertainment. Sallee and Rigler wrote this article to provoke thought and they are successful at it because they do not use jargons or write to impress. The authors wrote to make people think, which makes it comprehendible to everyone from university professors to high school students.

Another issue I decided to dissect is the January 2004 issue that revolves around the theme of popular culture. The table of contents provides interesting article titles such as “Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School,” “From Sheryl Crow to Homer Simpson: Literature and Composition through Pop Culture,” and “Using Film to Increase Literacy Skills.” This particular issue gives entertaining titles as well as more conventional scholarly titles.

After reading “From Sheryl Crow to Homer Simpson: Literature and Composition through Pop Culture” and “Doing Our Homework on Homework: How Does Homework Help?” I conclude that this journal likes to border between entertainment and scholarly information. The English Journal publishes articles that are not full of jargons or abstract theories. Writers who divulge in literary criticism and theories would probably not be accepted into this journal regardless of how much they integrated their articles into a classroom setting. They would be denied for stylistic writing reasons and not for their ideas. The English Journal prefers to publish articles and issues that while scholarly can be read by different social and educational classes.

http://www.ncte.org/journals/ej