ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights opportunities for engaging pleasurable and powerful critical literacies by looking closely at four- to seven-year-old children's appropriations of everyday texts and the social issues that stem from those texts. Some children from Canada and the USA were part of a three-year study linking literacy development with everyday texts. Specifically, I will demonstrate the integration of critical literacies in curricula for young children through the use of texts such as food wrappers and toy packaging. Ways that children participate in various forms of text analysis will be shown along with the children's re-design of these texts.
A critical literacy curriculum needs to be lived. It arises from the social and political conditions that unfold in communities in which we live. As such it cannot be traditionally taught. In other words, as teachers we need to incorporate a critical perspective into our everyday lives with the children we work with in order to find ways to help them understand the social and political issues around them.
(Vasquez 2004a)