ABSTRACT
Robbie held In My Family [En Mi Familia] (Garza, 2000) as her kindergarteners gathered around her. “What did we talk about in Mexico yesterday?” Robbie asked. “They have piñatas for their birthdays,” Carly suggested. “They call their grandma ‘Abuela’,” Ryan added. Robbie explained that in this book, author/artist Carmen Lomas Garza told about her Hispanic family and growing up near the Mexican−American border in Texas. “Who’s going to take graffiti notes?” Julie went to the easel and picked up the marker. As Robbie read, children suggested information that Julie wrote. “Write that they cook cactus and eat it!” Ethan said. Later, Christina inserted, “They decorate egg shells for Easter. The eggshells are cascarones. Write that!” This vignette from Robbie’s classroom is an example of how we used global
literature in pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade classrooms to reclaim early childhood literacies. Through global literature we deepened children’s knowledge about themselves and others and strengthened their developing intercultural understandings as they learned reading and writing. As Hadaway (2007) stated, global literature “honors and celebrates diversity, both within and outside the United States, in terms of culture, race, ethnicity, language, religion, social and economic status, sexual orientation, and physical and intellectual ability…[it] includes both multicultural and international literature” (p. 5). Intercultural understandings are attitudes that demonstrate appreciation and
respect for diverse cultural perspectives (i.e., ways of living, acting, and believing in the world), concern for global issues that cross the boundaries of countries, and a desire to make the world a better place (Short, 2009). As story, global literature introduces children to people and situations they haven’t yet met/experienced which supports their developing intercultural understandings (Rosenblatt, 1978;
Short, 2012). In the United States, less than 2% of children’s literature was originally published in another country and translated while in Europe and major Asian countries that figure is 40% to 80% (Bond, 2006). Bond (2006) stated, “Countries with numerous translated books have more opportunities to bridge the language and cultural gaps between groups of people around the world” (p. 73). The need for global literature stories in the United States is great. Global literature was central to our work-–as was communicating through art.
Through reading and responding to literature in writing and art, children not only learned reading and writing but thought critically, considered complex issues, communicated their ideas, and grew as responsible citizens of the world. Banks (2004) stated:
