ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the process behind developing Molly of Denali, a new PBS KIDS multi-platform literacy property and action-adventure comedy that follows the adventures of feisty and resourceful ten-year-old Molly Mabray, an Alaska Native girl. Unfortunately, US students do not, on average, reach the same level of achievement with informational text as students in some other countries. Even with preschoolers and early elementary students, it is possible to engage with multiple informational texts on a particular topic. Many “standards” documents expect young children to begin to learn to compare texts and to integrate information across multiple textual sources. In considering the use of a source, it is also important for young children to begin to develop the disposition that texts are fallible—sometimes texts are poorly written, ill-suited to their purpose, or outright wrong—because they are out of date, because the source is not sufficiently knowledgeable, or even because the source is deliberately misleading.
