ABSTRACT
This chapter explores translanguaging literacies in Latinx children's literature, which includes picture books, middle grade, and young adult novels. We analyze the ways in which authors enact translanguaging literacies to develop characters, tell authentic stories, and discuss issues impacting the community such as immigration policies. In so doing, authors also address a changing community landscape, and amplify the voices and stories of racialized Latinxs, including Afro-Latinx. We view children's literature as the chispa that can spark educators' own ways of creating translanguaging spaces in the classroom. We analyze how these can be used as mentor texts, provide a guide to expanding culturally and linguistically sustaining classroom libraries, and present a framework that considers temas, textos, and translanguaging as transformative pedagogical practice.
