ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the methodologies by which it proceeds from concepts and theories to analysis. It focuses on research methodology, not a report on research findings, from the perspective of a scholar in literary studies. The chapter intends to flesh out the how of critical analysis of texts by attending to the processes and methods that shape author investigations of children's texts. When mainstream readers approach minority texts they are normally required to do more work in order to understand them, since they are situated outside the systems of belief that inform such texts. Critical reading requires that author's engage in two processes in tandem. They need both to stand back from a text so as to situate it, top-down, in relation to the historical and cultural forces that have shaped it and the theoretical frames that they draw on; and also, in bottom-up analysis, to examine it's linguistic and narrative features.
