Crossing Thresholds and Becoming Vitally Attached: Bringing an Affective Lens to Diverse Books in Intervention

• In Event: Situating Students: Four Approaches to Critical Engagement With Children's and Young Adult Literature

Abstract

This paper brings together theories of culturally sustaining pedagogy and affect to analyze the inclusion of critically acclaimed picturebooks reflective of linguistic and cultural diversity within an intervention setting. Drawing from a two-year study with first and second graders and their teacher, I consider how diverse books created opportunities for multilingual students to cross thresholds and experience vitality. In analyzing these affective intensities, I render the students’ heightened sense of mattering and belonging – to books, to the classroom community, to the world. Despite the limitations of language to render affect fully, I make the argument for diverse books within intervention and for the creation of vital settings in which to experience them as an educational, civil, and human right.

Author

• Kelly K. Wissman, University at Albany - SUNY