A Club for All: Creating a Critical Literacy Book Club

The hero in a picturebook often faces a problem, but through perseverance and resilience is able to demonstrate strength and courage to overcome or address the problem. These stories provide an engaging, active plot for readers to discuss. Heroes are found throughout the pages of award-winning children’s literature, and book clubs are a way to support students in constructing meaning of complex texts (Jocius & Shealy, 2018) as well as to hold courageous conversations about critical literacy topics such as immigration and race (Kaczmarczyk & Adams, 2021; Jones & Lynch, 2023). In a funded research/teaching project, Dr. Jan Lacina and two master’s degree students in the College of Education, Maddie Baldikoski and Avery Penman, formed a before school breakfast book club at TCU’s laboratory school for children with learning difficulties, Starpoint School. The club met each Monday/Wednesday morning from 7:15-8am September though the end of April and will resume again in the fall.

In the United States, laboratory schools have a long history. The first laboratory school was formed by the educational philosopher John Dewy in 1896 at the University of Chicago. A laboratory school is a school operated by a university and/or college of education with the purpose of conducting research and for training future teachers. At TCU, we are fortunate to have two laboratory schools. In the book club sessions discussed in the linked article published in Literacy Today, the authors discuss the formation of the book club. A research article is forthcoming.

Link to article: https://publuu.com/flip-book/24429/1282661/page/70