Children’s Literature and Learner Empowerment
J. Bland
Bloomsbury 2013, 331 pp., £67.50
isbn 978 1 4411 4441 6
This book is based on Janice Bland’s doctoral thesis
for the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena. Fortunately
though, whilst retaining the multiplicity of references
of a thesis, the book has been written in a way which
is relevant and accessible to its intended audience
of teachers and teachers in training. What it does
is to introduce the reader to the field of children’s
literature (as well as other related fields such as
second language acquisition, narrative theory, and
reading research) whilst arguing very persuasively for
the greater use of children’s literature in the education
of children and teenagers in the EFL classroom, and
especially in what Bland calls ‘the ever-younger EFL
classroom’ (p. 2). It does so by focusing on important
issues, by providing a critical evaluation of the
literature relevant to these issues, by putting forward
her position on these issues, and by providing detailed
examples of the approaches she is advocating.
The book starts with an Introduction which provides
an overview of those issues in the EFL-literature
classroom to be given more detailed treatment in
subsequent chapters. In particular, it highlights the
importance of well-crafted texts, of covering the
literacy spectrum, and of reading as empowerment.
In Part 1, the book focuses on visual literacy. Bland
argues for giving a significant role in the very young
EFL classroom to picturebooks, especially those
with many narrative and appealing pictures and
little text (what she refers to as ‘nearly wordless
picturebooks’). She supports this position with
reference to the literature on multimodality, multi-
literacies, and the empowerment value of visual
literacy. She also puts forward a case for using what
she calls ‘playful post-modern picturebooks’ (i.e.
challenging, rule-breaking, subversive picturebooks),
a case for ‘picturebooks with an implicit sociocultural
agenda’, and a case for ‘picturebooks with an
environmental perspective’. In other words, she
argues the case for using picturebooks that are
engaging, which facilitate language acquisition,
which promote visual literacy, and which contribute
to the educational development of young learners.
She also advocates the frequent use of graphic
novels in the classroom for older children as a lead
in to and an addition to the use of conventional
novels, as a very effective means of engaging
children by connecting with their world and as a
means of developing literary literacy.
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Throughout Part 1, Bland provides examples of
potentially engaging younger learner ‘texts’, and for
each one demonstrates imaginative ways of exploiting
them in order to facilitate language acquisition, to
develop literacies, and to contribute to the cognitive
development of the learners.
Part 2 considers the importance of literary literacy and
of ways of helping children to achieve it through, for
example, the use of postmodern fairy tales, poetry,
creative writing, and plays. The focus in this part is
on children’s literature and its liberating potential
for engaging the reader in high-order thinking and
in co-construction of texts, as well as its potential
role in empowerment through education ‘to read the
world critically, constructively and purposefully, with
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the pedagogic promise of being able to influence
outcomes at least to some extent and therefore
have choices in life’ (pp. 111–12). Initially, Bland
focuses on ways of using postmodern fairy stories to
achieve these goals and proposes the three literary
literacy stepping stones of ‘engaged reading’ of
socially committed, questioning, and radical texts,
of ‘participatory reading’ which stimulates the
readers to contribute as co-creators, and of reading
against the text (‘… or resisting reading, by which
is meant discovering implicit ideologies and the
uncovering of unequal power relations’ (p. 126)).
In this section, Bland also investigates ways of
achieving ‘Empowerment with fairy tales as “utopian”
texts’, ‘Parody and “playing havoc with all the old
certainties”’, ‘The literature canon and schema-
refreshing discourse’, and ‘The motivational power
of excess’. These headings are certainly indicative of
Bland’s stance of engaging young learners actively
in the reading process. In the other sections of
Part 2, Bland continues her theme of promoting
empowerment through engaged co-construction and
turns her attention to ways of achieving this through
the use of children’s poetry and creative writing, with
particular emphasis on the value of language play, and
of language patterning for humour and for pleasure.
She also focuses on the value of children’s plays and
especially on the potential benefits of involving young
learners as writers and performers of drama. Part 2 is
especially rich with very persuasive examples of texts
which Bland has used and of the actual tasks which
have accompanied them.
In Part 3, Bland turns her attention to critical cultural
literacy and in particular to radical children’s literature
and engaged reading, before concluding the book with
a detailed and exemplified discussion of the use of
Harry Potter to help children to achieve critical cultural
literacy. The emphasis is very much on engaged
reading as a means of promoting both critical
language awareness and critical cultural awareness.
The cognitive, emotional, and moral development of
the young learner is given priority and such issues
as human rights, global issues, racial issues, class
issues, gender issues, and ecocritical issues are
discussed. As usual a number of stimulating examples
are provided of how to use literature to help young
learners to explore the issues and the section is
concluded with an extended exploration of how to
make use of Harry Potter to help young learners to
develop critical cultural literacy.
While I agree with Bland about the importance of
helping young learners to develop critical cultural
literacy, I would have liked to see some reference in
this section to how getting young learners to become
engaged in thinking about the issues focused on
could also help them to acquire language and develop
communication skills. It is important to help teachers
to contribute positively to the education of young
learners of EFL but it is also important to help them to
develop their language proficiency too.
How informative is the book? The book is full of
information about every aspect of the use of children’s
literature in the young EFL classroom. Most of this
information is up to date, valid, reliable, accurate,
informative, and relevant. For example, the sections
on picturebooks and on graphic novels offer detailed
information about current thinking and research in
these areas. What I particularly appreciate is that
Bland rarely glosses the experts she refers to but
provides extended quotations which make her text
self-standing. Only rarely does the reader need to
go to the source of a reference to find out what a
researcher actually said (for example Nunning and
Surkamp (2006) are referred to on page 193 as
underlining the ‘value of drama in order to rehearse
a change of perspective’, but I am not sure what they
actually say). Occasionally, though, terms are used
and referenced without explanation. For example, I
have read the paragraph on ‘Heteroglossia’ on page
210 three times but I am still not sure what it actually
means.
There is one section in which I find the information
rather misleading. In the initial description of visual
literacy (pp. 16–20), Bland refers to researchers
such as Arnold, Masuhara, McTaggart, Stevick, and
Tomlinson who stress the importance of training
children to visualize (i.e. to create mental images
whilst they are reading). What she does not mention,
though, is that they are referring to children reading in
a foreign language and that Tomlinson, for example,
refers to evidence that visualization is automatic
in the L1 but does not automatically transfer to the
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L2. Bland then goes on to connect visualization to
picturebooks and graphic novels. Whilst these types
of text are extremely valuable and they undoubtedly
make use of images to convey meaning, there is
evidence that, unless they are very skilfully designed
to create information gaps, they can impose images
on the readers and inhibit the transfer of their
visualization skills from their use in L1 reading (see
Tomlinson 1997). This rather simplistic assumption
that images on the page promote imaging skills
continues throughout Chapter 2 without any evidence
being provided in support of the assumption. Bland
also assumes that multimodal presentation (i.e.
coding) will promote multidimensional representation
(i.e. a mental decoding process) but the quote
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from Masuhara (2005) which Bland uses on page
17 was referring to the ability to process print
multidimensionally. These might seem to be minor
quibbles but they do reduce the credibility of the
book, as does the lack of indication in this, and many
other sections, as to whether the references relate to
L1 or L2 reading or both, and of clear indications of
which learner ages she is recommending particular
approaches for.
How stimulating is the book? What I found
stimulating about the book is Bland’s passion for her
topic and her conviction that what she is proposing
is a valuable contribution to the field. I was also
stimulated by her many rich examples and especially
by her choice of texts which not only have great
potential for the affective and cognitive engagement of
young learners but actually engaged me too. Too many
academic books about education are crammed with
theories and generalized approaches but are lacking
in specific and detailed examples of the principled
application of these theories and approaches. But
not this one. For me undoubtedly its strongest point
is that every approach advocated is exemplified with
engaging texts and tasks.
The book is very persuasive in that all its major
points are supported by relevant references to
credible research. For example, I am now much more
convinced of the potential value of picturebooks and
of graphic novels than I was before. The book is also
persuasive in its use of an authoritative, personal,
and convinced voice. Bland speaks to the reader
as someone who has both read widely and thought
deeply as well as someone who has both researched
and experienced the approaches she is advocating and
is convinced of their value. It is difficult to say exactly
how persuasive the book is because I was predisposed
towards Bland’s position before I started to read it.
What it did for me was to reconfirm and validate much
of my experience and many of my beliefs in relation to
477
the education of young learners of EFL. What I would
hope it would do for other readers is to open their
minds to the possible value of experiential approaches
to the use of literature in the development of young
learner literacies and to try out and evaluate the
approaches and procedures advocated.
Bland’s style is usually direct and her approach
is to advocate, exemplify, and justify. However,
just occasionally her voice sounds more like the
stereotypical voice of a PhD thesis (for example
‘Empowerment can be supported through the
selection of children’s literature with post-modern
features, which allow the reader agency by offering
open texts for the reader to co-create according to the
precepts of reader-response criticism’ (pp. 12–13)).
The book would undoubtedly be useful to students on
teacher training and postgraduate courses relevant to
the education of young learners of EFL as it presents
to them the most up-to-date research and thinking
about how to help young learners to develop multiple
literacies, as well as proposing and exemplifying
procedures for applying this research and thinking
to the practical realities of the classroom. For similar
reasons it should also be useful to teachers, teacher
trainers, materials writers, and researchers with an
interest in helping young learners to acquire language
and develop both thinking and communication
skills. I would certainly recommend them to read it,
to evaluate it, and to think of ways of making use
of those approaches they are persuaded by in the
contexts in which they work. This is a very impressive
and valuable book which I really enjoyed reading.
478 Reviews
References
Masuhara, H. 2005. ‘Helping learners to achieve
multi-dimensional mental representation in L2
reading’. Humanising Language Teaching 7/2: 121–37.
Tomlinson, B. 1997. ‘The role of visualisation in the
reading of literature by learners of a foreign language’.
Unpublished thesis. University of Nottingham, UK.
The reviewer
Brian Tomlinson has worked as a teacher, teacher
trainer, curriculum developer, football coach, and
university academic in Indonesia, Japan, Nigeria,
Oman, Singapore, the UK, Vanuatu, and Zambia, as
well as giving presentations in over 70 countries.
He is Founder and President of MATSDA (the
Downloaded from http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Melbourne on January 17, 2016
international Materials Development Association),
a Visiting Professor at the University of Liverpool
and at Leeds Metropolitan University, and a TESOL
Professor at Anaheim University. He has over one
hundred publications on materials development,
language through literature, the teaching of
reading, language awareness, and teacher
development, including Discover English (with
Rod Bolitho), Openings, Materials Development
in Language Teaching, Developing Materials
for Language Teaching, Research for Materials
Development in Language Learning (with Hitomi
Masuhara), and Applied Linguistics and Materials
Development.
Email: brianjohntomlinson@gmail.com
doi:10.1093/elt/ccv043
Advance Access publication August 1, 2015