Immigration and Children’s Literature: Stories, Social Justice, and Critical Consciousness

This book explores the issues faced by immigrant children through the lens of children’s literature. The authors employ the UN convention of the Rights of the Child, the lens of equity, and Freire’s principles of critical consciousness as a framework for analysing children’s literature and immigration. They focus on circumstances and experiences of immigration from the perspective of young children who are leaving their homelands and growing up as immigrants. The book focuses primarily on children from birth to 8 years old but with crossover and implications for older children. The chapters reveal the social, economic, and political issues faced by child immigrants, refugees and asylees throughout the global context, viewed through and alongside children’s literature.

The book provides suggestions for the implementation of children’s literature in the curriculum and provides tools for educators and researchers working with immigrant and refugee children, showing how they can better understand their students and families. A variety of children’s literature is covered, including analysis of works by Jairo Buitrago, Yanksook Choi, Sandra leGuen, Rosemary McCartney, Bao Phi and Jeanette Winter.

Wilma Robles-Melendez is Professor of Early Childhood and Leadership at the Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice at Nova Southeastern University, USA. She is Series Editor of Immigration and Childhood Education.

Audrey Henry is Professor Emerita of Reading Education at Nova Southeastern University, USA.