| Multicultural children's literature can serve as mirrors for children of diverse backgrounds (Bishop, 1990); however, such books present varying degrees of quality in terms of cultural portrayals and literary merit (Harris, 1997). In addition, essentialist assumptions presuppose the existence of a monolithic cultural identity for all individuals of a specific ethnic/racial group (Barrera, Liguori & Salas, 1993). This leads to a "one size fits all" attitude, by which a given multicultural text, that is culturally specific, is considered to provide an accurate reflection of culture for children of similar backgrounds. Thus this qualitative, descriptive inquiry sought to explore how culturally specific children's literature may intersect with the cultural backgrounds of students. It focused on one subset of Latino children's literature (e.g., Mexican American-themed picture storybooks in bilingual editions), and one subset of Latino readers (six young bilingual children of Mexican origin). The children's textual transactions were examined for the types of responses evoked by the texts, how their bilingual/bicultural backgrounds were reflected in responses, and what this revealed about the texts.;Data consisted of oral, written, and artistic responses to the oral readings in Spanish of four focal texts, as well as family interviews. Coding and analysis of students' responses revealed cultural connections across Sipe's (2000) five response categories: analytical, personal, transparent, performative, and intertextual. It was demonstrated that when children found some familiar cultural aspect in the focal books, and were provided a supportive group for sharing ideas, their responses in all modalities included high levels of aesthetic and critical thought as they used their cultural backgrounds and experiences to read/listen to the word (Freire & Macedo, 1993). Children's responses also pointed to several problematic textual areas: unknown vocabulary and sociohistorical concepts, unfamiliar settings, incongruence with protagonists' motivations/experiences, and unrealistic illustrations. Despite the distorted images perceived in some of the texts, the cultural specificity of content and illustrations created a sagittal dimension of space in which children could step into and out of story worlds, and rearrange literary elements from within to create images better reflective of their cultural realities. |
