One strategy for developing science literacy and scientific literacy in young children is through published trade books. To better understand how science literacy and scientific literacy may be ...represented in elementary classrooms, we investigated children's books that explore science concepts. Specifically, we examined high‐quality science trade books that children are likely to encounter in school to see if they could be used to support science literacy and scientific literacy; skills inherent in these types of literacies can arm our students to combat misinformation. Our findings demonstrate that books are not uniform in quality. Consistent with existing research, and in light of our findings, we make the recommendations to support teachers in elevating science trade books from simply serving as opportunities for reading in science to supporting science literacy and scientific literacy.
There is no information search system can assist young children's known picture book search needs since the information is not organized according to their cognitive abilities and needs. Therefore, ...this study explored young children's known picture book search strategies and extracted picture book search elements by simulating a search scenario and playing a picture book search game. The study found 29 elements children used to search for known picture books. Then, these elements are classified into three dimensions: The first dimension is the concept category of an element. The second dimension is an element's status in the story. The third dimension indicates where an element appears in a picture book. Additionally, it revealed a young children's general search strategy: Children first use auditory elements that they hear from the adults during reading. After receiving error returns, they add visual elements that they see by themselves in picture books. The findings can not only help to understand young children's known‐item search and reformulation strategies during searching but also provide theoretical support for the development of a picture book information organization schema in the search system.
Although the Great War made extraordinarily complex demands on the nations involved, it is the landscape of the battlefield which has continued to dominate contemporary perceptions of the conflict. ...Australian and English children's picture book authors and illustrators have adopted a similar focus, particularly regarding the Western Front. It is the illustrators, however, who have the more complex task, for they have inherited an aesthetic issue that has challenged artists since 1914. Like the British, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand official war artists of the time, they are confronted, at every turn, by the challenge of depicting a surreally empty landscape. It was not so much a landscape as the artists understood it before the war, but rather an anti-landscape, as though the war had annihilated Nature. What was left was a dystopian wilderness that bore witness to the destructive power of industrialised warfare. This article will explore how a selection of Australian and English children's picture book illustrators respond to the emptiness of the battlefield landscape, or as Becca Weir so evocatively characterises it, the paradox of measurable nothingness.
PDF
