Article one Promoting Reading

Promoting Reading among Mexican American Children

 

              Reading is best promoted when the text speaks to the reader’s world.  Books that enable minorities to take pride in their ethnic identity, provide positive role models, develop knowledge about their cultural history and build self-esteem can help promote literacy among minority readers.

 

              This article enables the reader to identify challenges, recommends classroom strategies and provides both literature selection guidelines and suggestions of literature appropriate for various grade levels for Mexican Americans.

 

              Today, only one tenth of one percent of the five thousand books published yearly are about or written by Mexican Americans.  In the past, only the major publishers of children’s literature published four to five books a year.  Most of the literature published through the 1990’s was limited to folklore, legends and protest pieces.  Since the early 1990’s, with a growing awareness of this issue, an increase in small publishing houses such as, Arte Publico, Pinata Books, and Bilingual Review Press have aided in launching Mexican American authors to national recognition.

 

              This article also offers ten suggestions for effective classroom strategies in how to better understand and prepare for cultural identity.  Nine guidelines for selecting appropriate literature are also recommended.  Finally, an extensive list of authors and works that have been reviewed and offer authentic cultural perspectives on Mexican Americans are presented by grade levels PreK-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12.

 

              I found this article useful.  The suggestions for effective classroom strategies offer some excellent suggestions on how to incorporate many methods for exploring the Mexican American culture.  I found the nine guidelines for selecting appropriate literature to be true to how I was trained in library science.  Interestingly, I found that Gary Soto was included in the literature selections on many levels as a good author of Mexican American literature.  This is in direct conflict with a second article I read.