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Teaching Literature in the Context of Literacy Instruction Jocelyn A. Chadwick and John E. Grassie. Heinemann, 2016.
Fans of Carol Jago's With Rigor for All will be delighted with this new offering from Chadwick and Grassie, who consistently echo Jago's championing of truly rigorous approaches to reading and understanding literature at all grade levels. Chadwick, the primary voice throughout the book, offers the view of an experienced teacher devoted to engaging all students in the joys, challenges, wonders, and labors of great literature.
If you are an educator who tends to tune out writers who espouse traditional values of canonical literature, please don't miss this book. Yes, Chadwick is attentive to the ideas of E. D. Hirsch, Sandra Stotsky, and Allan Bloom; but she is more influenced by John Dewey, Paolo Freire, and Cesar Chavez. The result is a thoughtful, well-founded, and culturally responsible approach to teaching students to embrace difficult and highly respected literature. Chadwick and Grassie position their ideas within an impressive reach of scholarly context, infusing them with relevant thoughts of dozens of living students and teachers, and undergirding them with moving stories from real classrooms and useful materials to help readers create their own pedagogical success stories. Teaching Literature in the Context of Literacy Instruction (TLCLI) is a rich resource, especially for a quick read (100 pages, plus 50 pages of...