#and novak's reactions were the cutest thing ever

[bluespring864]

Olga Danilovic and Hamad Medjedovic of Serbia win their mixed doubles match against Team Czechia at United Cup 2024 (featuring proud tennis dad Novak Djokovic)

[juliafaustinapearl-blog]

Julia Pearl - Readerly Exploration (due 10/19)

Sipe: Talking back and taking over: Young children's expressive engagement during storybook read-alouds

 Sipe BIG takeaway:  Young readers are more apt to be expressive when they are responding to literature. They laugh out loud, shout out questions, use large hand gestures, and even share personal stories from their own lives. This is not a means of rowdiness or distraction. Rather, it is the way that young children make personal connections with text and engrain being a reader more deeply into their identity.

Sipe Nugget: I appreciated what the article said about young children seeing stories as an invitation to be expressive. Story time is a time for personal engagement with a text. These texts elicit such responses because, as expressed in the article, not only are the texts enjoyable and exciting for young children. It is also explained in the article by the idea of carnivalesque, where there is a power shift from teacher to student as they become more expressive. I was happy that this was not discouraged as “misbehavior” but rather, it was encouraged and labeled as meaningful.

Exploration: Read a wide variety of genres and formats of texts to grow in their knowledge and experiences as a reader: Get inspiration from the assigned course reading(s) to find and read another text from a different genre or format and connect the two in some way.

 This reading automatically made me think of The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak. This book falls within the genre of fictional children’s literature. This book is meant to elicit laughter and promote reader engagement despite its lack of pictures. I used it in Sunday school lessons when teaching about the power of our words. My kids always were very expressive in their responses to the book, no matter how many times I read it to them. I often saw many of the same responses as those mentioned in the article, such as dramatizing (exaggerating what is in the story either verbally or non-verbally), talking back (commenting on and communicating with features in the text), or even taking over  (using the story as a launching pad for personal creativity). I would often here my kiddos laughing hysterically, shouting out comments on the book, or even making up their own silly saying, just as the book itself is made up of silly phrases. For my multimedia extension I included a video of a read aloud of the book, The Book with No Pictures, which shows active and expressive engagement. In this video it shows many of the similar expressive engagement reactions that my Sunday school kiddos also had when I read this book to them. It’s also the cutest thing ever, just saying.

 Multimedia Documentation