Haciendo Espejos: Multicultural Children’s Literature as Mirror Making

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the outcomes of a service-learning course where Latinas in a higher education setting created a 16-page children’s book for at-risk students as part of their education coursework in a regional public Hispanic-serving institution (HSI). There is a well-documented lack of Latina/o/x representation in children’s literature, which has impacts on literacy gaps and student confidence, but little research on the potential of creating children’s literature as a means to bridge divides. A series of qualitative focus groups at an HSI in a U.S.–Mexico border community were utilized to define the process of mirror making. Mirror making occurs when students draw from their own literacy journeys as the basis for writing while attempting to represent the experiences of emerging readers. As such, the process of mirror making represents a way of narrativizing sociopolitical issues of language, gender, and family that are relevant to their formative experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Children’s literature
• Latinas
• testimonio
• Hispanic-serving institution
• representation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ when the project was taught again, in the following semester, one student chose to write the book entirely in Spanish with no English translation.