Issue No 1. Sliding into: Literacy

Why literacy/ies for this first issue of SLIDING? Read the editorial note to explore this volume’s main concept and our position about it.

Read some personal reflections on how we think about and teach literacy, and what it means to critically engage with a text here.

Children’s cookbooks are a budding but underexplored subsection of children’s literature. More attention should be paid to this subgenre to uncover messages related to the possibilities for children’s agency these books implicitly offer. Where some children’s cookbooks depict children at the service of adult interests or in need of adult protection, others construct the implied reader as a capable, culinary competent and social subject.

Have you ever wondered about the potential of digital picturebooks for children’s literacy development? Learn more about the intriguing narrative form and its benefits and challenges here.

While AI itself isn’t new, what is new is how accessible it has become. This technology is evolving at a rapid speed, and keeping up isn’t easy. My aim is to encourage you, reader, whether you’re a parent, a caretaker, or just merely interested in AI, to be curious and learn about it – not fear it – since we now have a generation growing up not just digitally native, but AI-native.

The words to fill in this crosswords with will give you 28 concrete solutions to implement if you want to make reading easier for yourself and others! Dive in, be curious, and don’t hesitate to get a bit of help from the internet.

This curated feature introduces ten anime series that transform science, history, language, and life skills into gripping visual stories. From Parallel World Pharmacy’s heartfelt medical lessons to Steins; Gate’s thrilling exploration of time and consequence, each recommendation highlights how anime can make complex ideas engaging, accessible, and deeply personal for young audiences.

Film literacy may sound like an intimidating skill to learn, but it can be crucial in this age, with an overwhelming amount of fictional video content being produced every day. In this article, I propose five easy activities to improve a child’s film literacy.

Ever wonder what makes libraries, classrooms, and children’s museums so inviting? Great children’s spaces are accessible, engaging, and inspiring to their visitors. This article takes a look at Dokken, an exemplary Danish library, to see five design principles in action.

Graphic Medicine, through the multimodality of the comic medium, opens the discussion about healthcare representation. Patients, caregivers, procedures and treatments are shown from a myriad of perspectives. This plurality of voices can support the development of health literacy skills in young readers to make them active agents in their own health processes and general well-being.

The 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) Report examines how well children are reading in 57 countries and eight benchmarking entities.  This infographic summarizes its main results, highlighting trends and factors that influence how young people read.

We’ve all heard in school about the importance of literacy. But what about reading for fun? Through this interview, Elaina Ryan reminds us about the importance of finding joy in books and sharing this enthusiasm with younger readers. Learn more about her insight and the fantastic initiatives that she is leading with Children’s Books Ireland!

Have you ever found yourself discussing children’s reading behaviour and got stuck in arguing for or against reading digitally? If this is the case then this article is for you.