Young Emergent Bilinguals as Meaning Makers takes readers on a journey of the multimodal literacy experiences of over 125 young children learning English as a new language in U.S. public school classrooms. The book is filled with a plethora of student work samples, transcripts, and artwork produced with the author/researcher as part of their literacy centers. These examples illustrate the rich and sophisticated ways emergent bilinguals make meaning using everyday resources. This often goes unnoticed by monolingual educators who tend to value linguistic forms of learning. Insight is offered into using endpapers as cultural invitations for meaning-making during reading instruction as well as ways to assess the multimodal productions of children. There are plenty of implications for practice that include ways to use technology to enhance digital literacy skills, discursive moves, and specifics about ways to value artwork produced by emergent bilinguals. The book pushes for changes in school curricula and policy as a way to move beyond monomodal, monolingual, and monocultural ideologies and practices.
Sally Brown, Ph.D., is a Professor of Literacy Education at Georgia Southern University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate students. She holds a Ph.D. in Language and Literacy from the University of South Carolina and worked as a public-school educator for over 13 years. Her research focuses on multimodal approaches to teaching literacy with young emergent bilinguals. Her most recent publications can be found in The Reading Teacher, Early Childhood Education Journal, and the European Early Childhood Education Research Journal.