The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures

Building on her groundbreaking work in Writing Superheroes, Anne Dyson traces the influence of a wide-ranging set of "textual toys" from children's lives:church and hip-hop songs, rap music, movies, TV, traditional jump-rope rhymes, the words of professional sports announcers and radio deejays, upon school learning and writing. Wonderfully rich portraits of five African American first-graders demonstrate how children's imaginative use of wider cultural symbols enriches their school learning. Featuring lively and engaging vignettes of children who are often left behind by our educational system, this book shows that children bring a rich folk culture to school and demonstrates how they "remix" their cultural references to accommodate school tasks like writing, and provides concrete examples of how children's cultural literacy practices translate into classroom practices and, in turn, into practices of academic success.