Sensitive Issues: An Annotated Guide to Children’s Literature K-6

In a literature-based setting, teachers and librarians can encourage students to become lifelong readers by providing books on personal problems confronted daily by many children, such as substance abuse, illness, death and divorce. Sensitive Issues - An Annotated Guide to Children’s Literature K-6 is an annotated bibliography of children’s books published since 1975 at the elementary school level. The books listed focus on issues that individual children may face, or that teachers and/or librarians can develop into units of study for larger student groups. The first chapter discusses a variety of learning strategies and activities in using children’s books to explore sensitive issues. Each of the remaining eight issue chapters contains an introduction to the topic and presents a set of related books, which are alphabetically arranged by title. Every entry includes an appropriate grade level for independent reading and reading aloud, a summary and critique of each book and followup activities that can be used by teachers and the librarians to enrich students’ appreciation of the written text.