Gettin Through Thursday

The day before mama gets paid is the hardest day of the week, and sometimes results in a broken heart.  What happens when you've been promised a celebration for a hard earned report card with top grades that you might not get after all? Report card day falls on a Thursday, the day mama doesn't have any money left.  Melrose Cooper and NNeka Bennett have provided readers with a narrative that includes concepts around economic inequality and access for children to engage in critical discourse around economic diversity.

 

Access and exposure to diverse narratives in picture books offer children opportunity to learn about their familiar communities and their unimagined, unexplored world.  Words and illustrations on the pages invite the reader to participate, with exposed characters and their personal experiences lived.  Thus, there is a great need for a variety of representations of family, school, and life.  As children deepen their own sense of self through the portrayals they connect too.  Bishop said:

Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange.  These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author.  When lighting conditions are just right, however a window can be a mirror. (1990, as cited by Harris, 2007, p.153)