Ninety-two-year-old Octavio Rivera has been visited by some very interesting dreams--dreams about piänatas that spill their treasures before him revealing kissing turtles, winged pigs, hitchhiking armadillos and many more fantastic things.

Inviting teachers back to the role of reflective advocates for thoughtful reading instruction, this book presents theory and pedagogical possibilities to reclaim and build upon the knowledge base that was growing when government mandates, scripted commercial programs, and high stakes tests took over as the dominant agenda for reading instruction in U.S. public schools. Focusing on literacy learners’ and their teachers’ lives as literate souls, it examines how the teaching of reading can be reclaimed via an intensive reconsideration of five pillars as central to the teaching and learning of reading: learning, teaching, curriculum, language, and sociocultural contexts. Reclaiming Reading articulates the knowledge base that was marginalized or disrupted by legislated and policy intrusions into classrooms and provides practical examples for taking good reading instruction out of the cracks and moving it back to the center of the classroom. Explaining what happens in readers’ minds as they read and how teachers can design practices to support that process, this book encourages teachers to initiate pedagogy that will help them begin or return to the stance of reflective, knowledgeable, professional decision-makers.

Ninety-two-year-old Octavio Rivera has been visited by some very interesting dreams--dreams about piñatas that spill their treasures before him revealing kissing turtles, winged pigs, hitchhiking armadillos and many more fantastic things.

This expanded edition of the International Multilingual Research Journal’s recent special issue on translanguaging — or the dynamic, normative languaging practices of bilinguals — presents a powerful, comprehensive volume on current scholarship on this topic. Translanguaging can be understood from multiple perspectives. From a sociolinguistic point of view, it describes the flexible language practices of bilingual communities. From a pedagogical one, it describes strategic and complementary approaches to teaching and learning through which teachers build bridges between the everyday language practices of bilinguals and the language practices and performances desired in formal school settings. The Complex and Dynamic Language Practices of Emergent Bilinguals explores the pedagogical possibilities and challenges of translanguaging practice and pedagogy across a variety of U.S. educational programs that serve language-minoritized, emergent bilingual children and illustrates the affordances of dynamic, multilingual learning contexts in expanding emergent bilingual children’s linguistic repertoires and supporting their participation in formalized, school-based language performances that socialize them into the discourses of schooling. Taken together, the chapters in this volume examine the dynamic interactions and complex language ideologies of bilinguals—including pre- and in-service teachers, preK-12 students, and other members of multilingual and multidialectal sociolinguistic communities throughout the United States—as they language fluidly and flexibly and challenge the marginalization of these normative bilingual practices in academic settings and beyond. The articles in this book were originally published in the International Multilingual Research Journal.

An old man tells his granddaughter about the nine most beautiful dreams of his lifetime.

The “Hollywood” where Sammy Santos and Juliana Ríos live is not the West Coast one, the one with all the glitz and glitter. This Hollywood is a tough barrio at the edge of a small town in southern New Mexico. Sammy and this friends—members of the 1969 high school graduating class—face a world of racism, dress codes, war in Vietnam and barrio violence. In the summer before his senior year begins, Sammy falls in love with Juliana, a girl whose tough veneer disguises a world of hurt. By summer’s end, Juliana is dead. Sammy grieves, and in his grief, the memory of Juliana becomes his guide through this difficult year. Sammy is a smart kid, but he’s angry. He’s angry about Juliana’s death, he’s angry about the poverty his father and his sister must endure, he’s angry at his high school and its thinly disguised gringo racism, and he’s angry he might not be able to go to college. Benjamin Alire Sáenz, evoking the bittersweet ambience found in such novels as McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show, captures the essence of what it meant to grow up Chicano in small-town America in the late 1960s. Benjamin Alire Sáenz—novelist, poet, essayist and writer of children’s books—is at the forefront of the emerging Latino literatures. He has received both the Wallace Stegner Fellowship and the Lannan Fellowship, and is a recipient of the American Book Award. Born Mexican-American Catholic in the rural community of Picacho, New Mexico, he now teaches at the University of Texas at El Paso, and considers himself a “fronterizo,” a person of the border.