Taken from the National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) listserv: “The International Journal of Multicultural Education (IJME) is soliciting reviews of multicultural children’s books for its fall issue on Indigenous cultures to be published in December. Reviews can be done for picture books, easy readers, transitional readers, chapter books and literature for young adults.
“IJME is a peer-reviewed open-access journal for scholars, practitioners and students of multicultural education. Committed to promoting educational equity, cross-cultural understanding, and global awareness in all levels of education, IJME publishes two issues a year on various multicultural education topics.
“The review should consider the text from a multicultural perspective, paying attention to multicultural and monocultural themes, civil rights, cultural normativism, intercultural exchange, hybridity and so forth. Some questions might be: How does the author represent relationships between characters of different races or ethnicities? Does the text advocate for multicultural ideals in terms of political correctness or of civil rights? Are its representations of culture authentic or pejorative? Is this book likely to change the minds of its readers? Will it strengthen the convictions of those readers who share its perspective? How does this book compare with similar books on this theme?
“For picture books, additional questions might be, does the artist create authentic individualistic representations, or are they generic or stereotypical? Do the illustrations enhance the value of the text or are they superfluous? Do they possess pedagogical value in themselves, pointing toward traditions or unusual modes of representation”?
Submissions should be sent to mjoseph@rutgers.edu. More information can be found at the IJME website. Deadline is December 1, 2008.
