Areas of Interest

Children’s literature and literacy instruction and learning in elementary grades.

Research Interests

During my first teaching assignment at Scioto Village, the state reformatory for girls in Ohio, I decided that sharing my personal love of literature would become my professional mission. I subsequently was a reading supervisor in a middle school in Columbus, Ohio, and taught reading at Rosemount Middle School in Rosemount, Minnesota for a year before beginning doctoral work in children’s and adolescent literature at the University of Minnesota. My interests in connecting young people with books, in their writing and in their responses to literature have continued throughout my career.

I have also been an ardent advocate of children’s rights to read and am a past-president of the Minnesota Coalition Against Censorship. I have served as president of the Kerlan Friends, an organization that supports the work of the Kerlan Collection, a collection of original art and manuscripts from thousands of children’s books housed in the Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota, and have been the chair of the Kerlan Award committee. I have enjoyed reviewing children’s and adolescent literature for over 25 years for the Curriculum and Instruction publication New Books for Young Readers and currently serve as editor. I also serve on the adolescent literature editorial advisory board for The Five Owls, a children’s literature publication. I am working with the Minnesota Humanities Commission as an editor for Minnesota Storytime, an online collection of reading guides for children. I am a member of the International Reading Association and of the Children’s Literature Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Selected Publications