Dec. 2 “Multicultural Literature and Young Adolescents: A Kaleidoscope of Opportunity.”

The central focus of this article was very clear within the first couple of paragraphs. The author, Susan M. Landt, used the pairing of a kaleidoscope to the personal development and reflection through multicultural literature. What immediately caught my attention was this quote; “It is these memories that reinforce my belief in the power of literature to open doors in our minds.” This reflection of her childhood merely represents her personal reflection on the impact of literature. Another, or similar target of this article was to educate teachers with information to open these doors in our minds of strategies that will encourage students to use multicultural literature for student development. Though initially I had to Google what a kaleidoscope was, it allowed for a nice parallel to the openness of creativity as students read the literature and put themselves within the lives of the characters and imagine possibilities beyond reality.

Susan Brandt follows her opening with a solution or “point of attack.” She proposed the idea of developing minds of students: not a static, narrow vision, nut a spectrum of perceptions and possibilities. “My goal is to facilitate awareness and availability of quality literate that can provide young minds with a richer, clearer, and more accurate window which to gaze.” This quote was very interesting, but I included it on order to ask this question. If Susan M Landt restricts the selections of multicultural literature with the focus of race and ethnicity to provide depth of focus, how is she right by saying these “restricted selections” can allow the possibilities of drawing on a range of offerings within an area?

Though I did find this article quite fascinating and actually quite helpful, I began feeling annoyed after the author seemed to repeat herself over and over, and over, and over again (but maybe this was on purpose to really make her point clear). We as readers can grip some ideas out of this article that we will be able to use within the classroom, but each reader is able to understand that Literature can serve as a bridge to awareness and understanding and help students make intercultural connections. This point does in fact make me question how I want to teach young adult literature. In all honesty, it’s actually quite difficult to put my feelings on paper because I want to collaborate with my classmates before I come up with my connection or reflection. By taking a stab, I feel that if we as teachers promote the idea of reading multicultural literature, we open the windows for students to look out and imagine their own reality or world (as cliché as that sounds). I did in fact enjoy this article, and what I was able to come away with it as a future teacher myself. With that being said, I am curious and interested in how the classroom discussion will go today if majority of the people read the same article that I did.