:Mission Statement: 

           To help teachers, librarians and parents use books about the arts to enhance children's literacy.

The arts present a perplexing problem. Individually, many adults and children know personally the satisfactions of being involved with the arts, either as participants or as audience. In addition, there is ample, convincing evidence of the arts' positive effects on seemly unrelated academic areas, such as reading and math.

Despite this, school boards and administrations nationwide are decimating funding for the arts as budgets shrink. Fewer and fewer children experience the arts in school settings. This blog attempts to be a resource so that teachers, librarians, and parents can cope with this challenge.

The blog is designed to reach three main target audiences:

• Teachers concerned about the arts as necessary in children’s education, can use this as a resource to select books for their class rooms.

• By recommending children’s books about the arts, librarians can help classroom teachers who are working in schools without art programs.

• Parents concerned about expanding their children’s experiences with the arts will find a variety of books here to enhance their children’s arts literacy.

**Comments are available to be left at the bottom of each tabbed section**


About the Director of this blog and of the Center for Childrens Literature


John Warren Stewig is a highly respected children's book author and magazine writer. He has written 10 picture books for children, is the author or co-author of 12 scholarly books, and has published more than 100 articles in 47 periodicals. He was elected chairman of the 1998 Caldecott Award Committee of the American Library Association, which awards the coveted Caldecott Medal, the highest award for children's book illustration in the United States. Recently, he served on the Sibert Committee of the American Library Association, which gives an annual award for the most distinguished information book of the year, as well as on the Medallion Committee, given to an author by the University of Southern Mississippi for a body of work.
Dr. Stewig's areas of research and teaching are visual literacy and children's picture books, issues in children's literature, language arts curriculum, and drama in the curriculum. For several years he has taught methods classes in public schools so that he could demonstrate working directly with children. Dr. Stewig has led writers' workshops and Authors-in-the-Schools programs for various school districts in 26 different states.
Dr. Stewig has a bachelor of science degree, master of science degree and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Stewig's picture books are:

•"Sending Messages" (Houghton, 1978), nonfiction

•"The Fisherman and His Wife" (Holiday House, 1988), retelling

•"Stone Soup" (Holiday House, 1991), retelling

•"The Moon's Choice" (Simon and Schuster, 1993), retelling

•"Princess Florecita and the Iron Shoes" (Knopf, 1995), retelling

•"King Midas" (Holiday House, 1999), retelling

•"Clever Gretchen" (Marshall Cavendish, 2000), retelling

•"Mother Holly" (North-South, 2001), retelling

•"Making Plum Jam" (Hyperion, 2002), fiction

•"Whuppitie Stourie" (Holiday House, 2004), retelling

•"The Animals Watched" (Holiday House, 2007)

•“Nobody Asked the Pea” (Holiday House, forthcoming)

Dr. Stewig has also authored a book to help teachers and librarians encourage children to develop their observation skills and increase their ability to process visual information looking at picture books.