The brothers and sisters learn to write: popular literacies in childhood and school cultures

Abstract

Building on her groundbreaking work in Writing Superheroes, Anne Dyson traces the influence of a wide-ranging set of textual toys from children's lives--church and hip-hop songs, rap music, movies, TV, traditional jump-rope rhymes, the words of professional sports announcers and radio deejays--upon school learning and writing. Wonderfully rich portraits of five African American first-graders demonstrate how children's imaginative use of wider cultural symbols enriches their school learning.