"I'm in a bad mood. Let's go shopping" - Victoria Carrington

This article examines the significance of Diva Starz, a new line of interactive dolls aimed at young girls between 6 and 11 years for current models of literacy. It argues that these dolls have much to tell us about the construction of children as consumers, our views about 'childhood', and the models of literacy instruction most appropriate for giving children the skills and knowledge needed to deal with the complex pedagogic texts characteristic of childhood in contemporary consumer culture.

Published in Journal of Early Childhood Literacy Volume 03 Issue 01 - Publication Date: 04/2003

Reading, Homes and Families: From Postmodern to Modern? - Carrington & Luke

New economic, social and cultural conditions have begun to alter the patterns of home/school transitions in two ways: first, by shifting the normative definitions of family in postindustrial communities and economies; and second, by shifting the basis of preschool linguistic and literate socialization from longstanding print culture to emergent, complex blendings of multiliteracies that engage digital and media texts. Our claim here is that for many children the normative site for storybook reading–the family–is changing, that the texts and discourses of home and community-based literacy practices are changing, and therefore, that the background knowledge, expertise, and habitus that children bring from home to school are also in transition. The cases we describe model new patterns of identity and practice at work in the early childhood classroom–patterns for which a generation of print-trained and acculturated teachers have limited explanatory schemata other than those related to "deficit."

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