Abstract

This paper describes a three-year study of community based literature discussion groups involving parents and other caregivers and their fourth and fifth grade children in libraries in a Northeastern region of the United States. Sites represented underserved urban and rural community libraries, with economically and culturally diverse participants. These intergenerational discussions focused on children’s literature broadly highlighting themes of democracy and citizenship. Authors evaluated program implementation at fourteen sites, examining how the experience of implementing a thematic literature discussion affects participants’ understanding and collaborative meaning-making in the context of family and school reading practices and the formation of a reading community. Qualitative and quantitative data were obtained via observations and surveys. Our findings suggest that the building of a reading community increased participation and engagement at focal sites. The authors were interested in seeing how parents and children could interact with facilitators in “hybrid literacies” (Cushman & Emmons) to experience learning and construct meaning about text that could not happen typically in schools (Mahiri, 2005), even in classrooms where literature discussions are occurring. We also looked at what makes some book discussions “better” than others—and what we might learn that would help future sites, facilitators who implement such discussions, and our teachers and teacher candidates, to prepare them to create rich centers of literature discussion with parents that connect to students’ roles as life-long citizens.