The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write: Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures (review)

Featuring several school children who called themselves ‘the brothers and the sisters’, this book explores ‘the nature of change over time in children’s written language use’ (2) in our media-saturated times, when tensions exist between ‘different kinds of symbolic media and different social practices’ (136). It contains eight chapters.

Ch. 1, ‘School literacy: The view from inside a child culture’ (2–27), introduces the conceptual tools for tracing the threads of child literacy and the methodological tools for constructing the project data set. Ch. 2, ‘Mapping the cultural landscape of a contemporary childhood’ (28–51), looks into the children’s world and shows how schoolchildren’s musical appropriations have constructed children’s ‘present, past, and future childtimes’ (31) and how they have served a range of functions in children’s shared lives. Ch. 3, ‘The brothers and sisters in the classroom family: Entering school literacy practices’ (52–77), shows that children bring a wide variety of unofficial meaning-making resources into the official language and literacy classroom. Children draw upon and blend such resources in order to ‘make new activities meaningful’, and ‘they differentiate conventions and expectations in order to be more effective participants in valued social groupings’ (179).

Ch. 4,‘Sports matters: Marcel and the textual mediation of Coach Bombay’s and Ms. Rita’s worlds’ (78–108), details the way a particular child, Marcel, made use of sports media in his literacy development. Ch. 5, ‘Animated adventures: Noah’s textual ark’ (109–36), describes the role of animated adventures in Noah’s journey into school literacy. Ch. 6, ‘Singing stars: Denise’s musical voices’ (137–68), constructs Denise’s developmental tale by ‘tracing the intertextual threads of her performative use of rhythmic and emotion-filled language’ (140).

Ch. 7, ‘A writing development remix’ (169–91), suggests that written language development be considered as a process of ‘text appropriation and recontextualization’. Dyson also recommends ‘an explicit acknowledgment of communicative flexibility; a dialogic arrangement of curricular activities; support for the use of, and translation across, varied symbolic tools; and an inclusive approach to cultural forms’ (186). Teachers should not see children as merely students, but ‘as people with intertwined lives, as friends, peers, and community members in a culturally and socially complex world’ (171). Ch. 8, ‘The view from the outside: “You’ve got to grow with your children” ’ (192–216), presents adult perspectives on how ‘children gain access to new experiences through appropriating, stretching, and reworking the familiar’ (193). The author suggests that an adult must grow with the emergent reader and writer.

Childhood literacy development is now a topic ‘dominating political as well as pedagogical discussions’ (1). This book serves to make some issues ‘audible and publically negotiable’ (136). It highlights the influence on school learning and writing of ‘all manner of textual and media material’ (vii)—for example, church and hip-hop songs, rap music, movies, TV, traditional jump-rope rhymes, and the words of professional sports announcers and radio deejays. Meanwhile, it provides detailed examples of how children’s cultural literacy practices translate into classroom practices and, in turn, into practices of academic success. It will be useful for parents, literacy educators, and researchers interested in literacy development in the new media age.