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Reading Inspires is Reading Is Fundamental’s new podcast celebrating the power of books and the joy of reading. Each episode invites educators, librarians, families, authors, illustrators, and all who champion children’s literacy to explore one big question: What does reading inspire for you? Through engaging conversations and storytelling, Reading Inspires bridges the gap between research and real-world practice—showing what literacy looks and feels like in classrooms, libraries, and homes. Grounded in evidence yet open-ended in approach, this is a space for curiosity and connection. Whether you’re an educator seeking fresh ideas, a parent hoping to spark a love of reading, or simply a lifelong bookworm, you’ll find inspiration, practical insights, and stories that remind us all why reading matters—and how it changes lives.
Erin Bailey: Welcome to Reading Inspires by Reading is Fundamental.
I'm your host, Dr. Aaron Bailey.
This podcast celebrates the power of books and the joy of reading.
In each episode, we talk with educators, librarians, families, authors, and literacy champions to explore one big question.
What does Reading inspire for you?
Through stories, research, and real world experiences from classrooms, libraries, and homes, we explore what literacy looks like and why it matters.
Whether you're nurturing young readers, shaping learning spaces, or simply love a good book, we're glad you're here.
get inspired.
Today I'm very excited to have our guest, Dr.
Katie Sherpa.
Who's an assistant professor at University of Georgia, but before she was a professor there.
She was my professor at University of San Diego when I was studying education undergrad.
And I learned a lot from Dr. Sheba.
I learned about backwards design.
She introduced the works of Paolo Frere and ero.
But there's one.
Core memory from her class that I wanted to share.
'cause it relates to the topic today on reading and writing relevance.
And that is from back in our class when we, it was mostly a female dominant profession education.
So it was young college women in the class.
And Dr. Sheba allowed us this space to talk dis display displayed in fairytales and in movies that we saw growing up.
And keep in mind.
I'm a millennial, so the princesses I grew up with, I mean, if you want to even think of Princess as an archetype or a genre, was very different than the that my daughter's growing up with now.
So.
The women in the class really opened up about how we saw ourselves, our, what we thought who we saw ourselves in the reading and writing of princesses and our identities.
And really thank Dr. Sheba for creating the space for us to have that conversation and resonated with me.
So welcome Dr.
Katie Sciurba: Well, thank you for having me.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Erin Bailey: kick to, excuse me, kick us off.
Can you share a little bit about your journey into literacy education?
What led you from the classroom to becoming a scholar of literacies and children's literature and ultimately writing your book reading and relevance reimagined?
Katie Sciurba: Well,
that's a lot to answer in one question, but let's see here.
I would say I've always been a reader and I've always been a writer and that really began when I was a kid.
I always.
Wanted to write books for children.
I don't know why I had that in my head, probably from the time I was in fourth grade.
And so I would write stories on tablets that my grandfather brought home from his job at a paper factory.
So my grandpa would take these long naps during the day when she was watching us, while my mother was at work, and I would just write stories.
And so that's one thing that I remember very vividly.
I remember watching Reading Rainbow.
I remember all the commercials actually from reading is Fundamental.
I remember all of the, you know, the celebrities like Mr. T and people like that who really made reading super interesting and fascinating for me as a kid.
And I think one of the things that really helped me.
You know, kind of carve out a path as someone who became interested in helping other people learn how to read is seeing my own sisters have a little bit more of a challenge when it came to reading.
So I would let, I would get to play school with them and teach them how to read.
And I loved it.
And I loved, especially when I see the I would see them get it after struggling.
And so that really kind of planted the seed early for me.
When I moved to New York, I, you know, I became a teacher really early in my career.
I was a fourth and fifth grade teacher in the Bronx.
And one of the things that I realized is that you know, I, one, one of the things, I guess I was an assumption from my teacher education program
is that the kids didn't have a lot of opportunities to see their identities reflected in the literature that we had available in the classroom.
So that's one of the things that I went into my career early on thinking was.
Maybe, you know, was something worth exploring what was happening in the classroom?
Is this why some of my kids were struggling?
Did they not see reflections of their lives in the literature that we had available?
So when I went to pursue my PhD.
That's what I really decided to dig in a little bit more deeply to find out more about.
So I actually returned to my former students when I started my PhD at NYU and asked them you know, to what degree they saw themselves reflected, and their answers were very surprising, which is ultimately what led to my book project.
They really made me question my own assumptions about what was relevant, what would be relevant, and what could be relevant.
So that's really how I got launched into the direction that I've headed in, up, up to this point.
Erin Bailey: That's I'm, I'll hold the book here.
For those the, the video version of this, the full title is Reading and Relevance Reimagined, celebrating the Literacy.
Lives of young men of color.
And I know you mentioned revisiting your fourth grade and fifth grade students to do the research.
Can you talk to us about, was there a moment or an experience or something from your research that made you want to revisit and reconceptualize
relevance?
Katie Sciurba: Yes, that's a hundred percent.
That's exactly what happened.
I was taking a course at New York University and I went back to, to, you know, explore this concept of relevance with my kids and it had been ingrained in us from the time I was doing teacher prep or was in my
teacher prep program, that we needed to make sure that we reflected our students' identities, and that typically meant their racial and ethnic identities, but it also oftentimes meant their gender identities.
So what I assumed when I went in to talk to my former fourth grade kids is that they would tell me, oh, I don't see reflections of my own racial ethnic background.
I don't see enough boys reflected in the literature, and they didn't say that to me at all.
And so I was really surprised and taken aback and I thought, okay, so what is it exactly that you like to read?
And they were talking about, you know, Beverly Cleary and her Ramon and the Ramona Books and Adventure series and a lot of, animal books and things like that.
And when I asked them questions about why did these books resonate with you so, so much what was it that, that you connected with?
They were like, well, my family, I got to see, you know, I know what it's like to be, you know, to have an older brother.
And so this book reminded me of my older brother, or this character always gets into trouble the way that I get into trouble.
So it reminds me of myself.
Or this character, you know, went off in an adventure that I would like to take one day.
I've never really been outside the Bronx, so it's helped me think about other places I might explore in my own life.
So these are the kind of questions that the kids or these, the kind of answers that the kids gave me and I thought, oh man, I've really got a question, my own assumptions, because I knew that identity was still important and.
We knew that there was a great need for diversity in books, in classrooms in particular, but I felt like something was a little bit off in terms of how we were
conceptualizing rel, what it meant to be relevant, and what it meant to be relevant to different kids in different places and spaces and at different times in their lives.
So that's why I really decided to explore that for my book project.
Erin Bailey: Amazing.
And I'll, I'm quoting from your book here, but you define relevance in your book as the condition of being practically socially or conceptually applicable to How does this differ from what or former interpretations of relevance in classrooms looked like and
felt
like?
Katie Sciurba: Well, I would say that there are as many definitions of the word relevance as there are teachers out there in the world.
You know, we didn't really have a concrete definition.
And or understanding that we could operate from when it came to articulating exactly what the word relevance itself meant.
So we would hear, I would often hear culturally relevant pedagogy being, being kind of tossed around.
That's Gloria Latson Billing's Powerful Work.
And she talks about, you know, the social significance of reading and literacy practices.
But the word relevant itself within her definition wasn't, wasn't really defined concretely.
And so then what happened was people were taking her theory, which again, I, this is not at all to discount her theory.
It's extremely important and everybody should read her work.
I could never have done my work without reading her work.
But what happened and what I've seen in education spaces is that people would start to just apply a small fragment of her theory and kind of reduce it down to just talking about race.
Or just talking about gender or just talking about one tiny part of a child's identity.
And so what I try to do is think a little bit more broadly.
Yes, identity is certainly a large part of what makes something relevant or that can make something relevant depending on the reader.
But that we had to have a more of a way to articulate what exactly it means for something to be relevant that isn't just you are this race, therefore this book will be, you know, meaningful to you.
Because we were having, what I've seen in education, you know, 20 years in the field now, is that there's a matchup approach.
There's a lot of assumptions made about.
For example, right now what I'm seeing with some of the anti DEI discourse is that white students will not find these kind of books or topics relevant because it'll make them feel badly.
So that's what I, that's the kind of thing that I try to challenge in my work is that we can't make assumptions based on the racial identities of the kids that we see.
We tended to take a real essentialist approach to relevance in classroom spaces, and this has nothing to do with the original theory by Gloria Latson Billings, if you read her work.
It's way more complex than what I, how I've actually seen it put into practice in many classroom spaces.
Erin Bailey: It's almost like her theories were boiled down and simplify.
To the point where they lost
And purpose.
Katie Sciurba: Absolutely.
I think that one of the things that, that she articulates very well in her work is that there's this need for criticality and kids should be reflective of their own worlds.
You know, you really, I think her work aligns really nicely with Palo Re and Don La Mae.
Those conversations around liter.
See, reading the word in the world, but it was really distilled down to a, there was, it was too simplified.
Or at least it's been very simplified.
And even with extensions, like, culturally sustaining pedagogy you know, Paris and Ali's work it still, they troubled the word relevant saying that didn't go far enough.
So they wanted to change the word to sustaining, to talk about really honoring where kids were, but also enhancing their criticality.
But for me, what I argue where I kind of, it's not that I pushed back against that, but what I say is that it's, the word relevant in and of itself for me wasn't necessarily the issue.
It was the way in which relevant practices have been conceptualized and put into in, into practice in education spaces.
Erin Bailey: Absolutely, and we can all relate to somebody who doesn't look exactly like us or share a background.
to ours and it could be through a shared culture like the one that you created within the college class that I had with you.
You know, classrooms themselves become cultures.
You have a classroom culture and then you have relevant that you can all
relate to.
Katie Sciurba: Absolutely.
I think one of the things that happens is you can take the same person or a person with the same, you know, racial, ethnic identity and move them.
And they'll have a very different experience of relevance.
So for my students in New York City and the Bronx in particular, where I was a classroom teacher, if I had interviewed children from
similar racial ethnic backgrounds in California, where I was born, where I'm from, I think I would've had very different responses.
On some level, there would've been some degree that space Spatiality was playing into the way in which they were conceptualizing relevance as well.
Erin Bailey: Thank you.
Speaking of Spatiality, you have four dimensions of relevance that you discuss in your book, identity, spatiality, temporality, and ideology.
Can you us through these dimensions and how do they influence students' reading
experiences?
Katie Sciurba: Sure.
So I would say that the four of these dimensions are you know, they are always at play.
I would say they're, the way that I describe it as that these four dimensions are always kind of in the background, like the score of a film, but one of them may become more salient, or two of them may.
Become more salient, just as certain instruments will.
So you notice them more or they become more important for you at a certain time, right?
Or at a certain instance as you're having a certain textual experience.
But I'll start with identity.
So again, this is usually boiled down to just mean race or ethnicity, but we have to think more broadly.
So again, gender identity sometimes is brought into that conversation.
We might also think about students' linguistic identities.
There are a lot of different ways that we identify with certain categories.
I use Stuart Hall's definition of identity or his conceptualization of identity, thinking of the way in which we identify.
With certain categories of difference.
So how we situate ourselves amidst the ways in which we are categorized by others in many instances.
So for example, if you are white, how do you identify with whiteness?
How do you identify with your white identity for children who are black identified?
Is it, are they more, are they African American?
Do they have African ancestry?
Are they from the Caribbean?
There are a lot of complexities to who to whom these children are.
But also thinking about the way in which their identity may shift over time.
So identity is not static.
There is no essence to who we are as individuals.
That shifts as we grow, as we change, as we move to different locations, as we surround ourselves by different people and different contexts, different cultures, we start to see ourselves differently.
Based upon the way in which we are seen by others, and that's something that we have to think about as well.
So for example that will lead me into my other dimension.
So thinking about Spatiality.
So for many of my boys the boys in my city, when they were in fourth grade, fifth grade for my book project, they were at an all boys school that was focused on, really focused on their identities as young men of color.
And these were mostly black Latina, south Asian boys who were at the school where I'd started doing my research.
And so they really focused on yes, their identities as young men, but also as young men who were on a certain trajectory.
They were identified as bright boys from low income backgrounds.
So class was a large part of how their, that space was conceptualized for them.
So class identity is another.
Thing that we often overlook in school context, but also thinking about what happened to those young men when they started in this place that was so supportive of their identities as young men of color.
And then they went, many of them went into predominantly white institutions.
So Spatiality really played into what they found relevant.
So in the first school context, I think they are, they were, some of them would say race didn't matter in terms of what they found relevant because they were reading so many books
from so many cultures and so many different, even even though they were an all boys school, they were reading books about women and feminist texts, and they found them relevant.
'cause they, they would say things like, well, I'm a boy and I don't understand girls, so I need to hear their stories and learn about them.
So I would say that.
Space really allowed them in that instance, to broaden, to have a real expansive understanding of what was relevant and what could be.
And then when they went into predominantly white institutions, many of them were like, okay, I can't read anymore.
You know, I can't read the Odyssey again.
I can't read Be Wolf again.
I am so tired of reading text authored by white male writers.
I need to go find books about, you know, written by black authors that feature black characters.
So then.
Relevance for them shifted yet again.
So even, for example, if they were someone who was really into nonfiction, they would push themselves out of their reading genre comfort zone to go find topics that reflected who they were as black young men, for instance.
So space mattered, but it's not just you know, a certain location.
It might be you know, where you are.
It could be where you are geographically.
It could be a mental.
Space too.
So what kind of space is created, so it's not just the physical location, but what's the, you know, the culture, the dynamic, what's happened?
How has that space been imbued with meaning as McKitrick would talk about in her work?
So then that leads me to temporality.
Which is all the aspects of time.
So it might be what's going on politically at a certain point in time.
So what's happening now in 2026 versus what was happening in 2016 versus what was happening in 2008 when I first started speaking to some of the young men about politics and you know, who was gonna be elected as president or who could be.
How old they were at a certain time.
So talking to them at 12 versus 22 to, you know, maybe if I talk to them again when they're 32.
Or as I do in many, they are about 30, 31, 32 now.
And I have been in touch with some of them and have heard how relevance has shifted for them.
So time and how that shifts things, a same thing.
It'll shift their identities as well.
And so that's why these di dimensions intersect.
And then the last one is ideology.
So what is your framework of thought for viewing the larger world?
So, again, there are many scholars like j Henry, J like, like Stewart Hall, like, Michael Apple, who really talk about ideology and education, but really thinking about ideologies that work in service of empowerment, as well as in disempowerment.
So the way in which young people can position themselves as thinking about, okay.
The ideology in this book either matches with mine or this is an ideology against which I do not, you know, I against which I'm going to fight or argue, and I'm going to resist this ideology.
So it's not just a text that aligns a hundred percent with where they are.
They might see it applicable to their life because.
Maybe they're a scholar and they need to take up a counter argument so they find something that's, that has ideological misalignment, and then they start from there.
So, sorry, this is a really long description of each of these dimensions, but you know, each one of those is a chapter in the book, so it's kind of hard to talk about them in brief.
So I hope that, that at least.
Erin Bailey: no, it was fantastic.
I do wanna pull on one thread because it comes lot right now.
In today's climate and that is around ideology and without getting political, and you did such a nice job of framing this, why is it important to read books that don't align perfectly with your ideology?
And maybe what are, what is some of the feedback that from these students
about
that?
Katie Sciurba: Well, so that's, they have mixed thoughts about it.
So many of them would read things like, for example, white Man's Burden in middle school, and they were thinking about like how it aligned with other ideologies, such as colonialism and things of that nature or racism.
And so they were.
Were able to take an ideology that they did not necessarily agree with, and they were able to see how it was important to history, what that meant for them, for their identities as young men of color, what it meant for the countries many of them were from.
So for the young men in my study who were first generation Indian American to think about colonialism in India based on many of the texts they were reading in class.
So they were reading things that were problematic in many ways.
At least, you know, from their perspective.
But it was important for them to see one, how other people think in the world, that not everybody's going to think they way the way they do now in this current moment.
So they needed to see some of that early thought that really contributed to large political movements global powers, right?
So it was important for them to even, you know, to kind of take some steps back and trace.
The way people's thinking ha has evolved on certain topics and I think in terms of reading things that don't agree, that you don't agree with
ideologically, I think it's important just to know what perspectives are out there, what alternative perspectives are out there so you can really see.
Okay, one, there might be a thread.
There might be a thread in their argument that has some truth in it that you can get behind.
That you might be like, okay, I understand where they're coming from here, but their approach to it, their response to it may be different, but I think it's important to see where if anywhere you can find comic.
Common ground with ideological perspectives that are different from yours, but also to not just discount them, we can't just say, I don't agree with that because they have this worldview, they are this religion.
They are, they believe this about gender.
So I don't believe anything that they say, we have to read what they say or hear what they say first before we can even make that assessment.
So I think that's what I tend to see now, is that there's a tendency to shut down.
The conversation to take things out that might have you know, an ideology that is seen as being a propaganda in some way.
But I think that we need to teach young readers and writers and thinkers to really see how they can push back against ideologies to develop their own ways of thinking about the world.
So they're not ever going to encounter somebody who thinks a hundred percent the way that they do.
And that's just a really good lesson in life to think about what perspectives are out there and how am I going to insert my voice amidst these other conversations that are happening.
Erin Bailey: Thank you for that.
Appreciate it.
It's almost like you can take the four dimensions that you've defined and use that as an approach to reading something, especially something that you may be apprehensive about.
So you taking for context your own identity the identity the author.
The space and time in which you live and the space and time in which the work was written, you know, the con, the context and then use that to think about the ideology and the writing and how that might fit in with
your own
ideology.
Katie Sciurba: percent.
Exactly.
And one of the things that I'm, I've thought about I, I talk about it in brief in my book, but I think it's something that I'm continuing to think more about is how do we make texts.
Relevant to certain to young readers, right?
And so.
One of the things that I think I would hate to see is that we just take things that are right now relevant in their current time and space, and we just kind of stop there rather than
actually try to help them see how, for example, alternative perspectives things that don't agree with them, that don't have ideological alignment with the, with their own ideologies.
To just discount those texts entirely rather than give them a chance, an opportunity to see, okay, it may not match the way you think, it may not match your identity, but how could the, what does this say about the world that's important for you to know as.
You know, whatever identity category you belong to and are feeling, you know, that you identify with most.
So I think that's the way that we have to approach relevance is thinking about how can we actually help young people see that these texts have meaning or can have meaning in their lives, right?
Even if they don't see the connection right away.
Erin Bailey: Very important right now.
So let's think about teachers and the context and events that they're facing in their lives right now.
Many of them feel tension between delivering standards based instruction, but also making literacy relevant to their students' lives.
What are some practical strategies that you've learned from your work that can help teachers navigate this tension?
Katie Sciurba: So we are in, there is a lot of tension out there right now, especially I feel like anything to do with reading is really a hot topic.
No matter what's.
Side, you're on, right?
Everybody's got an opinion.
And I think one of the things that, that happens in schools is that there's a lot of fear around what you can and can't say what you can and can't introduce to your kids.
And I think that's very troubling.
It, and it's sad to me because I think that there is so much potential, again, into bringing books that even I am not, you know, a fan of ban banning books as many people who know me well can attest to.
But I would say one.
Any kind of reading is going to meet the standards.
Anything that you do.
So I'm a big fan, I'm a big proponent of bringing trade books into classroom spaces as much as possible.
But what's happening I think, is that a lot of teachers are being mandated to use more of a scripted curriculum, right?
So they have to use texts that are part of a larger, program or they have to use curriculum that's kind of laid out for them.
Sometimes on a weekly basis.
I'm seeing that quite a bit here in Georgia.
So what I encourage my teachers to do is to give their kids opportunities to read, right?
So they, they often, there's usually space for the kids to drop everything and read.
So the kids have opportunities to select their own books.
So I encourage teachers to have books available in the classroom, one to do an inventory with.
Their own students.
So what kind of books do they find most relevant to their lives?
And obviously I encourage my own students to write their own inventories, that kind of, that at least capture some degree, all the different aspects of the dimensions of relevance.
And then to give that to their kids, or even just ask their kids informally.
And then to have those books available or take the kids to the library so they can.
Find books that will, you know, e encourage them to read.
That's the most important thing.
I think that no one will argue that it's a bad idea to get kids to read, but what they will say is that it's a bad idea to get them to read some things.
So, but what I would say is that.
The most important thing we can do as educators is to get kids to find joy in the process of reading and writing, and that those two things are interrelated and there as, as challenging as it is.
I think there are ways to, you know, maybe give notes to your parents.
And ask the parents to do certain things at home, make resources available to families so that they can go find books and they can read them at home if they aren't allowed to teach certain texts in the classroom.
So I think that's one way that you can do it, but it is we are in challenging times.
I'm, I, it's, there's no real way to sugarcoat that.
And I think that I do I work with teachers a lot.
I am a former teacher and, you know, at the height of No Child Left Behind restrictions where we could not.
Do or say certain things.
And so I relate very strongly.
And so I do think that you know, there are, there's always a way to, to find a, there's always a way to find joy in literacy.
And we just have to figure out, we have to be creative in many instances and how to do that.
How do we get the books and literacy activities into those spaces even when it feels impossible and find.
You'll find comradery in other educators and see how they're maneuvering right now.
Erin Bailey: And that, that I wanna highlight one thing that you said because it's something that I learned from you in our class together, and that is you really you know, with some exceptions, but you really can teach any standard with any book.
Of co. If you think about common core standards or whatever standards your state is using now, there's a difference between informational text and literature text.
Sure.
But it's more about your craft and creativity as a teacher.
But that was what I learned from you when you introduced backwards design and backwards planning, is you can do a lot of things with one book.
So certainly if you're not required to use a scripted curriculum or if you have opportunities to use both the curriculum that's provided with for you as well as.
Supplementing with some of your own materials.
You can provide student choice, you can use a interest inventory, which RIF has one of those, and I'll link it in the show notes for anybody in that.
Even, you know, giving students choice in, okay, we, we have this lesson for today, here are three books that I can use to teach this lesson or next week.
You know, if you're someone who in advance, one do you wanna use?
very choice, is a very
powerful
Katie Sciurba: Absolutely.
And one of the things that you are reminding me of is that you know, right now when I in a school, you know, local.
Here that's using a scripted curriculum.
They are talking about birds, and that's part of what the kids, the lesson is all around birds.
So I was invited to come in and read with the kids.
So I found, I chose two books about birds and one is called My Beautiful Birds and it's about a Syrian refugee family.
And it's about a young boy who's a sad that his birds were left behind as they had to flee their home.
So that's one of the texts that I read.
And the kids made these little puppets with beautiful birds that they were allowed to color and they put on popsicle sticks and they could flap the wings.
And then another text was just the let, don't let the pigeon stay up late book.
And so we had little sheets where the kids could write use the speech bubble to write an excuse that the pigeon was getting was giving to be able to stay up late.
So we paired.
You know, more, I paired more of a serious book that's based on a true story with one that's totally fictional and crazy and they were equally fun and the kids were equally engaged and it tied to the curriculum that exists that is about birds.
So I was very proud of that lesson.
You know,
I felt like I came home and I told my husband, I still got it.
I can still work with kids.
So, you know, I have, that's one thing I've tried to do too, is just.
This is the first probably year where I haven't worked with kids formally since I became a professor.
I've always tried to maintain at least some kind of a connection to classroom space with, you know, running the literacy clinics and things like that.
I've always worked directly with children myself so that I can really try to think creatively about how to address the standards just as my teachers are having to do that in school spaces right now.
Erin Bailey: That is such a wonderful practice, and I hope anyone who works in higher education who is listening to this will take that back
to their department because having professors regularly in classrooms, interacting with children, seeing the teachers that they're training.
Work in classrooms, I think creates a great feedback loop into what you are teaching in your university classroom.
Because what we don't want is this disconnect between what we're learning in university classrooms and then what teachers are actually doing in their own classrooms.
Katie Sciurba: Oh yeah.
I mean, I think that the, one of the, my favorite parts of teaching teachers or future teachers is to bring in the activities I do with the kids.
So to bring in pictures.
Of the activities my kids create or the, you know, my the little kids that I get to work with create, or even just to talk through my planning process or to talk through things that don't go well.
Right.
They can help me troubleshoot.
Like, oh, these are some things I've tried.
They didn't go as planned.
Let's talk about that.
You know, it was my first time doing it and it, you know, you're not gonna get it right every time, 20 years working with kids.
And I still will miss the mark.
So.
Erin Bailey: I'm gonna hold up the book one more time.
Reading and relevance reimagined, and if you're just listening to the podcast, I'll include it below in the show notes, but I have to
ask you, Dr. Sheba, I know the background story behind the cover artwork, but I'm sure our listeners would love to hear it from you.
Katie Sciurba: Oh, this is a fun story.
So John Jennings is a phenomenal artist and he and I met at the San Diego Festival of Books several years ago and he happened to have illustrated my husband's book cover, which is on black vampires, the paradox of blackness in African American vampire fiction.
So, we happen to meet him.
And then we had lunch with him there.
And when it came time to my book getting accepted, I was like, oh my gosh, I really want John to do the cover.
And he amazingly agreed.
I can't even believe he said yes to me to this day.
And so the picture that you see on the cover is actually my.
Son, who was 12 years old at the time, which was the exact same age as the boys in my study.
And so he was really able to, what I, how I describe it, is that he turned my son into a reading superhero on the cover of the book and to capture the elements.
That the young men talked about.
So he really listened to my description of the book and the different dimensions.
So you see the time piece, you'll see film, you'll see the, you know, the text and the empowerment with the fists in the air, the black power fist.
So all the things that the young men talked about being important to their reading practices.
Are, I feel like reflected very nicely on, on the cover there.
So, yes, look up John Jennings.
He's incredible.
He's a professor at uc Riverside right now, but you can often catch him at Comic-Con or some of the other conventions.
So I highly recommend that you look up his work.
Erin Bailey: I'll include it in the show notes too, if anyone's interested in his work.
But I mean, it's such a beautiful story and perfect example of how reading is also relevant to you and your son, who is 12 years old, the same age as.
The boys that you worked with at the beginning of your study and that he's on this cover now, and it really brings it full circle.
so we always end the show by asking, guess what does reading inspire for you?
Katie Sciurba: Well, it inspires a lot.
I mean, I feel like I live and breathe reading and writing, and I think that the thing that inspires most for me is really is this notion of criticality.
But I think that reading offers you opportunities to expand your world.
In very interesting ways to look critically at the world in which you are currently existing, but also to imagine new possibilities.
And so no matter what kind of text you read, I think that you have, you are afforded the opportunity to do that, and it can be really a powerful experience.
So for no matter what age you are, I think that it's something that you'll always have, you'll always be able to do, and it's an important skill to have.
Erin Bailey: Thank you.
And I don't know about you, but I think the word critical is a little scary to some folks right now.
But I love the way you laid it out in that everyone should be critical.
It's not a scary or a negative thing, it's something that we do.
It's the lens that we take as we're navigating our day to day lives.
And it's okay to be critical readers too.
Katie Sciurba: Absolutely a hundred percent.
We should be critical readers.
We should be critical of everything, right?
Never accept anything at face value.
Erin Bailey: Thank you so much Dr. Katie Sheba.
It was such an honor having you on the show and thank you all for listening to Reading Inspires by Reading is Fundamental.
I hope today's conversation's.
Sparked new ideas, meaningful connections, and a renewed love of reading.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, share it with a fellow literacy champion, and join us next time as we continue exploring what reading inspires.