Guest editorial: Transillumination: raising awareness of representations of families in children’s and youth literature

This excerpt from We Match on the Inside, a picturebook told from the perspective of a girl who is adopted, exemplifies messages communicated about children who are adopted in similar books, including words commonly used like “gift” and “love.” The portrayal of families formed through adoption in children’s picturebooks can contribute to a more diverse representation of families. At the same time, such portrayals can be challenging because the adoption process is such a multifaceted and complicated process and yet its depiction is often simple and uncomplex, much like the quote above.

These kinds of noticing have been a pivotal part of our conversations the past few years as we have studied the depiction of adoption in picturebooks. Through weekly meetings that have led to conference presentations and journal articles, we have considered how to support educators in making schools more inclusive of families formed through adoption. Part of this work has also resulted in us starting to question the notion of families in general and how they are represented.

Traditional views of family are organized around blood relations, heterosexual marriage and the two-parent household with biological children. But many people’s experiences do not reflect this image. After spending hours ruminating on what constitutes a family, from thinking about our own families, to families of those close to us, to representations of family in the media, we want to challenge the normative family form that dominates and open up discourse about what constitutes family. For instance, our own families are different from each other and from what we typically see depicted. Amy and her husband do not have children but do not view themselves any less than a family with children. Melody is adopted and has always struggled with the complexities of what family might mean and look like. Now that she has two biological children of her own, for the first time in her life, she has blood relatives, thus fulfilling a relationship most others take for granted

The complexities of families and noticing the ways in which many families are underrepresented, misrepresented or not represented at all is what led us to this special issue, Transillumination: Raising Awareness of Representations of Families in Children’s and Youth Literature. Symbolically, we draw on the term “transillumination” to convey what we wish to accomplish in this special issue. Transillumination is a medical procedure in which light is shone through parts of the body for diagnostic purposes. In the same way that a medical practitioner might use transillumination as a method of imaging to look “below the surface,” this special issue seeks to shine a light on the representations in children’s and youth literature of the lived experiences of families whose representations may also be “below the surface” of what is socially or culturally construed as typical, to promote inclusivity and normalize difference. Here we seek to broaden the definition of family to include a chosen network of mutual care, commitment and interdependence that may or may not include biological or legal ties.

A large rationale for this special issue is grounded in the scholarship and theories around culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012). Supporting the notion that children need to see themselves and their experiences represented in texts, we posit that just as children need to see their race, language, religion and ethnicity reflected, they also need to see families like theirs represented. Picture books provide opportunities for children to develop positive self-identities (Hall, 2008; Levin, 2007) and can support them in seeing multiple perspectives and resisting stereotypes (Thein et al., 2007).

A critical examination of representation and omissions in children’s literature is important. A lack of diversity in picturebooks has long been documented (e.g. Larrick, 1965; Koss, 2015), with researchers showing a dearth of texts that represent children and families of Color, non-dominant ethnicities, diverse languages, same-sex parents, non-gender conforming stereotypes or disabilities. At the intersection is how the construct of family is (or is not) represented. The number of published children’s and youth literature that represent “non-traditional” families is much lower than those that feature “traditional” families (Mokrzycki, 2020). Additionally, research that has examined the representation of families in children’s and youth literature is an emerging area.

Relatedly, we look to the literature on what it means to belong as a sense of belonging is instrumental to positive well-being and development (Baumeister and Leary, 1995; García Coll et al., 1996; Osterman, 2023). This literature informs us that belonging includes having authentic connections where one feels they “fit” (Faircloth and Hamm, 2005), something that children who come from non-traditional families may struggle with, such as children who are adopted (Kim and Park Nelson, 2019).

Developing a sense of belonging is often in relation to dominant cultural and community settings, where assimilation may be the dominant model through which “whitestream” culture is privileged and normed (Urietta, 2010; Wong et al., 2003). This is problematic and antithetical to a sense of belonging as one must trade their “true” selves to be accepted. As we considered the theme of this special issue, we wanted to provide authors space to examine and highlight additional ways in which family differences or different constructions of family may also be misrepresented, underrepresented or represented in ways that do not allow for all the complexity and nuance children may need. With that in mind, all six of the articles in this special issue transilluminate a different facet of family life, which are narrowly depicted in picturebooks. In our own piece on the representation of families formed through adoption in picturebooks, “Adoption Representation in Picturebooks: A Critical Content Analysis” we draw on critical adoption studies (CAS) (Homans et al., 2018; McKee, 2018) to illuminate social issues that intersect with adoption, such as race, privilege, and kinship. In doing so, we draw attention to how larger metanarratives about family are reified in picturebooks and argue for the need for books that help to normalize families formed through adoption. At the same time, we are aware that most books do not represent the complexities of emotions that children who are adopted may experience across their lifespan.

Following this, the next article, “Transnational Parent Knowledge in Storied Lived Experiences: A Critical Narrative Review of Multicultural Picturebooks,” Emma Chen gives consideration to the immigrant experience as she explores the representation of transnational families in picturebooks. Specifically, she shines a light on transnational parents and how they support their children’s cultural and linguistic knowledge as well as their navigation of the education system. In focusing on the parents’ knowledge and agency, Chen challenges dominant narratives about immigrant families.

In “Where’s my Mom?: A Critical Analysis of System-Impacted Mother–Child Relationships in Children’s Literature,” Reka Barton, Marisol Johnson, Katie Turner and Samantha Bhatia focus on the representation of incarcerated mothers in picturebooks, sharing that fewer than 10 picturebooks or chapter books have been published in the past 25 years that feature incarcerated mothers and their children. Thus, the authors argue that this type of mother–child relationship is important to explore. Through the lens of considering the thoughtful child, they illustrate how the experiences of children of incarcerated mothers deserves to be amplified, ensuring more inclusive representation of families like theirs.

In their article “Beyond Heteronormativity: Queer Narratives and the Importance of Chosen Family,” Andrea Jackson and Whitney Neumeyer Roach focus on the historical construct of chosen family, particularly as it pertains to the queer community and other marginalized communities wherein strong networks of support that transcended biological ties are formed, as well reflecting on their own chosen families.

Mary Juzwik, Denise Davila and Laura Yares contribute “Reading Beyond Belief: A Framework for Interpreting Family Lived Religion in Realistic Fictional Picturebooks,” in which they present a framework for reading and teaching texts featuring religious lived experiences, which can provide support to teachers who wish to include these texts within their curriculum without a focus on them as religious texts. These books provide lenses into cultural practices based in religion that show diverse practices and invite the reader to consider how those practices connect (or not) to their own lives.

Finally, in “Shaming, Blaming and Reframing Disability: Depictions of Tourette Syndrome within Family Dynamics in Youth Literature,” Melissa Schieble and David Connor frame an analysis of young adult books whose main characters are navigating family dynamics impacted by Tourette syndrome. The analysis, conducted through the lens of disability studies, reveals narratives that are both instructive (e.g., teens learning to accept their disability and thrive with that acceptance) and problematic (e.g., parents who have abandoned their children and children who blame themselves for their abandonment).

It has been our pleasure to serve as the guest editors for this special issue of English Teaching: Practice and Critique. We hope the articles featured here will push you to notice, name, question and grow when it comes to understanding the concept of family and diverse family representations. Although not anywhere near exhaustive in considering the different dimensions and possibilities related to family, these articles help to decentralize what is typically construed as “normal” and illuminate lived experiences that typically exist on the periphery.

The authors are grateful to the journal editors Audrey Lucero, Melissa Schieble and Amy Vetter for this opportunity and their support and encouragement from start to finish. The authors would also like to thank the contributing authors for responding to our theme and whose work helps to push the field forward. Finally, the authors are grateful to the reviewers for their time and thoughtful feedback.