Lorraine McDonald
Cover illustration by Anna Walker
Only available in Australia and New Zealand
WINNER! — Educational Publishing Awards Australia 2023 Primary: Reference Resource
Children’s literature is in a golden age, with a never-before seen range of forms, modes and styles. This is exciting for teachers, who understand the power of literature to inspire readers and writers in the classroom. This brand-new, third edition of PETAA’s landmark text, A New Literature Companion, has been written to support and build teachers’ knowledge of how literature may be responded to, examined, interpreted, analysed, evaluated and created. Written in alignment with the latest version of the Australian Curriculum: English (v9) and including more than 80 mentor texts, this is a must-have for any initial teacher education (ITE) student or practising teacher library.
The book presents literary writing as both an art and a craft and explores aspects of the craft of writers’ artistry. Throughout the chapters, this text highlights the reciprocity of the reading-writing relationship, highlighting close reading and developed writing teaching and learning opportunities for teachers and students. There is a consistent focus on how language constructs meaning in texts.
In this new edition, a new chapter, Teaching mentor texts, has been written in response to current teaching needs. The book expands its discussion of literary genres and now includes sections on Spiritual Realism, Magical Realism and Climate Sci-fi (or Cli-fi). The book now also examines Postmodern texts, Graphic, Verse novels, Manga, and renews its focus on Non-fiction. Figurative language and Poetry are now examined as a natural pair, and the book considers additional relevant examples for teachers from fiction and non-fiction prose. Chapter 6, Reading and viewing picturebooks, makes stronger links between verbal and visual texts to teach inferencing, interpretative and analytic reading skills.
New title information (.pdf 295 kB)
Sample chapter
Sample Chapter (.pdf 553 KB)
Intended audience
Pre-service teachers
Early career educators
Teacher librarians
Classroom teachers
Literacy Leaders
Please note the book below is in digital format: follow this link to order a print copy.