Multicultural children’s literature can serve as mirrors for culturally diverse children when they transact with literature about their own culture. However, despite extensive research on reader responses, literary responses of children of various cultural backgrounds received little attention.
The purpose of this study was to explore responses of eight Korean transnational children with varying exposure to Korean culture to picture books about Korean people and culture in order to describe how the children draw on their cultural backgrounds in making responses to the books.
A qualitative multiple case study approach was used to examine the meaning making process of four groups of Korean transnational children (i.e., Korean adopted, Korean American, acculturated and recent Korean immigrant groups) before, during and after reading six picture books for 10 weeks. Data sources included field notes, reflection journal from the researcher, 24 videotapes and audiotapes documenting read-aloud and post-reading sessions, 4 audiotapes recording interviews with the children’s mothers, and the children’s artifacts. The data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed.
Analyses of the data revealed that the children constructed five types of literary responses (i.e., analytical, intertextual, personal, transparent, and performative) within the similar percent ranges as in Sipe’s study. Data analysis also illustrated that the children made culturally-based responses by drawing on their cultural knowledge and experiences while recognizing, connecting, inquiring and evaluating what we had read.
A closer examination of the children’s responses to the three books revealed that children’s diverse cultural backgrounds contributed to the construction of different perspectives and responses to cultural practices, an immigrant character, and inauthentic cultural descriptions presented in the books.
These findings demonstrated that the children actively employ their cultural backgrounds in responding to the books. This study makes a unique contribution to reader response literature as it examines the literary responses of the four sub-groups of Korean children to picture books about their own culture and describes their employment of cultural backgrounds in constructing meanings from the books.