This paper presentation will focus on a collaborative project involving the publication of original books about and by refugee youth at Southeast by Southeast, a community center established by Mural Arts Philadelphia. The books narrate and give voice to the memories of youth from their homes and refugee camps and project their visions for their new communities in Philadelphia. Panelists include an artist, educator and literacy researcher who bring various perspectives to the project. In this session, they will consider implications for creative and collaborative approaches to arts-based literacies that center youth and storytelling.

In this preliminary qualitative research study of Korean American adolescents in a book group, I document the co-creation and inquire into the affordances of an out-of-school space for literature discussions. This particular part of my larger study draws on the findings from interviews of three participants and aims to shed light on how and why they perceive the book group space as safe, connecting, and critical.

In this practitioner research study, I explore how seven second and third-grade Arabic-speaking students responded to children?s literature about the Middle East. The theoretical framework draws on the understanding that children?s literature can serve as ?mirrors? for children (Bishop, 1990) and on ?culturally sustaining pedagogy? (Paris, 2012). I share three emerging findings: 1) students engaged in translanguaging; 2) students drew on their cultural knowledge to make connections; and 3) students spoke back to the books to provide alterative points of view. This study responds to and extends the call for the inclusion of diverse books into classrooms.