2026 Calls for Features

Children’s and Young Adult Literature Feature: Hope, Resistance, and Critical Empathy in CYAL

Reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the word cannot dispense with continually reading the world. (Freire, 1981, p. 5)

Extending the theme “Resistance Amidst Crisis: A New Hope for Language and Literacy Education,” the “Children’s and Young Adult Literature” (CYAL) feature aims to emphasize discussions, research, and creative works about children’s and young adult literature by focusing on hope, resistance, and critical empathy. 

Our feature is presented as a space to promote resilience and foster open conversations in the realm of children’s and young adult literature (CYAL). Bringing attention to championing all voices, experiences, and identities, which, according to Freire (1981), can be confronted through conscientização, by developing a critical understanding of the world. Children’s and young adult literature has been a powerful tool for social and personal transformation in society and can be used to cultivate critical consciousness and empowerment. 

This literature emerges as a global resource that transcends cultural barriers and connects lives, offering diverse perspectives and enriching debates about education. 

JoLLE’s CYAL feature for the Spring 2026 issue welcomes content that engages the themes of the main call but with a focus on particular formats and topics for CYAL. We aim to engage in pluralistic and responsive work that, in moments of political, social, and personal crisis, has the potential to serve as tools to challenge dominant discourses and offer rhetorics of optimism and restoration. 

We invite contributors to engage with the evolving landscape of children’s and young adult literature through the following prompts:

  • Trends in contemporary children’s and young adult literature
  • Experiences of censorship and ideological violence in CYAL
  • Contemporary CYAL narratives of hope, healing, and community 
  • The state of criticality in research around CYAL
  • The state of “Diversity” in CYAL and its role in classrooms and educational spaces 
  • Safe avenues and narratives of resistance and resilience in CYAL

We are interested in submissions from graduate students, scholars, librarians, and other professionals in the field of education focused on CYAL. We especially encourage emerging and junior scholars to submit, as our journal has an ethos of supporting new voices in the field, and we, of course, welcome established scholars as well. 

We welcome submissions in the following formats:

  • Reviews on contemporary, international, or multilingual children’s literature
  • Reviews or Op-Ed pieces  highlighting different CYAL media - films, play-cultures, documentaries, etc. 
  • A written piece celebrating a CYAL author and illustrator of choice - “Author and Illustrator Spotlight” (based on JoLLE’s issue theme)
  • Autoethnographic pieces from authors and illustrators on their creative process, positionalities, and epistemologies.
  • Autoethnographic pieces or Op-Ed works of educators (reserved for preservice teachers, teachers, librarians, and other K-12 professionals) and the role of CYAL in education.

Word count specifications:

  • Reviews: up to 1000 words
  • “Author and Illustrator Spotlight”: 500 words per author/illustrator profile (with accompanying images)
  • Autoethnographic piece submissions: 800-1000 words
  • Op-Ed Submissions: 800-1000 words

References:

Freire, P. (1981). Education for critical consciousness. Bloomsbury. 


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Blossoming Language Learning through Arts-Based Expression

Shifting from conventional scholarly modes into arts-based approaches, the Blossoming on Arts-Based Expression feature strives to reimagine language and literacy education through a creative lens. The feature aims to harmonise the artist and scholar by embracing the messiness and non-linearity that opens us up to hope, joy, and resistance. Because art is a universal language, this approach serves as both a bridge and mirror that connects people across differences while reflecting the particularities of individual and collective experiences. This innovative look at the dynamic nature of language and literacy education is investigated through creative expressions.

Riding on the vehicle of art-based inquiry (Cahnmann-Taylor & Zhang, 2018), this feature seeks to build resilience in language and literacy education by examining three critical dimensions: diverse contexts and communities, affective factors including anxiety and belonging, and power dynamics that privilege certain languages and ways of speaking over others (Dryden, 2021). With a particular focus on the expressive quality of art, we specifically invite artful research genres, including but not limited to poems, narrative prose (fiction or non-fiction), comics, paintings, graphic depictions, or other literary forms that illuminate language and literacy education. We also welcome critical literary responses that analyze the multilingual and multicultural encounters through which language and literacy educators cultivate joy, resistance, and hope (Silva & Lee, 2024). 

This feature contends with the productive tensions of doing arts scientifically and doing science artfully. The analyses featured will offer important theoretical and pedagogical foundations for arts-based language teaching and research that address themes of optimism and resistance in the field of language and literacy education.

We welcome submissions including, but not limited to, the following:

  • Resilience and hope
  • Multimodal literacy
  • Multi (or trans-) modality
  • Power, ideology, and language
  • Creativity across culture and identity
  • Creativity across language and literacy
  • Translanguaging in creative/artistic contexts
  • Artist expressions within language learning contexts
  • Language education in multimedia (popular culture, cinema, poetry, etc.)

Please adhere to the following formats:

  • For visual art submissions, include title, media, and year of piece. JPG or PNG file formats accepted. Please include a statement of 200-300 words to accompany your piece(s).
  • For written submissions, include title and year of piece. A maximum of 5 pages per submission.

References:

Cahnmann-Taylor, M., & Zhang, K. (2018). The arts and TESOL. The TESOL encyclopedia of 

English language teaching, 1-6.

Dryden, S., Tankosić, A., & Dovchin, S. (2021). Foreign language anxiety and translanguaging 

as an emotional safe space: Migrant English as a foreign language learners in Australia. System, 101, 102593.

Silva, D. N., & Lee, J. W. (2024). Language as hope. Cambridge University Press.

 

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Reflections in Practice Feature: Reparative Practices Across Educational Contexts

Echoing our main call focusing on reparative practices of optimism and resistance in language and literacy learning contexts (Sedgewick, 1997), we invite contributions that reflect the many ways people sustain one another through language, learning, and care. We welcome submissions from K-12 educators, literacy activists and advocates, authors, students, learners, educators, community members, and caretakers across all disciplines, as well as scholars working in diverse language and literacy learning contexts, including schools, community spaces, and other contexts.

We are especially interested in stories, practices, and moments that illuminate the everyday work of repair, resistance, and hope within and beyond schools. Whether you are a teacher, librarian, instructional coach, administrator, teacher candidate, community practitioner, volunteer, or work with youth in some capacity, we want to hear how you and your students or collaborators are cultivating equity of voice, empathy, and connection through language and literacy. 

This feature invites reflective and/or narrative pieces, stories, and reflections about your practice. These contributions should explore one or more of the questions detailed in our larger call above, but they need not be based in research. Inquiries about potential submissions are also welcome. Contributors are responsible for securing permission for any student work or identifying information about students, districts, etc., included in their piece.

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Call for Academic Book Reviews

In alignment with our theme “Resistance Amidst Crisis: Searching for Hope in Language and Literacy Education,” we invite reviews of recently published academic books (2022-present) that engage with reparative scholarship in language and literacy education. We seek reviews of works that explore hope, joy, resistance, and the sustaining practices of educators and communities. In addition, we accept reviews of any recently published academic books related to our journal’s scope and purposes. Reviews should be 1,000-1,500 words and critically engage with how the book contributes to reparative approaches in education. We particularly welcome reviews of books centering marginalized voices, innovative pedagogies, and scholarship that moves beyond problem identification toward transformative possibility.