4
Soeder, 2005). As students of different ethnicities and races enter school, they are constantly
challenged to “fit-in” and assimilate, in most cases, the texts they read in class do not allow these
students to make connections or achieve proper emotional responses (Robinson, 2013). For the
purpose of this research in analyzing transitional series multicultural literature, an emotional
response is defined as “common emotional reactions such as fears, triumphs, loss, maturation,
childhood recollection, grief, pain, pride, and joy,” (Robinson, 2013, p. 46.). Well-written
multicultural literature with complex, developed characters allows for students of all ages to
experience appropriate emotional responses, including empathy, as well as create a climate that
welcomes racial, gender, and cultural diversity in the classroom.
This thesis has chosen to focus upon transitional series books for young children. Green
and Hopenwasser (2017) state that transitional series literature is written in a straightforward,
predictable, and comprehensible manner, usually for students between the ages of kindergarten
and third grade, containing protagonists dealing with age-appropriate events. If these books are
engaging, well-written and reflective of the reader, children who read transitional series literature
will read for pleasure as an adult (Green & Hopenwasser, 2017, p. 51.). When young students
interact with texts that feature protagonists they can connect with, they can see how others are
like them and are able to make text-to-world connections between the events of the literature and
their actual lives. However, if students do not encounter characters like them, literature will
become more frustrating, rather than pleasurable and entertaining. In the last five decades, the
main protagonists of transitional literature have moved away from the cookie-cutter mold of an
Anglo-Saxon, suburban, American student between the ages of nine and thirteen (Szymusiak &
Sibberson, 2001). By the late 1980s, the multicultural educational movement, a push for equal