“We Are Stories”: Centering Picturebooks in the Reading Support Class

The author explores the Names, Journeys, and Dreams project, in which culturally and linguistically diverse learners and their families engaged with picturebooks that inspired dialogic conversations, authentic writing, and family–school connections. The author provides four recommendations for incorporating picturebooks within the reading support class with diverse learners: enter the storyworld together, make families the curriculum, value multiple languages, and celebrate students as authors. Alongside sustained and reciprocal family engagement efforts that position families as instructional resources, centering diverse picturebooks within the intervention setting can help students grow more fully into their identities as readers, writers, and dreamers.