Lawrence Sipe Book Receives NRC Award

Lawrence R. Sipe, associate professor in Penn GSE's Language and Literacy in Education division, has been awarded the 2008 Edward B. Fry Book Award by the National Reading Conference (NRC) for his book Storytime: Young Children's Literary Understanding in the Classroom.

Storytime, which is published by Teachers College Press, draws on Dr. Sipe's research in urban classrooms to present a grounded theoretical model of young children's understanding of picture storybooks. Advancing a theory of literary understanding, Dr. Sipe suggests that children respond in five different ways during picture storybook readalounds; that these responses reveal that children are engaged in five different types of literary meaning-making; and that these five types of meaning-making are instantiations of five foundational aspects of literary understanding.

The NRC, an association of literacy scholars, gives the annual award to recognize "outstanding contributions to literacy research and practice." Criteria for the award are that it will advance knowledge about literacy; display inquiry into literacy; and show responsible intellectual risk-taking.

For more about Storytime, click here.

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Media contact:  Jill DiSanto-Haines at 215-898-4820 or jdisanto@upenn.edu