We hope you and your students enjoy the
possibilities presented in this edition of The History Teacher,
a special-focus issue on Tradebooks, Textbooks, and Narrative.
Books, which frequently form the core of our teaching, are at the heart of this issue:
John H. Bickford III and Theresa Byas evaluate the
different representations of Martin Luther King Jr.
in tradebooks aimed at younger readers.
Mark Pearcy analyzes the remarkably similar depictions
of the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War in textbooks
for more advanced readers.
Peter Conolly-Smith zeroes in on one popular U.S.
history textbook to canvass how it has changed
—for better or worse—with each new edition.
Jordan M. Reed frames the textbook as a form of pedagogical technology
in its own right, whether through traditional print versions or
the ever-growing digital field of open educational resources.
Dave Neumann then takes us behind the scenes of
the intricate textbook adoption process for grades
K-8 under California's State Board of Education.
Finally, Kevin Vanzant and Summer Cherland each tackle
the concept of narrative itself, with innovative methods
on how the narrative structure can be mined for
even more historical learning opportunities.
