¡Bienvenidos!

Hello and welcome to my blog!  My name is Marianne, and I'm a first-year PhD student specializing in language and literacy education.  Before grad school, I was a Pre-K and Kindergarten teacher in Texas (my homeland), where I worked with children and families from all over the world.

Since I'm a mega-nerd and love learning about languages and cultures, I got my master's degree in early childhood TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), and now I'm happily ensconced in the study of picture books and immigrant literacies.

My specific interests are:

• Latin@, Chican@, and Latin American children's literature
• Picture books about international adoption from Latin America
• The depiction of Latin American indigenous (specifically Maya and Nahua) characters and cultural practices in children's literature
• The literacy development of children of immigrants from Mexico and Central America
• Critical literacy
• Social justice

Fun stuff!  So I'm looking forward to sharing my ideas and hopefully finding other blogs that deal with similar topics.  Time to get bloggity.