Wanda Brooks, Ed.D.
Associate Dean of Teacher Education
Associate Professor of Literacy Education
Dept. of Teaching & Learning

Ritter Hall 449
1301 Cecil B. Moore Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19122-6091

phone: 215 204-3344
wbrooks@temple.edu

Education

Ed.D. University of Pennsylvania in Reading, Writing, Literacy
M.A. University of California at Berkeley in Language & Literacy
B.S. Hampton University in Elementary-Middle School Education

Areas of Professional Interest

African American Children’s and Young Adult Literature
Middle School Readers & Reader Response
Teaching Youth in Urban Schools

Recent Scholarship

Books

Brooks, W. & McNair, J. (2008). (Eds.) Embracing, Evaluating and Examining African American Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.

Journal Articles

McNair, J. & Brooks, W. (2012). African American transitional chapter books. The Reading Teacher, 65(8), 567-577.

Brooks, W. & Browne, S. (2012). Toward a culturally situated reader response model. Children's Literature in Education, 42(1), 74-85.

Brooks, W., Sekayi, D., Savage, L., Waller, E., Picot, I. (2010). Narrative significations of contemporary Black girlhood. Research in the Teaching of English, 45 (1), 7-35.

Leonard, J., Brooks, W., Barnes-Johnson J. & Berry, R. (2010). The nuances and complexities of teaching mathematics for cultural relevance and social justice. Journal of Teacher Education, 61 (3), 261-270.

Brooks, W. & McNair, J. (2009). “This story of mine is not unique:” A review of research on African Americans in children’s literature. Review of Educational Research, 79(1), 125-162.

Brooks, W. & Savage, L. (2009). Critiques and Controversies of Street Literature: A Formidable Genre. The ALAN Review, 37(3), 48-55.

Brooks, W. (2009). An author as a counter-storyteller: Applying Critical Race Theory to A Coretta Scott King Award Book. Children’s Literature in Education: An International Quarterly, 40(1), 33-43.

Brooks, W., Brown, S. & Hampton, G. (2008). “There ain’t no accounting for what folks see!” Considering colorism within a Sharon Flake narrative. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 51(8), 660-669.

Hampton, G. & Brooks, W. (2007). Octavia Butler and Virginia Hamilton: Black women writers navigating the margins of otherness in the genre of science fiction. Children’s Literature Review, 127. {Reprint from the English Journal, 92(6), 70-65}.

Brooks, W. (2006). Reading representations of themselves: Urban youth use culture and African American textual features to develop literary understandings. Reading Research Quarterly, 41(4), 372-393.

Brooks, W. & Hampton, G. (2005). Safe discussions rather than first hand encounters: Adolescents examine racism through one historical fiction text. Children’s Literature in Education: An International Quarterly, 36(1), 83-98.

Brooks, W. (2003). Accentuating, preserving, and unpacking: Exploring interpretations of family relationships with African-American adolescents. Journal of Children’s Literature, 29(2), 78-84.

Hampton, G. & Brooks, W. (2003). Octavia Butler and Virginia Hamilton: Black women writers navigating the margins of otherness in the genre of science fiction. The English Journal, 92(6), 70-75.

Brooks, W. (2002). Virginia Hamilton’s The House of Dies Drear: A textual analysis of embedded African American literary features. The New Advocate Journal, 15(4), 283-291.

Chapters in Books

Brown, S. & Brooks, W. (2008). Historical fiction and “cultural evocations” in a community based literary club. In, Brooks, W. & McNair, J. (Eds.), Embracing, Evaluating and Examining African American Children’s and Young Adult Literature. (pp. 97-110). Lanham: Scarecrow Press.

Brooks, W. (2007). The literary voices of urban readers: Multi-factor influences on textual interpretations. In, Solomon, R. & Sekayi, D. (Eds.), Urban Teacher Education and Teaching: Possibilities and Hope in Canada, the United States and the Caribbean. (pp. 195-206). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Brooks, W. (2005). Reading linguistic features: Middle school students’ responses to the African American literary tradition. In Hammond, W., Hollins, E., Hoover, M., & McPhail, I. (Eds.), What we know: Teaching African American learners to read: Perspectives and practices (pp. 253-263). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.