Literacy Analysis through Peritextual Analysis: A Review

A note from the editors: We have a unique feature in this edition, a book review of Literacy Engagement through Peritextual Analysis. This new book sheds light on the importance of peritext, the non-text features included in texts that we read. In addition, Linda McElroy’s Research Summary Column also highlights the same book directly following this review. Both of these will help prepare you to participate in an exciting opportunity to hear from the editors of this book, Oklahoma’s own Shelbie Witte, from Oklahoma State University, Don Latham, and Melissa Gross. You may also choose to read all, or portions of, the book before the discussion next fall. Be sure to check our website and Facebook page for details of how to join the discussion.

BOOK REVIEW Dr. Barbara J. McClanahan

Literacy Engagement through Peritextual Analysis: A Review

Peritext—it’s been right there under our noses all the time, but few of us have acknowledged it or given it a second thought. Peritext is a term used to encapsulate all the items within a book that are not what we think of as the “important part.” These items are such things as the cover including any dust jacket, the table of contents, the foreword, the glossary, the author’s notes, or anything else connected to or within a text that is not the “meat.” In Literacy Engagement through Peritextual Analysis (LEPA), editors Shelbie Witte, Don Latham, and Melissa Gross and their colleagues draw our attention to these often-ignored aspects of texts and provide insights as to how we can use them to enrich our own reading and that of the students we teach.

In conversations with students and colleagues about peritext, I learned that I wasn’t the only one who skipped all the peritext (what one of Dr. Witte’s students referred to as “white noise”) to dive into the “real stuff.” I was definitely not like Donna Alvermann, who shared in the Foreword to LEPA that she always pondered the peritext, considering herself a sleuth determining how that “extra stuff” enhanced the reading experience. I was clueless for many years that it could add anything at all to my appreciation or understanding of a book. In fact, it was not until I began a master’s program in reading that I became aware of the power of using the cover image to anticipate with children what might be between the covers. As I continued through my graduate programs, I gained more awareness of the value of this “extra stuff,” but I had no idea it had a name!

Enter Witte, Latham, and Gross with LEPA. This volume contains a collection of articles written by researchers and practitioners who share their experiences incorporating the use of peritext to deepen comprehension and appreciation of various kinds of texts for a range of grade levels. In the introduction, Witte explains that peritext is indeed more than white noise; in fact, paying attention to it using the “groundbreaking” Peritextual Literacy Framework (PLF) brings clarity to the entire text. Moreover, she says, study of peritext promotes visual literacy and critical thinking, important goals in today’s classrooms. The volume is organized in three sections framed around these three propositions—the PLF, visual literacy, and critical thinking.

In the first section, Latham and Gross introduce us to the PLF which they have developed as an extension of the work of Genette (1997) on paratext, identifying peritextual literacy as a kind of literacy for the first time. The PLF is structured on six identified functions or purposes of peritext: production, promotional, navigational, intratextual, supplemental, and documentary.

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The remaining articles in LEPA are variations on the PLF theme; each chapter is written to demonstrate specific uses of the PLF in a range of grade levels. The authors share their initial efforts to utilize the PLF, with varying degrees of success, often reflecting on what can be changed to improve the experience for students. Since the PLF is so new, learning how to use it effectively is something of a trial-and-error proposition.

Since reading LEPA, I have subsequently read two children’s books. I will share briefly how my reading of one of the books was enhanced with the awareness gained from LEPA. Al Capone Does My Homework (Choldenko, 2013), is a combination historical fiction and mystery for intermediate-grade children. Having learned about the PLF, I began assessing the peritext it offered as I read it. The cover page with its captivating title features the outline of a cell door, a pair of handcuffs, and a prison guard’s cap, clearly designed to draw in young readers. On the back of the book are images of two of the other books in Choldenko’s Alcatraz series with short blurbs of praise or lists of awards the books have earned. These elements fall into the category of “Promotional” in the PLF. Making students aware of this designation and how it is used with the books they read helps them understand that these items are presented for a purpose— specifically to engage their interest.

Immediately after the Table of Contents (a navigational type of peritext, according to the PLF) which lists the chapters with intriguing titles, is a two-page photograph of Alcatraz with locations which figure in the story clearly labeled. This falls in the “Supplemental” category of the PLF. Having been on a tour of Alcatraz several years ago, this photograph triggered memories of the buildings we visited and helped orient me as I read the text. Even without prior knowledge of Alcatraz, however, the photograph can be used to help the reader visualize the events and the setting much more readily, if the reader realizes that is its purpose. At the end of the book, there is a section labeled “Author’s Notes;” here Choldenko shares a great deal about the research she did in order to write the book and some of the real events that were incorporated into the story. On the PLF, this section falls into the “Documentary” category.

I have taken the time and space sharing my experience with Al Capone Does My Homework to demonstrate how easy the PLF is to apply to a given text. But beyond simply identifying the various categories of peritext, the PLF also offers questions that can be used to deepen the children’s—or any reader’s—understanding of these items. Why are they there, what do the authors or creators of this text want me to do with these bits of text or images, or what have they failed to include that would be important to know? So, the PLF leads us to identification of the peritext, through the visual literacy analysis as described above in thinking about the cover and photograph of Alcatraz, and ultimately to the critical thinking piece—the questions we should be teaching children to ask about all texts they encounter.

Given the relatively recent development of the PLF, the range of text types that practitioners and researchers have used with the PLF, as showcased in LEPA, is really quite remarkable. Novels, even graphic novels or historical fiction, are not surprising to find, but the range extends to nonfiction texts, participatory novels, online news articles, Disney films, and documentary films, all of which are discussed in LEPA. Certain text types such as films required the practitioners to adapt the PLF to fit, suggesting its flexibility.

On the whole, I found this to be an eye-opening and valuable addition to my understanding of text and literacy. Its language is inviting, not overly academic, and almost mysterious, as if the reader is being let in on a big secret, but in a way that lets him/her feel a part of the discovery. This is certainly a volume that deserves to be on the shelf of everyone

responsible for teaching reading, from the earliest grades to adults. The PLF is definitely being added to the coursework for my pre-service teachers.

Barbara J. McClanahan, Ed.D. Professor, Southeastern Oklahoma State University

References

Genette, G. (1997). Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Witte, S., Latham, D., & Gross, M. (Eds.) (2019). Literacy Engagement through Peritextual Analysis. Chicago: ALA Editions and the National Council of Teachers of English.

Children’s Literature CitedCholdenko, G. (2013). Al Capone does my homework. New York, NY: Penguin Group

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