Book Review Children, Film and Literacy

We know today that media education can enhance literacy skills. However, there is too little literature about the connection between children’s development of literacy skills and film production. In her book, Children, Film and Literacy, Becky Parry demonstrates the powerful connection between the three. The book is an adapted version of Parry’s dissertation involving case studies of six UK primary school students using filmmaking practices to enhance their emerging literacy skills. She created and taught a special class with year 5 students at a primary school in Sheffield, UK (equivalent to fourth grade in the US). Parry used action research design to investigate how the six students understand and interpret narratives by creating different filmmaking activities. The book begins with four chapters devoted to literature review of (mainly British) media education, followed by research methods and the context of the study. Parry describes her findings and concludes with suggestions for incorporating filmmaking in primary schools. The literature review showcases how to use media production in the classroom and explains how film classes at the primary level can contribute to advancing the understanding and interpretation of narratives for diverse learners with different literacy skills. Parry connects multimodality (Kress, 1997) and cultural studies (Buckingham and Shefon-Green, 1994) to the current British literature on children, popular culture, an