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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