Engaging with critical literacy through restorying: a university reading and writing workshop on fairy-tale reimaginations

ABSTRACT This article presents the findings of a university reading and writing workshop on fairy-tale reimaginations. Fairy-tale reimaginations, understood as rewriting fairy tales using alternative narrative techniques, can be introduced into a literacy classroom where learners read reimagined fairy tales that stimulate their critical response and subsequently reimagine new stories that interrogate presumptions in the traditional tales. To justify the design of the workshop and its effectiveness in enhancing student learning, I combine restorying and critical literacy as the theoretical framework. By theorising fairy-tale reimaginations as a form of restorying, I foreground fairy-tale reimaginations as acts of resistance that reflect more diversifying perspectives in the society (Thomas & Stornaiuolo, 2016). I have chosen the four dimensions of critical literacy (FDCL), synthesised by Lewison et al. (2002) to illustrate how the workings of fairy-tale reimaginations befit the general principles of critical literacy. For a fuller realisation of critical literacy through consumption, production, and distribution of texts, understood as action and reflection upon the action, I contend to develop a reading/writing pedagogy that places emphasis on reading and rewriting followed by sharing and reflection. To this end, I hope to offer teacher-researchers insights to bring the fantasy genre into their literacy classroom.