Linking Literacy and Life reframes literacy as a social, cultural, affective, and democratic practice through which children negotiate identities, exercise agency, and participate in the world. Bringing culturally sustaining pedagogy into dialogue with reading for pleasure pedagogy, it shows how equity and enjoyment can become mutually reinforcing aims in literacy education. The volume is organised in three parts: Reframing Literacy with Sociocultural Perspectives, Bringing Reading for Pleasure into the Curriculum, and Building Cultural Bridges through Storytelling and Community Engagement. International scholars explore how motivation, cultural recognition, and reader identity shape engagement; how children's literature and postdigital literacies expand possibilities for meaning-making; and how storytelling connects literacy with inclusion, community participation, and social action. Together, these contributions link conceptual insight with pedagogical possibilities across classrooms and communities. An afterword by Jack Zipes revisits Gianni Rodari's vision of children as producers of culture.

Tiziana Mascia (PhD) teaches children’s literature and literacy education in the Department of Humanities (DISTUM) at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy. Her research examines children's reading cultures from a sociocultural perspective, focusing on reading for pleasure, narrative nonfiction, and multimodal digital narratives. She contributes to national and European research projects and collaborates with international networks and institutions. She is founder and chair of Literacy Italia, a non-profit association that connects research with schools and supports the continuing professional development of teachers. She leads the Digital Narratives Observatory in collaboration with the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

Juli-Anna Aerila (PhD) is an Adjunct Professor of Reading and Literature Education and works as Senior Lecturer of the Didactics in Mother Tongue and Literature Education at the University of Turku in Finland. Her research primarily focuses on literature education, with particular interests in arts-based approaches to literature teaching, reading for pleasure, and family reading programs. She is also engaged in exploring multilingual and language-aware education as well as children’s humor in the early years education. Since her PhD, she has developed Individual Story Ending (ISE) -method for the purposes of aesthetic and engaged reading.