2026 ALISE Annual Conference

This work-in-progress study examines how a monolingual school librarian creates translingual participation structures during a Pre-K storytime with children’s picturebooks. Drawing on literacy as social practice and microethnographic discourse analysis, the study analyzes moment-to-moment interactional organization of participation. Preliminary findings show that participation expanded when the librarian positioned herself as a co-participant in children’s family language practices, but narrowed when interaction shifted toward vocabulary explanation. The study highlights how translingual storytime emerges through interactional practice, with implications for preparing librarians to work with linguistically diverse communities.