Children’s books have been proven to be vital resources for developing learners’ language and literacy skills. These texts motivate children to think imaginatively, bringing their real-life experiences to comprehend what they are reading. However, research shows that a large proportion of teachers in South Africa are not readers and do not know how to teach reading, a result in part of inadequate teacher education. Notably, teachers’ beliefs about reading as well as their reading habits may have a significant effect on how they promote reading in the classroom. Thus, there is a need to improve pre-service education, especially when systemic evaluations show that 81% of South African learners in Grade 4 cannot read for meaning in any of South Africa's 11 official languages. This is described as a binding constraint on the education system, for if children cannot read independently and gain knowledge from books, this places a barrier to further learning across all subject areas. In this self-study, two teacher educators from different institutions of Higher Education in South Africa describe and narrate their collaborative journey of incorporating children’s literature in their Bachelor of Education, Foundation Phase course to expand their pre-service teachers' knowledge of children’s books. This study was implemented with 99 second year Bachelor in Education Foundation Phase (BEd. FP) students from Site A and 70, third year BEd FP students from Site B. This study focused on motivating pre-service teachers (the students) to read children’s books; engage in dialogical engagements and conduct book reviews. This qualitative, interpretative study used data-generation methods of self-reflective journals and Microsoft Teams focus group discussions to reflect on the conceptualisation of the project and the implementation process. To discuss the findings, a sociocultural approach theory which acknowledges the importance of working and supporting each other’s learning was utilised. Findings of the study show that student’s knowledge of children's book improved since each student was required to read and review 5 children’s books including books in African languages. We offered our students a social environment where they could read for pleasure, share their reading and free writing opportunities which are rare in Higher Education. We argue that if student teachers are equipped with proper instructional strategies for integrating children’s literature into the coursework, they may implement these practices and promote a reading culture in the school classroom. In addition, reading experts agree that teachers must be engaged in reading and writing events to become effective teachers of reading and writing.

Keywords: Foundation Phase, Pre-Service Teachers, Children’s books, Reading, Self-study.