Last week, thanks to Andrea Elliott‘s five-part series in the NY Times, the name Dasani came to mean much more than a label found on the side of a slender, blue-hued, plastic water bottle.

The series, which profiles young Dasani and her family as they experience various dimensions of homelessness and institutional forms of support and challenge, has received a significant amount attention in the mainstream press as well as across local contexts including our twitter stream, classroom discussions, hallway conversations, and, in one instance, a bus ride debate.

I am still very much mulling over the intricate layers of information and analysis of child homelessness that Elliott’s narrative offers, so in the meantime I thought I would share a collection of resources that I have gathered to help my own ongoing analysis and sense-making:

• The original article: Invisible Child — Girl in the Shadows: Dasani’s Homeless Life
• A conversation with Andrea Elliott on NPR’s The Brian Lehrer Show
• NYTimes’ The Learning Network spotlights “Invisible Child” for their Reading Club — featuring lessons and insights from youth involved with Youth Communication (which publishes Represent magazine) and the Possibility Project (a youth theater group)
• Sliding into Homelessness: An essay by Zakkiaya Bowen — another collaboration between NYTimes The Learning Network and Youth Communication‘s Represent magazine, including discussion and teaching resources. (Read another piece by Bowen here: Choosing Who I Let In
• Making Ends Meet: Children’s Books That Explore Social Class, Homelessness, and Poverty – a post from earlier this year by Mary Ann Reilly on her blog Between the By-Road and the Main Road

Additional Resources (taken from the Reading Club and other sources)

• Lens Blog | In Brooklyn, Photographing an Invisible Child
• Learning Network Guest Post | 10 Ways to Talk to Students About Sensitive Issues in the News
• Times Topics | Homelessness
• DoSomething.org | Homelessness and Poverty
• Youth Communication | Pieces on Homelessness
• Youth Communication | Pieces on the Foster Care System
• The Dasani Effect: How You Can Help the More Than 1.6 Million Homeless Children in America