Children's and Young Adult Literature and Culture

Children's and Young Adult Literature and Culture

Author: Amie A. Doughty

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2016-08-17

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1443898015

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This collection of essays explores a wealth of topics in children’s and young adult literature and culture. Contributions about picture-books include analyses of variants of the folktale “The Little Red Hen” and bullying. Race and gender are explored in essays about picture-books featuring children as consumable objects, about books focused on African American female athletes, and about young adult dystopian fiction. Gender itself is further explored in articles about Monster High, Joyce Carol Oates’s Beasts, and The Hunger Games and Divergent. Essays about fantasy literature include an exploration of environmentalism in Rick Riordan’s The Heroes of Olympus, a discussion of Severus Snape as a Judas figure, an explication of Chapter 5 of The Hobbit, and an analysis of ghosts and nationalism in Eva Ibbotson’s The Haunting of Granite Falls. An essay about Horrible Histories explores television, genre, and the way history is coded. Other contributions explore how teaching literature to reluctant readers can be effective through multimodal texts and how Harry Potter has played a role in the popularity of young adult literature for adult readers.


(In)Visible Presence: Feminist Counter-narratives of Young Adult Literature by Women of Color

(In)Visible Presence: Feminist Counter-narratives of Young Adult Literature by Women of Color

Author: Traci P. Baxley

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-09-02

Total Pages: 141

ISBN-13: 9462096899

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Current school systems create a generation of students who experience institutional practices that honor other students’ needs—those students who share the values of those with power—and have pathologized other groups, specifically women of color. (In) Visible Presence intends to contribute to existing pedagogy, which empowers students, teachers, administrators, and policy makers to develop participatory membership in schools and among citizens who can begin to create an anti-oppressive society. (In) Visible Presence contains a holistic, thematic approach to exploring young adult (YA) novels written by women of color, while providing cultural and historical contexts for interpreting and analyzing their work through a feminist lens. Unlike other scholarship, (In) Visible Presence uses a feminist theoretical framework to create a space in which select literary works offer counter-narratives that can be analyzed and critically interpreted according to principles and ideas intended to validate women, thus making their triumph over racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism and equity challenges a visible cause relegating consequential change for both young girls and women of color. (In) Visible Presence maintains current discourse dialogue through a concentration on the intersectionality of gender, race, and class identities and how these identifiers serve as criteria for privilege and marginalization, even in YA literature. (In) Visible Presence aims to explore YA literature written by women of color represented by African American, Asian American, Indian American, and Latina Americans. Our theoretical perspective focuses on the connection of race, gender, and class that is exclusive to women of color. The construction of “voice” and “space” is important for readers to hear from those once silenced.


Teaching Young Adult Literature

Teaching Young Adult Literature

Author: Mike Cadden

Publisher: Modern Language Association

Published: 2020-04-01

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1603294562

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Thanks to the success of franchises such as The Hunger Games and Twilight, young adult literature has reached a new level of prominence and popularity. Teens and adults alike are drawn to the genre's coming-of-age themes, fast pacing, and vivid emotional portrayals. The essays in this volume suggest ways high school and college instructors can incorporate YA texts into courses in literature, education, library science, and general education. The first group of essays explores key issues in YA literature, situates works in cultural contexts, and addresses questions of text selection and censorship. The second section discusses a range of genres within YA literature, including both realistic and speculative fiction as well as verse narratives, comics, and film. The final section offers ideas for assignments, including interdisciplinary and digital projects, in a variety of courses.


The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literature

The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literature

Author: Crag Hill

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-03-05

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1134054742

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This examination of the literary effectiveness of young adult literature from a critical, research-oriented perspective answers two key questions asked by many teachers and scholars in the field: Does young adult literature stand up on its own as literature? Is it worthy of close study? The treatment is both conceptual and pragmatic. Each chapter discusses a topical text set of YA novels in a conceptual framework—how these novels contribute to or deconstruct conventional wisdom about key topics from identity formation to awareness of world issues, while also providing a springboard in secondary and college classrooms for critical discussion of these novels. Uncloaking many of the issues that have been essentially invisible in discussions of YA literature, these essays can then guide the design of curriculum through which adolescent readers hone the necessary skills to unpack the ideologies embedded in YA narratives. The annotated bibliography provides supplementary articles and books germane to all the issues discussed. Closing "End Points" highlight and reinforce cross-cutting themes throughout the book and tie the essays together.


Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction

Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction

Author: Ymitri Mathison

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2017-11-20

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1496815092

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Winner of the Children’s Literature Association’s 2020 Edited Book Award Contributions by Hena Ahmad, Linda Pierce Allen, Mary J. Henderson Couzelis, Sarah Park Dahlen, Lan Dong, Tomo Hattori, Jennifer Ho, Ymitri Mathison, Leah Milne, Joy Takako Taylor, and Traise Yamamoto Often referred to as the model minority, Asian American children and adolescents feel pressured to perform academically and be disinterested in sports, with the exception of martial arts. Boys are often stereotyped as physically unattractive nerds and girls as petite and beautiful. Many Americans remain unaware of the diversity of ethnicities and races the term Asian American comprises, with Asian American adolescents proving to be more invisible than adults. As a result, Asian American adolescents are continually searching for their identity and own place in American society. For these kids, being or considered to be American becomes a challenge in itself as they assert their Asian and American identities; claim their own ethnic identity, be they immigrant or American-born; and negotiate their ethnic communities. The contributors to Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction focus on moving beyond stereotypes to examine how Asian American children and adolescents define their unique identities. Chapters focus on primary texts from many ethnicities, such as Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese, South Asian, and Hawaiian. Individual chapters, crossing cultural, linguistic, and racial boundaries, negotiate the complex terrain of Asian American children’s and teenagers’ identities. Chapters cover such topics as internalized racism and self-loathing; hypersexualization of Asian American females in graphic novels; interracial friendships; transnational adoptions and birth searches; food as a means of assimilation and resistance; commodity racism and the tourist gaze; the hostile and alienating environment generated by the War on Terror; and many other topics.


Reading Still Matters

Reading Still Matters

Author: Catherine Sheldrick Ross

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2018-03-01

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13:

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Drawing on scholarly research findings, this book presents a cogent case that librarians can use to work towards prioritization of reading in libraries and in schools. Reading is more important than it has ever been—recent research on reading, such as PEW reports and Scholastic's "Kids and Family Reading Report," proves that fact. This new edition of Reading Matters provides powerful evidence that can be used to justify the establishment, maintenance, and growth of pleasure reading collections, both fiction and nonfiction, and of readers' advisory services. The authors assert that reading should be woven into the majority of library activities: reference, collection building, provision of leisure materials, readers' advisory services, storytelling and story time programs, adult literacy programs, and more. This edition also addresses emergent areas of interest, such as e-reading, e-writing, and e-publishing; multiple literacies; visual texts; the ascendancy of young adult fiction; and fan fiction. A new chapter addresses special communities of YA readers. The book will help library administrators and personnel convey the importance of reading to grant-funding agencies, stakeholders, and the public at large. LIS faculty who wish to establish and maintain courses in readers' advisory will find it of particular interest.


Teaching Culturally Sustaining and Inclusive Young Adult Literature

Teaching Culturally Sustaining and Inclusive Young Adult Literature

Author: R. Joseph Rodríguez

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-11

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1351580450

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In this book, Rodríguez uses theories of critical literacy and culturally responsive teaching to argue that our schools, and our culture, need sustaining and inclusive young adult (YA) literature/s to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse readers and all students. This book provides an outline for the study of literature through cultural and literary criticism, via essays that analyze selected YA literature (drama, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) in four areas: scribal identities and the self-affirmation of adolescents; gender and sexualities; schooling and education of young adult characters; and teachers’ roles and influences in characters’ coming of age. Applying critical literacy theories and a youth studies lens, this book shines a light on the need for culturally sustaining and inclusive pedagogies to read adolescent worlds. Complementing these essays are critical conversations with seven key contemporary YA literature writers, adding biographical perspectives to further expand the critical scholarship and merits of YA literature.


Innovations in English Language Arts Teacher Education

Innovations in English Language Arts Teacher Education

Author: Heidi L. Hallman

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2017-02-02

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1787140512

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The field of English language arts teacher education has experienced change over the past two decades. Changes in the discipline have produced a much more expansive understanding of literacy and of what teachers of English language arts do. This volume will focus on innovations in English language arts teacher education.


Teaching the Canon in 21st Century Classrooms

Teaching the Canon in 21st Century Classrooms

Author: Michael Macaluso

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-11-01

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 9004389318

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The canon, as much an ideology as it is a body of texts perceived to be intrinsic to the high school English classroom, has come under scrutiny for maintaining status quo narratives about whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, ability, and even those associated with American ideals of self-reliance, the good life, and the self-made man. Teaching practices around these texts may also reinforce harmful practices and ways of thinking, including those connected to notions of culture, literary merit, and methods of reading, teaching, and learning. Teaching the Canon in 21st Century Classrooms offers innovative, critical ways of reading, thinking about, and teaching canonical texts in 21st century classrooms. Responding to the increasingly pluralized, digitized, global 21st century English classroom, chapter authors make explicit the ideologies of a canonical text of focus, while also elaborating a pedagogical approach that de-centers the canon, bridges past and present, applies critical theory, and celebrates the rich identities of 21st century readers. In using this book, teachers will be especially poised to take on the canon in their classroom and, thus, to open up their curricula to ideas, values, concerns, and narratives beyond those embedded in the canonical texts.