Product Description: This is the first volume to consider the popular literary category of Early Readers – books written and designed for children who are just beginning to read independently. It argues that Early Readers deserve more scholarly attention and careful thought because they are, for many younger readers, their first opportunity to engage with a work of literature on their own, to feel a sense of mastery over a text, and to experience pleasure from the act of reading independently...read more

Mediated Boyhoods: Boys, Teens, and Young Men in Popular Media and Culture brings together work from various disciplines that explores the relationships among the everyday lives of boys and such media platforms as television, films, games, sports, music, urban and suburban culture, fashion, young adult novels, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. Offering a comprehensive overview of boyhood studies, chapters consider questions about the current state of boyhood as it is represented in the popular media; the ways that boys are influenced by and work to influence popular culture; the ways that popular texts often reflect adult expectations, anxieties, and prejudices about boys and boyhood; and the ways that boys, teens, and young men are often able to reflect upon and to act, sometimes unpredictably, to resist, subvert, or re-imagine and re-create popular culture and media. The volume serves as a companion to Mediated Girlhoods: New Explorations of Girls’ Media Culture, edited by Mary Celeste Kearney.

Product Description: Boys in Children’s Literature and Popular Culture proposes new theoretical frameworks for understanding the contradictory ways masculinity is represented in popular texts consumed by boys in the United States. The popular texts boys like are often ignored by educators and scholars, or are simply dismissed as garbage that boys should be discouraged from enjoying...read more