By examining the novels of critically and commercially successful authors such as Sarah Dessen (Someone Like You), Stephenie Meyer (the Twilight series), and Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak), Reading Like a Girl: Narrative Intimacy in Contemporary American Young Adult Literature explores the use of narrative intimacy as a means of reflecting and reinforcing larger, often contradictory, cultural expectations regarding adolescent women, interpersonal relationships, and intimacy. Reading Like a Girl explains the construction of narrator-reader relationships in recent American novels written about adolescent women and marketed to adolescent women.Sara K. Day explains, though, that such levels of imagined friendship lead to contradictory cultural expectations for the young women so deeply obsessed with reading these novels. Day coins the term "narrative intimacy" to refer to the implicit relationship between narrator and reader that depends on an imaginary disclosure and trust between the story's narrator and the reader. Through critical examination, the inherent contradictions between this enclosed, imagined relationship and the real expectations for adolescent women's relations prove to be problematic.In many novels for young women, adolescent female narrators construct conceptions of the adolescent woman reader, constructions that allow the narrator to understand the reader as a confidant, a safe and appropriate location for disclosure. At the same time, such novels offer frequent warnings against the sort of unfettered confession the narrators perform. Friendships are marked as potential sites of betrayal and rejection. Romantic relationships are presented as inherently threatening to physical and emotional health. And so, the narrator turns to the reader for an ally who cannot judge. The reader, in turn, may come to depend upon narrative intimacy in order to vicariously explore her own understanding of human expression and bonds.

Beyond Borders compiles essays from various authors who explore the queerness of young adult literature that contains lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and questioning characters, some written by LGBTQ identified authors, while presenting lessons for secondary English classrooms. As queer theorists, the authors ask if young adult literature can imagine other spaces, representations, ways of being, identifications, and inclusion of LGBTQ characters and stories. This collection examines questions of theory as well as classroom literacy practices, while employing new theories in novel and creative intersections with literary texts. The book is perfect for teacher education courses focused on young adult literature, as well as secondary English education courses including methods of teaching English courses, teaching literature methods courses, queer theory in education courses, teaching of writing courses, and content area literacy courses.

Product Description: The Boys Club: Male Protagonists in Contemporary African American Young Adult Literature is a study of prominent issues and themes such as education, identity, and racism in contemporary (i.e., post-Civil Rights era) young adult novels written primarily for African American boys by African American men and women writers...read more

Product Description: Although the United States prides itself as a nation of diversity, the country that boasts of its immigrant past also wrestles with much of its immigrant present. While conflicting attitudes about immigration are debated, newcomers—both legal and otherwise—continue to arrive on American soil...read more

Product Description: Reading the Adolescent Romance provides an exhaustive study of the developments in young adult literature since the 1980s with a focus on Francine Pascal’s "Sweet Valley High" series, which has become a cultural and literary touchstone for both fans and critics of the novels...read more

Product Description: The author of more than 50 informational books for young people, Russell Freedman has received every major award in the field, including the Newbery, the Robert F. Sibert Medal, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal. Major prizes are but one indication of the significance of an author, and Russell Freedman has been and continues to be essential in moving criticism and publication of nonfiction into the fullest realm of appreciation and development...read more

Mixed-heritage people are one of the fastest-growing groups in the United States, yet culturally they have been largely invisible, especially in young adult literature. Mixed Heritage in Young Adult Literature is a critical exploration of how mixed-heritage characters (those of mixed race, ethnicity, religion, and/or adoption) and real-life people have been portrayed in young adult fiction and nonfiction. This is the first in-depth, broad-scope critical exploration of this subgenre of multicultural literature. Following an introduction to the topic, author Nancy Thalia Reynolds examines the portrayal of mixed-heritage characters in literary classics by James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, and Zora Neale Hurston—staples of today's high school English curriculum—along with other important authors. It opens up the discussion of young-adult racial and ethnic identity in literature to recognize—and focus on—those whose heritage straddles boundaries. In this book teachers will find new tools to approach race, ethnicity, and family heritage in literature and in the classroom. This book also helps librarians find new criteria with which to evaluate young adult fiction and nonfiction with mixed-heritage characters.

One of the most revered authors of young adult books, Richard Peck has penned several critical and commercial successes including Dreamland Lake, The Ghost Belonged to Me, and the National Book Award finalist, A Long Way from Chicago. Peck's novels have also received prestigious awards including the Edgar for Are You in the House Alone? and the Newbery Medal for A Year Down Yonder. He is also the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the National Humanities Medal, the ALAN Award, and the National Endowment for the Humanities Medallion. In Richard Peck: The Past Is Paramount, authors Donald R. Gallo and Wendy J. Glenn recount the highlights of Peck's life, focusing on his world travels, his accomplishments as a teacher and his renowned writing career. Gallo and Glenn examine Peck's 30 novels, as well as his short stories and children's books, poems, essays and other nonfiction. An additional chapter analyzes themes, characters, and style in his writing. The appendixes list Peck's many honors and prizes, as well as film adaptations of his works. The extensive bibliography cites all of Peck's primary and secondary works, along with sources of interviews, speeches, prayers and credos, articles about him, and sources of reviews of each of his books. For fans and scholars alike, Richard Peck: The Past Is Paramount is the most authoritative resource about the life and work of this beloved author.

Product Description: Knowledge about carnality and its limits provides the agenda for much of the fiction written for adolescent readers today, yet there exists little critical engagement with the ways in which it has been represented in the young adult novel in either discursive, ideological, or rhetorical forms...read more

Product Description: Serious scholarship on African American children's and young adult literature is a relatively recent phenomenon. To date, only a handful of book-length works―aside from doctoral dissertations―have been devoted to the exploration of this body of work and the historical works that are at its foundation...read more

Product Description: This book shows how authors of young adult literature use the creation of names for people, places, events, inventions, animals, and imaginary concepts as one of their most important literary techniques. Chapters address how authors use names to stretch readers' emotions, to reveal ethnic values and differences, to create "other worlds," and to establish tone...read more

Product Description: Passions and Pleasures: Essays and Speeches About Literature and Libraries is a collection of Michael Cart's favorite columns and speeches about young adult literature, how he has observed and participated in the growth of the genre, the changes it has undergone, and what he sees as its future...read more

Book by

'This volume introduces readers to both the writer and his work, with an emphasis on the characters, dates, events, motifs and themes. Myers's one hundred one A-to-Z entries offer concise, analytical discussion on all topics and include generous citations from primary and secondary sources'--Provided by publisher.Discusses Walter Dean Myers and his work, with entries on the characters, dates, events, motifs, and themes from his literature.

Product Description: This book analyzes American Indian characters and themes in young adult literature, outlining plots and evaluating content from a native perspective. Teachers, librarians, parents, and young adult readers will find essential analytical information about a cross-section of literature with American Indian protagonists, narratives, and settings...read more