Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction ed. by Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction ed. by Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson Katy Lewis (bio) Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction, edited by Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson. UP of Mississippi, 2020. Rebekah Fitzsimmons and Casey Alane Wilson's edited collection, Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction, is an excellent addition to the study of Young Adult (YA) literature, providing key insights into the roles that understudied and underrecognized texts play in literary discourse about adolescence. In "Introduction. Boom! Goes the Hypercanon: On the Importance of the Overlooked and Understudied in Young Adult Literature," Fitzsimmons and Wilson establish two goals for this collection of essays: their first goal is "to move away from analysis focused only on singular popular texts and toward a broader framework of common themes, character arcs, and genre conventions present in the contemporary YA field" (x). This clearly stated goal helps set the tone of the volume, which takes a more "macrolevel approach," Fitzsimmons and Wilson point out, favoring broader understandings of what these genres are doing rather [End Page 283] than in-depth, close reading analyses (x). Connected to this is their second goal, "to expand the corpus of materials with which children's literature scholarship regularly engages and examines" (x). With this context, the editors establish how this volume of scholarly work does not seek to cover every area of YA literature; instead, the work here opens outward, inviting readers and students, "scholars and teachers alike to engage with a broader range of texts by a more extensive list of authors" (x). This thematic "opening outward" becomes the central strength for the collection as it inherently invites its readers to participate in this scholarly study. Situating their edited collection within the long-established literary theory and criticism of young adult literature, Fitzsimmons and Wilson provide an overview of how power, adolescence, and growing up are central themes of YA literature and how this collection of essays explicitly pushes back on the "hypercanon" (ix) of popularized YA novels and series to envision new ways of understanding those themes in YA literature. "It is this overall impression of homogeneity" in YA literature, Fitsimmons and Wilson note, "that this book seeks to correct by highlighting the vast array of genres, developmental patterns, and tropes that are regularly published under the umbrella of YA literature" (xv). Fitzsimmons and Wilson designate "a blockbuster book … as a bestselling book that exceeds conventional or expected boundaries such as genre or marketing categories," that is, "books that become so recognizable they can be comfortably featured in multiple sections of a bookstore" (xiii). In this collection, authors engage with YA novels about dystopias, road trips, YouTube memoirs, paranormal powers and serial killers, mermaid coming-of-age stories, police violence against Black youth, masculinity, disability, romance and marriage plots, acquaintance rape and sexual violence, and contemporary ballet. With this breadth of focus, the collection excellently surveys different trends in YA literature while still leaving room for other scholars to develop further analyses about additional understudied texts. The fourteen chapters in the collection are split into three sections: Defining Boundaries "groups together essays that collectively work to provide insights into the conventions of existing subgenres within the YA category" (xvi). Next, Expanding Boundaries "brings together essays that explore collisions of subject, theme, and character in ways that challenge the limits of long-established genres." Fitzsimmons and Wilson also note that "[w]hile the essays in the previous section provide insight into the rules that define (emerging) genres, the essays in this [End Page 284] section look at texts that question the rules as we know them" (xviii). Last, Revealing Boundaries "works to critique existing categories by tracing often unspoken genre norms and pushing back against expectations," and the authors in this section "work to illuminate boundaries that previously may have been hidden or overlooked by previous analyses" (xix). The section divides are one thing that I think the volume could improve on. While I wholeheartedly agree that these divides help balance the work of the essays, I would have found it more helpful to include...