Young Adult Literature Research Articles

Research: Exploring Trends in a Growing Field: A Content Analysis of Young Adult Literature Scholarly Book Publications 2000–2020

To understand trends in what seems to be an explosion of books written about young adult literature (YAL), the authors conducted a content analysis of scholarly books published between 2000 and 2020. The question What trends in YAL research and pedagogy do the books published in this span of time reflect? guided this inquiry to support English teacher educators in their engagement with YAL scholarship within and beyond teacher preparation. After examining 191 books, with the majority of them focusing on research and theory in YAL, findings emerged in five areas: critical events in society, shifts in public education, literacy movements, publishing trends, and scholarly community influence.

Paradigm Shift in Fantasy Literature: Screen Adaptations as a Source of Infotainment

In the previous two decades, young adult fiction has dominated the best-selling books, owing to its popularity and the ease with which it is widely available over the internet. Young adult fiction and high fantasy have been extensively studied in the literature in connection to a variety of genres, which also include fantasy books. Numerous researchers have examined blockbuster fantasy series in this regard. Several academics have shed new light on cinema adaptation theory or its critical examination within this area of study. As such, this study will examine the intertextual utterances seen in most significant fantasy blockbusters. The study examines a variety of disciplines, including cinema adaptations, high fantasy books, and young adult writing.

Colibri–Corpus Libri et Liberi: Digitization of 19th-Century Children’s and Young Adult Literature–a Project Sponsored by the German Research Foundation

Colibri–Corpus Libri et Liberi: Digitization of 19th-Century Children’s and Young Adult Literature–a Project Sponsored by the German Research Foundation

Verisimilitude in Young Adult Fiction: Catharsis within and through Anderson’s Speak

This article highlights the protagonist’s journey in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson towards finding an outlet to release the inner turmoil triggered by past traumatic experiences. Doing so, the paper sheds the light on the inner conflicts, as well as the major mechanisms of defense adopted by the protagonist. Just as importantly, by drawing on Kramer’s art therapy theory, the study explains how art creation and creative writing helped the protagonist and the author, respectively, release pent up emotions through a symbolic form, making them one step closer to the verbal form of self-expression.

Northern Lights Are Our Friends: Soviet Deportations and Siberian Nature in Children's and Young Adult Literature

Although their history dates back to the sixteenth century and the policies of Tsarist Russia, Siberian exiles—in the cultural memory of central and eastern Europe—are usually associated with the Gulag and the policies of Lenin and Stalin during the revolution, collectivization, the Great Terror, and the Second World War. As a result of the mass repressions, millions of adults and children of various nationalities, including Poles, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Russians, were deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union—Siberia, the Ural Mountains, and Kazakhstan. The article examines children's and young adult books about these deportations that not only showcase the totalitarian character of Stalinism but also contrast human brutality with the goodness and innocence of nature surrounding the child protagonists transported deep into the USSR. Thus, the novels' chronotope seems to convey the testimony of traumatic events in the history of post-Soviet nations and provide young readers with a sense of hope epitomized by the vastness of the snows of Siberia.

From the Editor

From the Editor Lisa Rowe Fraustino (bio) In this, my first introduction to my first volume as editor of the annual, I want to begin by thanking all of our contributors, from whom I have learned more than I thought my brain could absorb. I have learned not only from the seven authors whose accepted essays appear in these pages but also from those whose work is still in the revise and resubmit (R & R) process, and even those whose work was not a fit for us—or not yet. Equally, I learned from our expert readers, whose generous attention to the work of anonymous colleagues makes every essay better, makes the journal better, makes the editor better, makes children's literature scholarship overall better, and indirectly betters children's literature itself. With no organizing theme for this open volume, I decided to order the essays chronologically based on the text sets under discussion, beginning with a classic of the White canon, Peter and Wendy. In "'[A] commotion in the firmament': The Thermodynamics of Neverland," Clayton Carlyle Tarr looks at J. M. Barrie's 1911 novelization of his 1904 play as an exemplar of how children's literature incorporated Victorian science. Peter Pan and Tinker Bell harness energy in ways that defy the physical laws of thermodynamics, a subject that Barrie studied at the University of Edinburgh. Just as the character Peter Pan never ages or dies, the thermodynamic power of storytelling allows Peter Pan to live on across generations. At the same time as Barrie staged children's play in White, patriarchal, colonialist fantasies, H.G. Wells represented nationalist masculinity through play in two little-known novels for children, Floor Games (1911) and Little Wars (1913). Chloe Flower's essay, "The Exemplary Game: Going to War with H.G. Wells's Toy Soldiers," situates these fictional war-gaming texts in British culture and the figure of the toy soldier in material history. She finds that, like the reproducible hollow toy, "the boy is a delegate for an infinitely expanding number of other, expendable male selves proceeding outward to empire and forward into England's triumphalist future." Just as children's literature has contributed to the reproduction of traditional gender roles across generations, so too has it contributed to cultural change. In "Little Miss Muffet Must Go! Mommies at Work [End Page ix] and the Radical Roots of Non-Sexist Children's Literature," Julia L. Mickenberg explores the historical impact of an early feminist picture book and discusses why it was then—and still is, to some extent—difficult to find picture book mothers working outside of the home. Eve Merriam's 1961 text was given new life in 1970 when rediscovered by the Women's Liberation movement and featured in Elizabeth Fisher's "The Second Sex, Junior Division," which Mickenberg parallels with the importance of Nancy Larrick's "The All-White World of Children's Literature." With the next essay, we skip ahead to the poststructural era, when both young adult literature and the theoretical study of it have gained influence and respect. Barbara Tannert-Smith combines topoanalysis and psychoanalysis in "'The Garden Frightens Me': Trauma, Recovery, and the Environmental Uncanny in Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now." By mapping "the traumatic route of intertextual modeling" in what Amitav Ghosh has called "the environmental uncanny," Tannert-Smith deconstructs romantic notions of landscape and human-nature entanglements in Rosoff's 2004 critically acclaimed novel about young people surviving on their own in a future World War III. J. K. Rowling's series of seven Harry Potter books came out between 1997 and 2007, and Kathryn Strong Hansen discusses the author's 2008 postscript to her Wizarding World in the next essay, "On the Margins of Harry's World: Paratext and The Tales of Beedle the Bard." Reading Rowling's footnotes placed alongside Dumbledore's in the text, Hansen argues that paratexts of the Tales undermine Rowling's expressed intent in fighting bigotry by marginalizing readers as Muggles themselves, distancing rather than fostering the connection that had made them feel included throughout the series. In recent decades, scholars have paid increasing attention to comics and graphic novels. Kai Mikkonen continues...

Resilience in Young Adult Literature

Resilience in Young Adult Literature

A Research Synthesis of Using Young Adult Literature in College English Literature Class

A Research Synthesis of Using Young Adult Literature in College English Literature Class

Identity and Racism in Young Adult Literature

Identity and Racism in Young Adult Literature

Playing in and through Children's Books

Playing in and through Children's Books Chrysogonus Siddha Malilang (bio) I would like to start this editorial by complaining about my dog. It has been difficult to walk her in the last couple of days as she gets distracted easily by the budding snowdrops around the park. The spring is coming—at least here in the north—and it has awakened the somewhat-playful beast within my dog. She forgets about me as soon as she sees the fresh buds of spring flowers, acting all wild with her runs and pounces. But how can I blame her if I had acted the same way several days ago at the Bologna Children's Book Fair? The numerous—and various—children's books showcased in the Bologna Fiere exhibition center made me lose control over myself. My playful inner child was unleashed and, just like my dog, I dropped my grip of time and space. The books transformed me back into the happy days of my childhood, where I was content to stay in my bedroom for the whole day as long as I was surrounded by books. The only thing missing was the presence of my parents and their concern for my well-being, a boy who refused to go out in the sun and play. They were afraid that I had become too studious and wasted my opportunities to play. Little did they know that I was playing through and within those books—that my act of reading is a play in itself. How can children's books be akin to play? That is one of the questions this issue tries to answer. Björn Sundmark and Annette Mars, in their article "The Play of Words, Music, and Images in Hans Alfredson's Flowery Frankfurters," argue that playful storytelling for children can be achieved through a transmedia conversation between a children's illustrated book and recorded songs. On the other hand, Sylvia Pantaleo presents the possibility of playful dialogue through silence or wordlessness in her article, "Reviewing the Multifaceted Complexity and Potential of Wordless Picturebooks." The more tactile, tangible play with and through children's books is further discussed as Frank Serafini and Lindsey Moses discuss children's books requiring unorthodox physical interaction in their article, "An Analysis of the Semiotic Resources of Contemporary Movable Picturebooks." Despite the common association of play with complete freedom, rules are still necessary. A play completely devoid of rules is nothing but pure chaos; the participants need to subject themselves to rules to ensure enjoyment for everyone involved (Nilsson). In terms of children's literature in the globalized world, one of the important rules of play is about representation and inclusivity. "'Paper White' Characters and the Desire for Homogeneity in Spanish-Language Picturebooks" by Macarena García-Gonzáles and Xavier Mínguez-López examines how ethnicity is absent, [End Page 1] erased, or folklorized across recommended picturebooks from various hispanophone countries. Meanwhile, "A Cause for Hope or an Unwitting Complicity?" by Helen Adam and Yvonne Urquhart scrutinizes the representation of cultural diversity in picturebooks nominated for various awards in Australia. This issue also features an article covering other points of interest. "Northern Lights Are Our Friends" by Mateusz Świetlicki and Sylwia Kamińska-Maciąg examines how the chronotopes in children's and young adult books about Soviet deportation both testify to the traumatic historical events and provide readers with a sense of hope. The "Children and Their Books" section features an article about Biblioteca Interactiva Latinoamericana Infantil y Juvenil, a new interactive children's library in Chile, and its attempt to promote reading among Chilean children. In the "Letters" section, readers can enjoy the presentation and discussion of a children's book from India, Faces in the Water. Readers can also find a short interview with Reda Gaudiamo, an Indonesian author, and learn how she drew upon her playful childhood and her daughter's experiences to weave the stories of a five-year-old Willa. There are, of course, many other things to say about the content of this issue. Anamaria Anderson has compiled wonderful Postcards from various corners of the globe. The issue's cover illustration is taken from...

Beowulf as Children's Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize (review)

Reviewed by: Beowulf as Children's Literature ed. by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize Anna Smol (bio) Beowulf as Children's Literature, edited by Bruce Gilchrist and Britt Mize. U of Toronto P, 2021. This volume of ten essays, an interview, and an extensive bibliography is an outstanding resource that lays the groundwork for future research in the field of medieval adaptations for young readers. Situated at the intersection of scholarship on children's literature, Beowulf, medievalism and adaptation studies, this collection covers a long history, from the first Beowulf adaptation for Danish children in 1820 to works by twenty-first-century writers and illustrators, and it suggests various theoretical and critical approaches to the topic of Beowulf adaptations for children. Britt Mize's "Introduction: Beowulf in and near Children's Literature" points out what some may find a surprising fact: that the largest category of Beowulf adaptations (other than direct translations) is those made for children. Bruce Gilchrist's extensive bibliography at the end of the book, listing over 150 adaptations made for young readers from 1820 to 2018, provides evidence of the Old English poem's continued appeal. Mize points out that, aside from a few previous publications on this topic, this volume marks the first time a collection of essays tackles the issues of "transmuting" the Old English poem for child readers and for the adults who provide those readings (5). Mize surveys some key issues that should prompt more scholarly attention: the unique character of every adaptation; its ideological goals, including its educational paratexts; the materiality of the book and its intended audience; and the relation of children's literature to young adult (YA) literature. The following essays each examine one or more of these issues, although Mize does point out, especially in the light of recent developments in early medieval English studies, that "[a] fully theorized, historicizing study of race and racism in Beowulf adaptations for children remains to be written" (7). The first two essays both deal with nationalist ideologies that shape Beowulf for young readers and, in this way, can serve as foundations for future studies of race and racism, as Mize hopes. It is fitting that [End Page 182] these first two essays deal with firsts, as their titles indicate: "'A Little Shared Homer for England and the North': The First Beowulf for Young Readers" by Mark Bradshaw Busbee and "The Adaptational Character of the Earliest Beowulf for English Children: E.L. Hervey's 'The Fight with the Ogre'" by Renée Ward. Busbee examines the work and influence of the Danish scholar N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), a name that will be familiar to most Beowulf scholars as the man who wrote the first full translation of Beowulf in a modern language (Danish), corrected some of the errors in the Thorkelin transcripts, and explained some of the poem's characters. According to Busbee, Grundtvig is also the man who first identified the poem as suitable for children. His Bjowulfs Drape, published in 1820, claimed to provide for children a "little shared Homer for England and for the North" that would introduce them to their Scandinavian, and specifically Danish, heritage as an alternative to the classical Greek and Latin that had dominated education previously. In this nationalistic goal as well as his belief that the Beowulf-poet wrote in a stage of history analogous to childhood, Grundtvig expresses themes repeated in children's adaptations throughout the nineteenth century and beyond. Busbee examines Grundtvig's translation choices, the development of his considerable influence on Danish education, and the political subtexts of his adaptation. He concludes with some thoughts about Grundtvig's influence, including on J.R.R. Tolkien's notion of a shared Northern heritage. Pointing to another first, Renée Ward presents the work of Eleanora Louisa Hervey (1811–1903), a children's writer who was particularly interested in medievalism. Ward posits that Hervey's story "Roderic's Tale: The Fight with the Ogre," published in 1873 in her volume The Children of the Pear-Garden, may be the first English adaptation of Beowulf that identifies children as its intended readers. Just as Grundtvig was inspired by cultural concerns about national...

Pain and Pandemics: Infected and Excluded Bodies in Young Adult Fantasy Literature

Illnesses can highlight inequalities in young adult fantasy literature as characters undergo exclusion and self-empowerment tied to diseases, disabled bodies, and death. In recent fictions by Marissa Meyer, Marie Lu, and Margaret Owen, heroines navigate epidemics and pandemics inciting either mistrust or mutual aid. In Cinder (2012), the protagonist experiences bodily vulnerabilities via her cyborg prosthetics and a worldwide plague. The Young Elites (2014) shows survivors of a fever facing ostracism, while The Merciful Crow (2019) depicts immunity as a boon and a burden. These books on the interpersonal impact of sickness can resonate intimately with readers today due to COVID-19.

The Making of the Docile Female Body in Korean American Young Adult Literature: A Feminist Foucauldian Reading of An Na’s The Fold (2008)

The Making of the Docile Female Body in Korean American Young Adult Literature: A Feminist Foucauldian Reading of An Na’s The Fold (2008)

Temporalities Beyond Transition: Form, Genre, and Contemporary Trans Novels

ABSTRACT: Popular narratives about trans identity traditionally rely on a metaphorical understanding of trans embodiment as a linear and unidirectional journey. This paper discusses how this temporality is questioned, reshaped, interrupted, and sidestepped in five recent novels by trans and non-binary authors: Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby (2021), Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017), Juno Dawson’s Wonderland (2020), Rivers Solomon’s An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017), and Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless (2021). The spatiotemporal organization of these novels negotiates the linearities that are conventionally employed in relation to trans stories, as each text engages with the conventions of specific genres—from the Bildungsroman to the picaresque, from science fiction to “chick lit,” from young adult literature to horror—in order to move beyond the structure of the personal transition journey.

Plants in Children's and Young Adult Literature ed. by Melanie Duckworth and Lykke Guanio-Uluru (review)

Plants in Children's and Young Adult Literature ed. by Melanie Duckworth and Lykke Guanio-Uluru (review)

Haunted Houses and Ghostly Homes: Kacen Callender's Hurricane Child as a Rewriting of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John

This essay responds to the dearth of analysis of young adult literature in postcolonial scholarship by placing Kacen Callender's LGBTQ+ middle-grade novel Hurricane Child (2018) adjacent to Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John (1987), a foundational text of contemporary Caribbean literature. I employ Homi Bhabha's reformulation of Sigmund Freud's unheimlich, or "unhomely," to interrogate how both novels complicate ideas of literal home and island home as places of fun, comfort, and safety. Just as the nostalgic image of the adoring mother discombobulates Kincaid's Annie, the figure of the physically absent mother plagues Callender's Caroline. Both characters live in symbolically haunted houses. Additionally, shame lurks in the corners of Caroline's psyche as she comes to recognize her budding same-sex desires, which put her at risk of being ghosted, or erased, as a valued member of her community. Extending the psychic trauma from the narrators to the histories of their islands, and relying on critical work on the Gothic by Avery F. Gordon, Maisha Wester, and others, this essay excavates politically charged depictions of landscapes for signs of literal spirits and evidence of haunting by slavery, colonialism, and the neocolonial systems of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Teaching Social Justice Through Gothic Young Adult Literature

Teaching Social Justice Through Gothic Young Adult Literature

De-Dehumanising the Autistic Other: Between the Image of “Beast” and “Being” in J. K. Rowling’s ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ - Screenplay and Book

The representation of autism in literature is a novelty of a delicate sense for what impact it can have on readers. Autism shows more frequently in the lines of Young-Adult fiction (YA), a genre known for its large audiences, which makes contemplating the image of an autistic person, as an actual character or a theme, either a means of access or a block to public awareness of the spectrum, respectively. The selected YA fiction works for this paper are Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, as screenplay (2018) and book (2001). The screenplay is not an adaptation of the book, but a background to the times when a character wrote his study book on the beasts that surrounds his environment. In the works, the use of terms like “monster” and “beast” seems to refer to a dehumanised image of the represented, which raises questions on why the writer would allude readers to relate autism to monstrosity; is she maintaining the habit of using illness as a narrative thematic tool or does she suggest otherwise? In order to formulate a ground for these inquiries, we will visit the text in relation to Lacan and Derrida’s thoughts on “Subjectivity” and how it defines fellowship from alterity and monstrosity. The objective of this research is to investigate the representation of autism in Rowling’s screenplay while backing up with examples from the book to see how far it meets the real or contrastingly contributes to reinforcing another stereotypical other.

The Depiction of the Loser Teenager in the Film and Television Adaptations of John Green’s Young Adult Novels

In the last few decades, the teen movie genre has left behind the genre of light comedies or farce comedies and deals with more substantial and fundamental issues concerning teenagers and young adults. In the literary universe of John Green, which has been the basis and source of inspiration for the corresponding film and television adaptations, the form of the good-natured and well-intentioned loser teenager dominates. The loser teenager watches with longing and anxiety the lives of his popular peers, longing to be given a chance to join their company. when this finally happens, he finds out that things are not always as they seem and the values that decorate his universe are not as meaningless as he initially thought. The heroes in Green's books possess culture, dreams and ambitions, and an already complete personal universe that most of their popular peers lack, lost in the abyss of adolescence, its changes, and dilemmas. their depiction in the mass entertainment media of film and television reflects also social changes in teen and school culture, s well as the broadening of personal outlooks and expectations of teenagers themselves. in the recent article, we are going to analyse the type of loser geek/nerd teenager hero in the film and television adaptations of his young adult novel Paper Towns (2015) and Looking for Alaska (2019).

캐나다 아동청소년 과학소설

The present study overviews Canadian science fiction for children and young adults in its early history. Canada’s multiculturalism is a great resource for diversity on their literary works, but at the same time, it often turns into concerns on their national identity. Canadian novels portray this unique trait in their stories with three major features. By contrasting the technology-dominated society with the nature-friendly one, they ultimately aim for an idyllic society. Also, the works express distrust of technology and progress with concerns about negative effects on the global environment. Finally, they lie on the blurred border between fantasy adventure and science fiction. Unlike mainstream science fiction novels, Canadian children’s SF writers take the subjects of science, nature, and humans more seriously. Depicting a variety of possible future societies, they continue to emphasize both the harmony of technology and the nature and the exploration of human identity. This originality distinguishes them from other countries’ works and are sufficiently attractive to many young readers.