Young Adult Literature Research Articles

Do I Dare to Leave the Universe Alone? Environmental Crisis, Narrative Identity, and Collective Agency in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction

Do I Dare to Leave the Universe Alone? Environmental Crisis, Narrative Identity, and Collective Agency in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction

The Role of Reader-Response Theory in Understanding the Reception and Interpretation of Contemporary Young Adult Literature

This research article explores the role of reader-response theory in understanding the reception and interpretation of contemporary young adult literature. Reader-response theory emphasizes the active engagement of readers in constructing meaning from texts, acknowledging the significance of individual perspectives, experiences, and socio-cultural contexts. This study aims to investigate how reader-response theory can enhance our understanding of how young adult readers engage with and interpret themes, characters, and narrative techniques in contemporary young adult literature. By analyzing reader responses through qualitative research methods and literary analysis, this article examines the intricate interactions between readers, texts, and the socio-cultural environment in which young adult literature is consumed. The findings contribute to the broader comprehension of reader-response theory and its applicability in studying the reception and interpretation of literature, specifically within the domain of young adult fiction. This research article not only sheds light on the diverse and nuanced ways in which readers respond to and make meaning from young adult literature but also provides insights for educators, authors, and publishers in effectively engaging with young adult readers and creating meaningful literary experiences within this genre.

“Interplay between grief and silliness”: an interview with Tyler Feder

ABSTRACT Tyler Feder’s Dancing at the Pity Party is her debut graphic memoir published by Penguin Random House in 2020. Her poignant narrative which delineates the sociocultural notions on death and personal expressions of grief won several accolades including the Sydney Taylor Young Adult Book Award and the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction nomination. Feder’s critically acclaimed narratives such as Bodies Are Cool and Are You Mad at Me? and other humourous illustrations in Unladylike and Together We March explore feminism, body image, pop culture, and mental health. In this interview, Tyler Feder shares her dual role as a daughter who had to process the loss of her mother and as a comic artist who had to represent the challenges posed by the social silence on death and grieving in her memoir, Dancing at the Pity Party. The conversation reflects on the transformative power of art and the role of an artist in debunking irrational social myths surrounding illness and death.

Finding Truths Through Fiction: Reflecting on Young Adult Literature in Dance Educator Preparation

In the course Dance Education Methods for the Secondary School, preservice teachers select and read a young adult novel and consider its applications to teaching dance. Drawing on research and practice in psychology and teacher education, we first share the rationale for including this assignment in the course. We then highlight a sample of novels that have been used for this assignment and describe how they relate to the discussion of themes such as asset and deficit views of students and communities, student-led learning in dance, team identities and social issues, abuse reporting and interventions, and injuries and health issues. We reflect on the process of engaging with this assignment and offer suggestions to other instructors.

Challenging Perceptions: A Post-Representational Reading of The Fate of Fausto

As the ‘greening’ of literature for children and young adults continues apace in a time of climate crisis, much research in the field adopts interpretative approaches that analyse representations of nature and the non-human in literature for children and young adults. This article adopts an alternative post -representational approach in its exploration of entanglements of materiality, aesthetics, and paratextuality in The Fate of Fausto by author–illustrator Oliver Jeffers. 1 I argue that The Fate of Fausto presents a performative, material-discursive space, demonstrating intra-actions between creator, process, product, and reader that transcend a limited representational analysis. I propose that this entangled analysis provides deeper insight into the transformative potential of visual literature in reshaping the young reader's perceptions of the world, and also demonstrates the efficacy of a post-representational approach in revealing such potential. The adoption of this approach could yield fruitful results in future ecocritical research on visual narratives for children and young adults.

Representation of migrating mothers in children’s and young adult literature on transnational families

This analysis examines literary representations of migrating mothers in seven Polish children’s and young adult books on transnational families, evaluated through grounded theory. While media discourse oversimplifies migration as a deviation from the normative ideal of the present mother, resulting in the deprecating label ‘Euro-orphans’, literary depictions offer a more nuanced perspective. The study identifies three distinct types of mothers – ‘deviant’, ‘incomplete’ and ‘complete’ – with migration portrayed as a juncture in family life that challenges their maternal status. The narratives reveal different family trajectories and obstacles while offering nuanced portrayals of mothers, including their biographies and character traits. Ultimately, however, they reinforce conventional norms of ‘good’ motherhood by portraying transnational family and motherhood as deviations from the norm. Nonetheless, the narratives acknowledge children’s active roles in co-shaping their family arrangements and the evolving status of the ‘good’ mother, emphasising that children are not merely victims of their circumstances.

The Impact of Digitization on Print Book Sales: Analysis Using Genre Exposure Heterogeneity

Problem definition: The rise of digital channels has led to significant media market transformations. This paper studies whether and how digitization, sparked by the launch of Amazon Kindle in late 2007, affected print book sales. Methodology/results: To estimate the impact, we exploit the quasiexperimental variation in the popularity of digital books across different genres or subgenres. We employ difference-in-differences and other identification strategies, and we use print sales data on a large representative sample of book titles published in the United States from 2004 to 2015 across a variety of genres. Using various empirical specifications, we find that digitization significantly reduced print sales of adult fiction (the most popular genre in the e-book format) while having a much smaller impact on adult nonfiction and juvenile fiction. We further find that the effect for adult fiction is higher after the launch of the iPad (in 2010) and stronger for smaller publishers, the paperback version, and low-selling books. Managerial implications: Our findings provide book publishers with key inputs for optimal pricing and release strategies of different book formats. Our study also extends the vast yet growing academic literature on the impact of digital distribution channels on existing sales channels and can inform the policy debate concerning third-party digitization and its effect on physical sales. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0594 .

“We want to help our community”: fostering youth civic agency in a third space

This study explores the conditions that provide new opportunities for youth of color to develop civic agency, paving the way to enact change in their schools and communities. This article shares findings from a qualitative study of an after-school program designed and implemented by the authors, in which 15 middle school-aged youth—including a majority of Latinx youth—participated in an after-school youth participatory action research (YPAR) program that included young adult literature alongside critical theories by authors and scholars of color. The authors used ethnographic methods to examine how three practices in the program—discussing YA literature and critical theories, conducting action research, and presenting findings and recommendations to peers and faculty—encouraged civic agency among youth participants. Drawing on the theory of third space, the authors argue that these practices fostered dynamic moments that opened new opportunities for civic agency that might lead to broader social justice-oriented change.

The Desiring Girl in South African Young Adult Fiction

ABSTRACT Girls in South African young adult (YA) fiction typically represent a heteropatriarchal, sexually passive model of femininity that allows for neither sexual autonomy nor sexual desire. This article examines six prominent South African YA novels that are unusual in that the sexual desires of their teenage heroines play an important role in shaping plot or character: S. A. Partridge’s Dark Poppy’s Demise (2011); Adeline Radloff’s Sidekick (2010); Sonwabiso Ngcowa’s In Search of Happiness (2014); and Lily Herne’s Mall Rats series of three books. The study finds that even in these rare examples of South African texts that treat girls’ desires as significant, desire mostly remains ambivalent or is treated evasively, while violence, by contrast, is embedded in each novel’s social context and routinely described at length, in explicit detail. South African girls live in a violent world, but the article argues that reducing their lives to a single violent dimension only perpetuates that violence. And in correlating girls’ desire indissociably with violence, these texts normalize the violent punishment of girls whose femininity is not sexually passive.

Creative Writing of Young Adult Literature: A Path for Preservice Teachers to Prepare for and Engage with Future Students

ABSTRACT In this article, I discuss how I pair the close reading of choice, high-interest, young adult literature (YAL) with the creative writing of young adult stories in a preservice English teacher preparation programme. This paired reading and writing is used to have preservice teachers (PSTs) engage with identities, communities, and stories of their prospective students to better prepare to teach reading in secondary contexts. At the same time it is used to engage students in creative writing of their own stories to learn to live and experience the writing they can ask students to do that is reflective of their own identities, communities, and the stories that need to be told. Two creative writing tasks are shared to show how creative writing attends to the needs of close writing and builds skills in PSTs even as they see the potential for writing to be more than what is traditionally expected.

Female representation in contemporary young adult literature:voice and protagonism in A mocinha do Mercado Central

Resumo O presente artigo teve como objetivo apresentar uma análise do romance A mocinha do Mercado Central, de Stella Maris Rezende (2011), que, voltado ao público juvenil, tem a potencialidade de oportunizar que temas contemporâneos, integrantes da vida social dos alunos, possam ser explorados no ambiente escolar, colaborando para a sua formação integral. Destacam-se, por exemplo, questões relacionadas à representação feminina, as quais podem incitar os alunos a (re)pensar discursos e figurações estereotipadas em relação ao gênero feminino. Para tanto, consideraram-se os documentos norteadores da educação básica brasileira, entre eles a Base Nacional Comum Curricular (Brasil, 2017) e o Referencial Curricular do Paraná (Paraná, 2018), que indicam a necessidade de inserir no âmbito escolar temáticas contemporâneas; estudiosas (Schmidt, 1995; Dalcastagnè, 2005; Zolin, 2015) que apontam para a invisibilidade da mulher na produção literária brasileira; bem como Candido (1972; 1995), que mostra a relevância da literatura para a formação humana. Como processo para a educação literária via leitura na escola, concluiu-se que a obra de Stella Maris Rezende (2011) pode contribuir para que o jovem leitor vivencie e compreenda o texto literário como potencial educativo, de conhecimento do mundo e do ser e fonte de humanização.

Family in Children’s and Young Adult Literature ed. by Eleanor Spencer and Jade Dillon Craig (review)

Family in Children’s and Young Adult Literature ed. by Eleanor Spencer and Jade Dillon Craig (review)

The Impact of Political and Cultural Changes in the European Landscape of the 20th and 21st Centuries on Children’s and Young Adult Literature

This review article discusses Political Changes and Transformations in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Children’s Literature, edited by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Farriba Schulz (2023). The volume aims to consolidate international, interdisciplinary discourse on how political and cultural shifts in the European political landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries have influenced children’s and young adult literature. The author of the article provides a critical overview of the volume’s 17 contributions.

“Chasing a Ghost” in Young Adult Literature: Mental Illness in Am I Normal Yet?

The relative lack of attention given to mental health issues compared to physical health problems in society poses a significant barrier to the development of adequate literacy surrounding mental health concerns. Furthermore, the pervasive stigmatization of individuals suffering from these disorders exacerbates the burden they face. In light of the increasing prevalence of mental illnesses and the imperative for timely interventions, the potential of Young Adult Literature depicting mental illnesses to enhance literacy in this realm appears promising. Consequently, it is aimed to examine the representation of obsessive-compulsive disorder in Am I Normal Yet? by the British author Holly Bourne. Initially, the disorders are contextualized within a broader framework, followed by an exploration of their representation within the novel. Subsequently, a thorough analysis is carried out on these representations, with a specific emphasis on how symptoms and treatment alternatives are presented in the narrative. Furthermore, due to the impact of environmental factors on mental health problems, the reactions elicited by these disorders within the storyline are investigated and discussed.

Dorastanie zaangażowane. Nastoletni bohaterowie powieści Anny Cieplak wobec migracji i sprawczości ("Ma być czysto" - teoria i praktyka recepcji)

Contemporary Polish literature for young adults (including the novels of Anna Cieplak) is a part of the field of considerations of engaged humanities. It refers to widely understood socio ‑cultural and moral contexts, addressing the issues of difficult adolescence and the changing family model presented in the perspective of migration, transnationalism and migrant identity. Socialisation and the broadly understood upbringing of children and adolescents in the Silesian province become the fundamental themes of Cieplak’s works. The writer also draws attention to the space in which the characters move (a small‑town community) and to the uneasy dialogues of generations. As shown by the study of students’ reception of this work, the novel Ma być czysto (It is Supposed to Be Clean) confirmed the above theses. The students recognise that the psychological portraits of the female protagonists presented in the book are convincing and rich and provoke deeper considerations of an existential‑ethical nature. The statements of studentsprove their engagement with reading while also referring to empathy towards families with migration experience and the challenges faced by modern teena‑ gers trying to define their own identity.

Girls’ Class and Character in Contemporary YA Fiction

Two contemporary works of young adult fiction that appeared on the New York City 365 Book List are examined in this paper as examples of the socioeconomic diversity that the creators of the list intended to include. Nic Stone’s Jackpot (2019) and Ibi Zoboi’s Pride (2018) both depict female high schoolers—Rico and Zuri—who grapple with their own identity-building as they demonstrate awareness of their socioeconomic situations, both of working-class backgrounds, and how their personal contexts contribute to the future opportunities available to them. Ultimately, even as the novels are propelled forward with romantic relationships with male teens of higher socioeconomic statuses, with greater access to power and privilege, both protagonists ultimately develop agency in their lives and powerfully negotiate their futures, especially through their understandings and analyses of class and its connection to their identities and relationships.

Sustaining Linguistic Heritage Through Black‐Centric Texts

AbstractAmerica's strength lies in its inherent diversity‐‐an enduring truth that makes the Eurocentric nature of our educational curricula troubling. Despite this foundational reality, curricular materials remain predominantly Eurocentric, often excluding authentic representation and inclusion of Black/African American experiences in children's and young adult literature. This issue is exacerbated by a politically charged environment where efforts to prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in education have been criminalized, particularly in southern states. Prioritizing cultural and linguistic diversity in U.S. classrooms is essential for nurturing and sustaining young learners' literate lives. This article aims to disrupt these inequities by analyzing the integration of culturally authentic texts, rooted in the lived experiences, perspectives, and traditions of Black/African American communities, to counter stereotypes and celebrate linguistic dexterity. Guided by culturally and linguistically relevant theories, the study presents a critical content analysis of three Black‐centric children's and pre‐adolescent books. These texts exemplify Black Livingness, showcasing joy, playfulness, and imagination in contemporary Black life while opposing anti‐Blackness. The findings highlight the importance of incorporating these texts in educational curricula to provide authentic representations of Black experiences, nurture students' cultural identities, and foster critical literacy. The article offers pedagogical recommendations for educators to meaningfully select and center Black‐centric texts, enhancing culturally relevant and rigorous literacy learning experiences. By disrupting harmful anti‐Black practices in curricula, educators can create learning environments that affirm and amplify Black linguistic capital, supporting the academic success and well‐being of Black students. Through this approach, the study aims to empower educators as transformative intellectuals and agents of change in promoting Black linguistic justice.

Creating and evaluating corpus-informed word lists for adolescent, beginner-to-low-intermediate learners of French, German, and Spanish

This study explores some of the implications of policy changes relating to the composition and use of word lists for French, German, and Spanish as foreign languages in secondary schools in England. Against the backdrop of literature relating to word list creation and use, we review requirements for the vocabulary content of high-stakes examinations in these languages under current and new policy, and describe the methodological steps we took in collaboration with teachers and members of an awarding organization to create corpus-informed lists for adolescent, beginner-to-low-intermediate learners based on frequency, word-topic relatedness, and teacher judgments of usefulness, relevance and difficulty. Under current policy, awarding organizations provide educators with non-mandatory, topic-driven word lists structured around pre-determined themes. We analyse the content of lists compiled using each approach (corpus-informed or topic-driven) and examine their lexical coverage of four corpora designed to represent potential learning goals of adolescents: passing exams, further study, reading and discussing young adult literature, and engaging with web content. Despite being 36%–44% (foundation tier) and 11%–21% (higher tier) shorter, the new lists cover an average 11% (foundation tier) and 18% (higher tier) more of every corpus. Our further analyses suggest that these stark results can be attributed to (1) the nature of the content (rather than function) words, (2) negligible coverage benefits from multiword phrases on the current lists, and (3) a more balanced part-of-speech distribution in the new lists. Some of our methods were used by awarding organizations in England to develop accredited lists for the new examinations. Those lists share large numbers of lexical items with the lists reported here, suggesting that our findings have immediate implications for secondary school foreign language education in England. More generally, we demonstrate a replicable approach to developing short lists with high coverage, suggest some pedagogical applications, and discuss how our methods could be adapted for other contexts.

The Paradox of Historical Fiction

In light of the fact/fiction divide, this paper delves into the literary genre of historical fiction for young adults and re-examines the disputed boundaries between fact and fiction. Exploring Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars, a work of historical fiction for young adults about life in Nazi-occupied Denmark, this discussion addresses the paradoxical nature of historical fiction: it is the fictional elements of historical fiction that play the crucial part in bringing historical facts closer to the young adult reader.

Review: <em>Family in Children’s and Young Adult Literature</em>

In lieu of an abstract: Family in Children's and Young Adult Literature, edited by Eleanor Spencer and Jade Dillon Craig, is a wide-ranging collection that delves into the multifaceted representation of families in Anglophone children’s and young adult literature from the nineteenth century to the present day. It takes up the baton from Ann Alston’s 2008 study, The Family in Children’s Literature, which examined ideological assumptions about the family in youth literature, and explicitly extends the scope to the field of YA literature. The inclusion of YA novels in this current volume affords it great scope for exploring more subversive portrayals of family life.