Reading Children’s Literature offers insights into the major discussions and debates currently animating the field of children’s literature. Informed by recent scholarship and interest in cultural studies and critical theory, it is a compact core text that introduces students to the historical contexts, genres, and issues of children’s literature. A beautifully designed and illustrated supplement to individual literary works assigned, it also provides apparatus that makes it a complete resource for working with children’s literature during and after the course. The second edition includes a new chapter on children’s literature and popular culture (including film, television, and merchandising) and has been updated throughout to reflect recent scholarship and new offerings in children’s media.

Reading Young Adult Literature is the most current, comprehensive, and accessible guide to this burgeoning genre, tracing its history and reception with nuance and respect. Unlike any other book on the market, it synthesizes current thinking on key issues in the field and presents new research and original analyses of the history of adolescence, the genealogy of YA literature, key genres and modes of writing for young adults, and ways to put YA in dialogue with canonical texts from the high school classroom. Reading Young Adult Literature speaks to the core concerns of contemporary English studies with its attention to literary history, literary form, and theoretical approaches to YA. Ideal for education courses on Young Adult Literature, it offers prolonged attention to YA literature in the secondary classroom and cutting-edge approaches to critical visual and multimodal literacy. The book is also highly appealing for library science courses, offering an illuminating history of YA Librarianship and a practical overview of the YA field.

In this book, Rodríguez uses theories of critical literacy and culturally responsive teaching to argue that our schools, and our culture, need sustaining and inclusive young adult (YA) literature/s to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse readers and all students. This book provides an outline for the study of literature through cultural and literary criticism, via essays that analyze selected YA literature (drama, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) in four areas: scribal identities and the self-affirmation of adolescents; gender and sexualities; schooling and education of young adult characters; and teachers’ roles and influences in characters’ coming of age. Applying critical literacy theories and a youth studies lens, this book shines a light on the need for culturally sustaining and inclusive pedagogies to read adolescent worlds. Complementing these essays are critical conversations with seven key contemporary YA literature writers, adding biographical perspectives to further expand the critical scholarship and merits of YA literature.

This examination of the literary effectiveness of young adult literature from a critical, research-oriented perspective answers two key questions asked by many teachers and scholars in the field: Does young adult literature stand up on its own as literature? Is it worthy of close study? The treatment is both conceptual and pragmatic. Each chapter discusses a topical text set of YA novels in a conceptual framework—how these novels contribute to or deconstruct conventional wisdom about key topics from identity formation to awareness of world issues, while also providing a springboard in secondary and college classrooms for critical discussion of these novels. Uncloaking many of the issues that have been essentially invisible in discussions of YA literature, these essays can then guide the design of curriculum through which adolescent readers hone the necessary skills to unpack the ideologies embedded in YA narratives. The annotated bibliography provides supplementary articles and books germane to all the issues discussed. Closing "End Points" highlight and reinforce cross-cutting themes throughout the book and tie the essays together.

The most readable, affordable, and up-to-date introduction to young adult literature.

Young Adult literature, from The Outsiders to Harry Potter, has helped shape the cultural landscape for adolescents perhaps more than any other form of consumable media in the twentieth and twenty-first century. With the rise of mega blockbuster films based on these books in recent years, the young adult genre is being co-opted by curious adult readers and by Hollywood producers. However, while the genre may be getting more readers than ever before, Young Adult literature remains exclusionary and problematic: few titles feature historically marginalized individuals, the books present heteronormative perspectives, and gender stereotypes continue to persist. Taking a critical approach, Young Adult Literature: Challenging Genres offers educators, youth librarians, and students a set of strategies for unpacking, challenging, and transforming the assumptions of some of the genre's most popular titles. Pushing the genre forward, Antero Garcia builds on his experiences as a former high school teacher to offer strategies for integrating Young Adult literature in a contemporary critical pedagogy through the use of participatory media.

Thanks to the success of franchises such as The Hunger Games and Twilight, young adult literature has reached a new level of prominence and popularity. Teens and adults alike are drawn to the genre's coming-of-age themes, fast pacing, and vivid emotional portrayals. The essays in this volume suggest ways high school and college instructors can incorporate YA texts into courses in literature, education, library science, and general education. The first group of essays explores key issues in YA literature, situates works in cultural contexts, and addresses questions of text selection and censorship. The second section discusses a range of genres within YA literature, including both realistic and speculative fiction as well as verse narratives, comics, and film. The final section offers ideas for assignments, including interdisciplinary and digital projects, in a variety of courses.

Explores various facets of creating a vibrant YA reading community such as inquiry-based learning, promoting and motivating reading, collection management, understanding multiple intelligences, accepting diverse beliefs, and acting as a change agent to name a few.

49 original essays on the essential terms and concepts in children's literature

Teaching Young Adult Literature: Developing Students As World Citizens (by Thomas W. Bean, Judith Dunkerly-Bean, and Helen Harper) is a middle and secondary school methods text that introduces pre-service teachers in teacher credential programs and in-service teachers pursuing a Masters degree in Education to the field of young adult literature for use in contemporary contexts. The text introduces teachers to current research on adolescent life and literacy; the new and expanding genres of young adult literature; teaching approaches and practical strategies for using young adult literature in English and Language Arts secondary classrooms and in Content Area Subjects (e.g. History); and ongoing social, political and pedagogical issues of English and Language Arts classrooms in relation to contemporary young adult literature.