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.
Comments
“Reading Young Adult Literature: A Critical Introduction, authored by renowned children’s and young adult literature scholars Carrie Hintz and Eric L. Tribunella, is a welcome and necessary addition to the teaching and scholarly literature around young adult literature. Rigorously academic but without off-putting jargon, Reading Young Adult Literature will deepen current discourse and open up new discussions of this vibrant body of literature.” — Crag Hill, University of Oklahoma, founder and co-editor of Study & Scrutiny: Research on Young Adult Literature
“A worthy companion to Hintz and Tribunella’s innovative book on children’s literature, Reading Young Adult Literature is an engaging introduction for scholars, instructors, students, and, indeed, anyone interested in the topic. The book provides insights into the precursors of YA literature; it also deftly explores the new frontiers of the field, including visual narratives, multimodal writing, verse novels, and fan fiction. A provocative final chapter puts YA texts in dialogue with ‘classic’ texts frequently assigned in secondary school classrooms.” — Don Latham, Florida State University
“This text’s scope and thoroughness make it a ‘one-stop shop’ of information on young adult literature. Hintz and Tribunella masterfully bring together the many contexts that a well-informed analysis of YA literature must consider. While most textbooks on YA literature maintain a narrow disciplinary focus, Reading Young Adult Literature recognizes and responds to the different disciplinary needs and methodologies that form the field, and students within English, library studies, and education (among other fields) will find the contents relevant, helpful, and thought-provoking. I know of few texts as insightful or comprehensive in presenting an introduction to studies in YA. This is the book that those of us who teach YA literature have been waiting for!” — Amanda K. Allen, Eastern Michigan University
- Preface
- How This Book Is Organized
- What Distinguishes This Book
- Introduction
- YA Literature in the New Millennium
- The Audiences of YA Literature
- Assumptions about YA Literature
- Reading Critically
- How to Use This Book
- Works Cited
- Chapter 1: Historicizing Youth, Adolescents, and Teens
- Youth and the Early History of Adolescence
- High Schools and the Creation of Contemporary Adolescence
- G. Stanley Hall and the Scientific Study of Adolescence
- American Immigration and the Generation Gap
- The Cultural Construction of Adolescence
- Defining Features of Adolescence
- Margaret Mead and the Cross-Cultural Study of Adolescence
- Reassessing Mead
- Marketing, Youth Culture, and the Teenager
- Youth Culture and the Teen Market
- The Teenage Consumer
- Teens and Public Space
- Teen Cool
- The Developing Adolescent and the Teenage Brain
- Erik Erikson and the Adolescent Identity Crisis
- Neuroscience and the Teenage Brain
- Juvenile Delinquency and the “Dangerous” Adolescent
- Sexuality, Youth, and the Adolescent Body
- Sexuality and Youth
- The Criminalization of Teen Sexuality
- Health, Beauty, and the Adolescent Body
- Race and Adolescence
- Recapitulation and the Science of Adolescence
- High School as a Racial and Cultural Contact Zone
- Adolescence and Black Civil Rights
- Models of Contemporary Adolescence
- Young Adult Literature and the History of Adolescence
- Works Cited
- Chapter 2: Adolescent Literature, the Junior Novel, and the Pre-History of YA
- Dating YA Literature
- YA Literature as a Market
- The Role of Editors and Librarians in the History of YA
- Influential Editors
- Pioneering Librarians
- YA Literature as an American Innovation
- YA Literature and the Problem of Datedness
- Defining YA Literature
- Realism and Genre
- Realism and Verisimilitude in YA Fiction
- Speculative Genres
- Awards
- The Genealogy of YA Literature
- Classic Children’s Literature
- Adolescent Literature for Adults
- The Junior Novel
- Learning from the YA Genealogy
- Works Cited
- Chapter 3: Realism and the YA Novel
- YA Voice, Relatability, and Reality Effects
- Towards a Definition of Realism
- Three Precursors to YA Realism
- The Bildungsroman
- Melodrama
- Naturalism
- Relatability and Its Discontents
- The Limits of Relatability
- The Antihero and the Rebel
- Comic Novels: Critiquing Social Conformity and the “Good Life”
- Fake Realism or Wish-Fulfillment Fiction
- Considering the YA Problem Novel
- Timeliness and Current Issues
- YA Realism and the Classroom
- YA and Topicality
- YA Realism: Capturing the Zeitgeist
- Works Cited
Chapter 4: Speculative Realms: YA Fantasy, Science Fiction, Dystopia, and Horror
- Speculative Fiction: Worldbuilding and the Imagination
- Genre as Possibility
- Fantasy
- Fantasy and Interpretation
- Fantasy: Race, Class, and Gender
- Intergenerational Solidarity and Challenging Ableism
- Horror and the Paranormal
- Magical Realism
- Science Fiction
- Science Fiction and Cultural Change
- Dystopia
- Climate and Postapocalyptic Fiction
- Adolescence and Speculative Genres
- Works Cited
Chapter 5: Young Adult Literature at the Cutting Edge: Hybrid and Experimental Genres, Multimodal YA, and Fandom Culture
- Hybrid and Emerging Genres
- The Verse Novel
- Comics and Graphic Novels
- Technology and Emerging Genres
- Convergence Culture
- Fan Fiction and Audience Response
- Literary and Cultural Transformation
- Works Cited
Chapter 6: YA in Conversation with the Classics
- Common Texts in the Secondary English Classroom
- YA Literature in Conversation with the Classics
- Case 1: Romeo and Juliet and Contemporary YA Retellings of Shakespeare
- Form and Language
- Romeo and Juliet as Suicide Narrative
- The Queer Possibilities of Romeo and Juliet
- Case 2: Using The Scarlet Letter and Speak to Explore Intertextuality
- Understanding Shame in The Scarlet Letter and Speak
- Case 3: The Great Gatsby; Jake, Reinvented; and the New Teenager
- Gatsby and the New Teenager
- Tragic Gatsby and Looming Disaster
- Case 4: Lord of the Flies and Contemporary YA Castaway Fiction
- Considering Genre and the Castaway Motif
- Redefining Survival
- Resisting Symbolism
- Case 5: To Kill a Mockingbird and Diversity in Contemporary YA
- Racial Bias and Narrative Perspective
- Relationships with Fathers
- False Accusations
- Reading the Canon Critically
- Works Cited
Acknowledgments
Permissions Acknowledgments
Index
Carrie Hintz is Professor of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. Eric L. Tribunella is Professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi.
