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Catholicism In Ya Literature: A Theological Perspective, Katherine G. Schmidt Ph.D., Jennifer Miskec

Faculty Works: TRS (2010-2022)

Though modern children’s literature owes a clear debt to religious tradition, the majority of literature written for young readers today avoids discussion of religion. Texts invested in explicitly religious exploration are often a product of religious or non-mainstream presses—and are quite often proselytic, resulting in a binary distinction of children’s and young adult literature as either secular (religiously neutral [1]) or religious (overtly proselytizing). Scholars have long been troubled by this reductive but powerful divide. As Graeme Wend-Walker notes in his 2009 MLA presentation “The Inexplicable Moon and the Postsecular Moment: Turkish and American Experiences of the Moon Landing in …