Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons^™

Cruising Faërie: Further Notes On Queering Faith In Fantasy Literature, Taylor Driggers

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

In Queering Faith in Fantasy Literature (2022), I argue that fantasy affords sexually marginalized people the ability to re-vision Christian theology in queer ways, thanks to its fixation on strange bodies, its longing for other worlds, and the ways in which both of these may reflect back on theological narratives of incarnation and salvation. Yet this project raises further questions that remain unresolved: namely, how might the framework of Christian theology constrain, as well as illuminate, queer imaginaries? If fantasy allows us to envision livable lives for ourselves as unruly bodies, just what forms of relating may those lives entail? …

"Something Mighty Queer" [Introduction], Alicia Fox-Lenz, Grace Moone, Leah Hagan

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Recounts the origin of the conference theme and introduces the contributors.

The Best Board Books Of The Year [2025 Edition], Bank Street College Of Education. Children's Book Committee

The Center for Children's Literature

Please enjoy our annotated list of the very best board books for ages zero to four that were published in 2023 and 2024.

The Power Of Pets: Navigating Infancy, Early Development, And Eventual Loss/ Exploring The Mutual Human-Animal Bond Through Children’S Board And Picture Books With Critical Anthropomorphism, Mary Teresa Woodcock

Children's Book Writing and Illustrating (MFA) Theses

Pets are powerful elements of picture books. Alongside our animal companions, we navigate infancy, early childhood and adulthood, and better understand our relationships and life itself. Critical anthropomorphism allows us to represent our relationship to our animal companions ethically in the written and illustrated text. This paper acknowledges an array of primary and scholarly texts about animals and their roles in human experience as a foundation for my three book projects “A Colorful Night for Cat,” “Grandma, Sam, and Me,” and “Tired Old Socks.” I work to portray animal companions authentically, showing how both humans and animal companions benefit from …

The Best Children's Books Of 2025: Holiday Gift Edition, Bank Street College Of Education. Children's Book Committee

The Center for Children's Literature

Notable titles that have captured the attention of Children's Book Committee members just in time for the holidays!

The Best Children's Books Of The Year In Spanish [2025 Edition], Bank Street College Of Education. Children's Book Committee

The Center for Children's Literature

An annotated list of the best children's books in Spanish published or translated in 2024. In English and Spanish.

Spanish title: Spanish title: Los mejores libros infantiles del año 2025.

A Stout Heart And A Good Blade: An Examination And Reconsideration Of Éowyn In J.R.R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings, Angela L. Loving

Children's Literature (MA) Theses

Using dramatic elements and patterns from the traditional literatures of his Northern European culture, including the Old English poem Beowulf and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, J.R.R. Tolkien tells an ancient tale anew in The Lord of the Rings, the tale of a dragon slain by an unlikely hero, in this case the Shield Maiden, Éowyn, and an even more unlikely assistant, a Hobbit named Merry.

Éowyn enters Tolkien’s complex narrative in the middle, where she is caught politically between the bright deeds of her ancestors and the darkness and doubt that surround her king and kin, caught geographically between the …

Reading Through The Eyes Of Faith: Introducing A Catholic Literary Lens To The English Language Arts Classroom, Julia French, Michael Macaluso

Journal of Catholic Education

Despite the proliferation and use of literary lenses in English Language Arts classrooms, one lens still seems to be missing from theorization, formulation, and thus practical implementation: religion. This absence is well-noted in the field, as positive depictions of Christian themes in books are rare and religion is rarely discussed as an identity marker that fosters growth and development. This article attempts to address that absence in two ways: first by conceptualizing and developing a Catholic literary lens that could be used in middle and secondary classrooms and second by offering practical suggestions for using this Catholic lens in ELA …

Panem’S Pitfalls: Reading The Hunger Games As A Critique Of Noncritical Media Consumption, Madison Phipps

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I utilize Collins’ YA dystopian series The Hunger Games to demonstrate that YA literature merits our attention as a valuable jumping point from which young adults can develop critical reading and thinking skills as well as develop enhanced media literacy. My first two chapters, in addition to situating Collins’ works within a long history of dystopian fiction, demonstrate how these works engage with the potential pitfalls of noncritical consumption in our media-saturated world. And in the third and final chapter, I examine how the series provides pathways to resistance and the potential for revolution.

The Sword And The Serpent, Gina Dittmeier

Children's Book Writing and Illustrating (MFA) Theses

This project provides insight into the monstrous bridegroom trope in fairytale and its influence in modern fantasy literature. The monstrous bridegroom trope has several different variations, but all of these variations result in a young and innocent woman marrying a monster. Through my critical essay, I look at this trope through a modern feminist lens, exploring the different variations of the trope in fairy tales, modern fairy tale adaptations, and fantasy literature. The essay brings in modern ideas of toxic masculinity and toxic femininity and applies them to the fairy tale inspiration of fantasy literature. The monstrous bridegroom trope and …

Mágico Nunca Se Muere: Una Historia De Un Amor Unconditional And Unstoppable, Belén Silvia Yudess

Scripps Senior Theses

This novella explores how traditions of silence, family dynamics, adolescence and storytelling influence identity formation and self-perception for Mexican-American women. Situated within the AIDS pandemic, this story aims to show how even within a world riddled with grief, hatred, and fear siempre hay espacio para las risas y el amor.

The Best Children's Books Of The Year [2025 Edition], Bank Street College Of Education. Children's Book Committee.

Children's Book Committee

Includes more than 600 titles chosen by the Children’s Book Committee as the best of the best published in 2024. In choosing books for the annual list, committee members consider literary quality and excellence of presentation as well as the potential emotional impact of the books on young readers. Other criteria include credibility of characterization and plot, authenticity of time and place, age suitability, positive treatment of ethnic and religious differences, and the absence of stereotypes.

Once Upon Another Time: Retelling Fairy Tales & Legends With Inclusive Identities For Modern Young Adult Audiences, Hailey Drapcho

Honors Theses

This thesis explores how modern young adult (YA) fairy tale retellings can act as interventionist works as part of the mythopoeic YA fantasy sub-genre, where they enfold traditionally excluded identities into the archetypal role of the fairy tale female protagonist who is expected to embody an idealized form of girlhood. Fairy tales have a profound impact on self-image and how individuals create expectations of their role in the world. By fracturing the archetypes maintaining restrictive and exclusionary expectations, mythopoeic YA fairy tale retellings affirm the young adult girl to embrace her own individual identity and determine her role in the …

Cultivating Empathy: A Content Analysis Of Empathic Themes In Best-Selling Children's Books, Elnaz J. Afousi

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study examines the presence and nature of empathic content in best-selling children’s picture books, with a focus on developmental relevance for preschool-aged readers. Using a modified version of the iEPIC empathy coding system, 10 titles from the New York Times best-seller list were analyzed to assess the frequency and complexity of three empathy-related constructs: Emotion or State Description (ESD), Exploring Emotion or State (EES), and Empathic Understanding or Concern (EUC). Results indicate that while all books contained some empathy-related content, ESD3 (self-reflective emotional descriptions) and EUC2/EUC4 (understanding and helping others) were most prevalent, suggesting an emphasis on both intrapersonal …

Dystopian Politics In The Hunger Games Series, Tristan Hogan

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series takes readers to a fictional country known as Panem that hosts an annual nationwide celebration in which adolescents compete in a battle to the death. In this analysis, I approach this book series with a Marxist lens to argue that the capitalistic system in Panem satirizes American culture in the early 21st century. Every novel in the series, through this theory, can be read as what scholars identify as a “critical dystopia,” a defamiliarized version of our culture, upheld through institutions and social participation in a way that satirizes ours. I argue that the …

The Personal, The Political, And The Hope For A Better Future: Disrupting The Traditional Rape Narrative In Young Adult Fiction, Melissa Roberson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation critically examines the current state of young adult rape fiction to explore the ways in which contemporary young adult rape novels engage with different aspects of rape culture and the systems in place that sustain it. Prioritizing issues related to disclosure, hope, healing, and justice, my investigation into these novels demonstrates the importance of attending to both the framing of rape and the challenges associated with narrativizing sexual violence in the context of adolescent literature. Ultimately, I argue that in order to challenge and disrupt the further entrenchment of societal attitudes and (mis)perceptions of rape that perpetuate the …

Prophets Instead Of Priests: Diagonal Orientations & Coming-Of-Age Queerness In Jane Eyre And Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Emily G. Flanders

Honors Theses

This project asserts that the moment in which a girl leaves the trajectory of the expected in favor of the unknown in order to pursue her discovery of self is when her coming-of-age narrative becomes queer. This is demonstrated through Jane in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Jeanette in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. Jane and Jeannette’s respective coming-of-age narratives–that is, them creating their fully embodied selves, the girl they believe and know themselves to be–happen off the expected life path in the liminal, in-between, undefined space of the queer oblique. There are moments …

Maurice Sendak’S Trio, And What Good Picture Books Have To Say, Eli F. Protas

Pomona Senior Theses

When we teach children how to read, we start with picture books. We do this despite the fact that picture books blend visual and verbal storytelling in ways that require nuanced understandings of both elements. Rather than studying these aspects individually, a complete picture book analysis relies on examining the intersection of words and images, how they interact structurally and how each lends meaning to the other. To understand how to better close read picture books, this thesis turns to the stories of Maurice Sendak, a picture book writer and illustrator whose work redefined the relationship between words and images …

Dystopian Fiction As Liberatory Practice: Dystopian Theory In The Classroom, Hailey C. Bowen

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Dystopian Fiction as Liberatory Practice, a title inspired by bell hooks’ “Theory as Liberatory Practice,” is a proposal for an English 2090 course that focuses on dystopian theory. This class is centered on The Nine Symptoms of Dystopian Theory, which I developed using multiple theoretical models including Afrofuturist Reading Practices, Marxist theory, and feminist, gender, and sexuality theories in conjunction with my own observations about the genre. Dystopian theory is a nine-step reading process that I have developed to reframe any text as dystopian. It is possible to argue that any text is dystopian using this process because, in any …

The Vision Of The Inklings: Mythopoeia And Modern Christian Literature, Emmalene Sotomayor

Senior Honors Theses

The Inklings wrote with the intention to convey truth through myth. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and their friends developed stories to point readers to something greater—very often God. Christian creators now can look to their example while writing their own works of art. Currently, Christian fiction is in a sad state, known for mediocre romance novels that hardly portray faith in a moving or truthful manner. Believers can use the wisdom of Tolkien and Lewis to develop their own excellent works. Lewis and Tolkien’s beliefs in myth pointing to God, hope against adversity, and good resisting …