Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons^™

Cultures And Colonization In Tamora Pierce's Young Adult Novels, Jessica R. Dube

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The content represented in young adult literature can be a shaping force for adolescents as they begin to understand more about themselves and the world around them. Fantasy fiction is especially powerful, as it allows readers to consider issues outside of their own experiences and learn through the characters of a fictional world. This thesis focuses specifically on the works of Tamora Pierce, and the ways in which she represents sociopolitical issues in her fictional world of Tortall. I analyze the ways in which Pierce’s works fulfill Landt’s standards of good multicultural literature, and how the representation she presents can …

Peeta’S Virtue In The Hunger Games Trilogy, Gabriel Ertsgaard

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The Latin virtus literally means “manliness” (vir = man) and, by extension, the positive qualities that a man should have. During the transition from Latin to French to English, “virtue” lost its gender specificity, but retained its reference to positive qualities. Thus, by the Enlightenment period, separate standards of virtue had emerged for women and men. Suzanne Collins disrupts this gendered virtue dichotomy in her Hunger Games trilogy. Peeta Mellark is a natural diplomat and peacemaker, a gentle soul who fits the feminine model of virtue better than the masculine model. Although Peeta engages in violence when necessary, he …

Race Youth In Twentieth-Century American Literature And Culture, Claire E. Lenviel

Theses and Dissertations--English

Race Youth in Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture argues for the centrality of black youth, both real and literary, to the trajectories of African American literature and its repudiation of white supremacy. Drawing on research into the rise of the adolescent and teenager as distinct social categories, I argue that age-based subjectivity should inform how we read race-based subjectivity. My first chapter explores how early twentieth-century black periodicals push back against white supremacist theories of human development in an explicit appeal to what I call “race youth,” the children and adolescents who would take up the mantle of racial uplift. …

"The Greek Gods Don't Exactly Show Up For Their Kids' Basketball Games": Adapting Epic Convention Through Family Dramas In Rick Riordan's The Last Olympian, Hannah Mcginnis

Capstone Showcase

Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians saga bridges the gap between ancient myth and modern coming-of-age. In this article, the assertion that The Last Olympian is essentially an epic for the new generation invites an examination of the Homeric-heroic tropes and characteristics which are attributed to Riordan's characters. This analysis explains that through the combined motifs of time, age, and family, Riordan actively adapts and subverts these Classical conventions into a modern mythography for young readers.

Fantastical Worlds And The Act Of Reading In Peter And Wendy, The Chronicles Of Narnia, And Harry Potter, Grace Monroe

Master’s Theses

My thesis explores the relationship between the child reader and the protagonist within fantasy children’s literature. By examining the experience of the protagonist in the text, I am complicating the notion of escapism in children’s literature and offering a new way to look at how children read. Using narrative theory and Freud’s fort-da, I detail how the events within a novel, the danger and catharsis within the plot, show how both the protagonist and the reader use narrative to better understand and cope with anxieties in their worlds. The novels and series that I discuss, Peter and Wendy (1911), …

Best Books Of The Past 20 Years For Children Ages 10-12, Rachel Schwedt, Janice A. Delong

Ages 10-12

With the thousands of books published for children each year, it is impossible to include every worthy title. In this list we have tried to meet the interests of both genders and a variety of racial groups, putting first compelling plots in which young people demonstrate strong character. In addition, stories must be well-written, attention grabbing, and age appropriate.

Titles are taken from See Me Shine: Developing Character Through Books: Ages 10-12

Mira Muchacha: The Latinx Bildungsroman In Elizabeth Acevedo’S The Poet X, Layza M. Garcia

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis explores how the Bildungsroman’s traditional narrative transforms into a window to the Latinx experience in Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X. The traditional Bildungsroman features white, male, and European protagonists, according to Louis F. Caton in “Romantic Struggles: The Bildungsroman and Mother-Daughter Bonding in Jamaica Kinclad’s Annie John” (126). Recognized as the first work in the Bildungsroman genre, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1796) tracks the development and education of the protagonist from boyhood to manhood. In 20th and 21st century literature, the Bildungsroman structure expands to reflect the diverse cultures, lifestyles, and identities of its readers. …

Introduction To The Special Issue: The Art, The Craft, The Tale Of Vision And Re-Vision: Ursula K. Le Guin Shows The Way, Melanie A. Rawls

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

This issue of Mythlore commemorates the life and writing of author Ursula Kroeber Le Guin: visionary essayist, poet, blogger, critic, teacher, and grandmaster of fantasy and science fiction via novel, novella, and short story. Le Guin was indisputably a gamechanger in the fiction genres of fantasy and science fiction, and her essays about these genres remain some of the most thought-provoking and insightful ever published. Le Guin has left us a body of mythopoeic work that is an inexhaustible source of wonder.

Mental Illness Representation In Young Adult Literature, Ashley Aberle

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this qualitative content analysis is to study the portrayal of characters who have a mental illness in award-winning young adult books for teacher librarians to recommend for young adult readers and for teachers to use in teaching and curriculum for mental illness acceptance. The research questions asked the following: how does award-winning young adult literature that includes characters with mental illness portray interactions with peers and adults; This study used qualitative content analysis to examine 10 novels portraying multiple mental illnesses and that were published from 2013 to 2020. This research identified three themes: Theme 1 is …

Examining Diversity In The Iowa Goldfinch Award, Jill M. Doyle

Graduate Research Papers

The purpose of this quantitative content analysis was to evaluate the race/ethnicity of the main characters and authors in the picture books on the 2015-16 and 2020-21 Iowa Goldfinch Award lists, a student-nominated book list. The books were evaluated using coding that was adapted from earlier research. Then the statistics were compared to ascertain whether the portrayal of diverse cultures changed. Results indicated that the diversity of both the main characters and the authors increased by 25%, to include races other than White. The number of White main characters decreased from 6 to 3, while non-human characters decreased from 15 …

A Rhetoric Without Words: The Persuasive Art Of Music, Charles Majors

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Reading In The (Local) Archives: Integrating Kas Interdisciplinary Literacy Practices In The K-12 Classroom, Heather Fox Ph.D.

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Winter 2020 Front Matter, Keb Editorial Board

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Enacting The Interdisplinary Literacy Practices In The Kentucky Academic Standards, Jean Wolph, Louisville Writing Project Xxxix

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

A Review Of The Whole Person: Embodying Teaching And Learning Through Lectio And Visio Divina, Penelope Wong Ph.D.

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of The Writing Workshop In Non-Traditional Instruction, Cara Caudill

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Schema Shwoop, Erin Dennis

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Reading The Word And Building Worlds In The Elementary Classroom, Winn Wheeler Ph.D., Caitlin Murphy Ph.D.

Kentucky English Bulletin

No abstract provided.

Mixed Messages: Reading Contemporary U.S. Literature Of Biracial Girlhood, Candice Nicole Hale

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The tragic mulatta character is no longer an accurate representation of biracial female characters in literature. This dissertation considers the vast history of the tragic mulatto genre and its tragic and mired representations of biracial women and how they are often portrayed in literature. Within a historical, legal, and political analysis, I highlight the ways perceptions, attitudes, and representations about biracial individuals have changed, so those same shifts should change in the literature. Because of the bourgeoning field of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS), both scholars and authors are recasting and rewriting the narratives and discourses of mixed-race in the …

Cultivating Classroom Libraries That Promote Multicultural Literature: Helping Our Students See Themselves In The Books That They Read, Kori Krafick

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

The purpose of this study, focusing on diversity in children’s literature, was to assist teachers in choosing quality multicultural literature for students. Quality multicultural literature lacks bias, avoids discrimination, racism, prejudice and sexism, and accurately portrays social issues, historical details, and dialects in both the words and the illustrations. The goal of this project was to provide teachers with criteria to use when evaluating multicultural literature. Howlett and Young’s (2019) instrument for evaluating multicultural literature, Literary Criticism and the Absence of Bias, was used to assess multicultural literature. The survey included questions pertaining to inherent racism, bias, prejudice, and discrimination, …