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Full-Text Articles in Children's and Young Adult Literature

Wimps, Dorks, And Reluctant Readers: Redefining Literacy In Multimodal Middle Grade Diary Books, Rachel Lee Rickard Mar 2014

Wimps, Dorks, And Reluctant Readers: Redefining Literacy In Multimodal Middle Grade Diary Books, Rachel Lee Rickard

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Since the release of Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the multimodal, middle-grade diary book has gained popularity. The series features “handwritten,” journal entries and drawings and has elicited many imitators, the most prominent of which is Rachel Renee Russell’s Dork Diaries. While the diary form is not new to children’s literature, these series reinvent the established conventions through drawings and supplementary online environments. Both series are routinely identified as for reluctant readers; however, their diversity of form actually leads to complex reader engagement. My purpose is to refute the idea that the books are useful only …


Brave New Forms: Adaptation, Remediation, And Intertextuality In The Multimodal World Of Hugo Cabret, Chelsea Marie Bromley Jan 2014

Brave New Forms: Adaptation, Remediation, And Intertextuality In The Multimodal World Of Hugo Cabret, Chelsea Marie Bromley

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Digital technologies have changed the way readers approach, experience, and respond to texts. In our hyper-mediated culture, images and texts converge and disseminate across multiple media platforms, changing once-passive readers and spectators into active agents in the intellectual and creative process of interpretation. This thesis examines the multimodal world of Hugo Cabret—the hybrid graphic novel, the film adaptation, and the novel’s official website—in an effort to better understand how intertextuality, convergence culture, and remediation play with media forms, represent an ideological shift toward participatory culture, and rework older, traditional media in the creation of new media and new media users. …


Subteen, Preteen, Tween: Preadolescent Literature Inside And Out, Bethany Fort Jan 2014

Subteen, Preteen, Tween: Preadolescent Literature Inside And Out, Bethany Fort

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the inside and outside of preadolescent literature, a subgenre that has been widely neglected by literary scholars, educators, and book publishers. In Chapter 2, I analyze the themes within The Giver by Lois Lowry and use the developmental stage of preadolescence to define a subgenre of preadolescence, which has distinct characteristics that separate it from the other subgenres of children’s literature. In Chapter 3, I focus on the outside of preadolescent literature, using the results of bookseller and author surveys and research on the history of the tween retail market to uncover the subtle messages being …