Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons^™

Redefining The Teenager: Liminality And The Dystopian Young Adult Heroine Who Overthrows The Government To Save The Child And Preserve Innocence, Ashtyn Zavala

All Theses

The teen girl figure has swept young adult dystopian fiction from 2008 onward, continuously overthrowing governments and acting outside of her socially defined roles. This stock character became a cornerstone in most YA fiction during its time, leading to this thesis’s investigation of its necessitation: why must a teenage girl save her country’s people from an oppressive government and why can none of the other children or adults do this saving? This thesis attends to Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games (2008-2025) and Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me (2011-2021) to examine the conditions and subsequent formula that give rise to this teen …

Complexities And Intersectionalities Of Rurality In Our Current Moment: Conversations Offered Through The 2025 Whippoorwill Book Award, Michael J. Young, Erika L. Bass, Erin Schulz, Monica Roe, Jacqueline Yahn

The Rural Educator

The 2025 Whippoorwill Award-winning book and eight honor books offer conversations for navigating the intersectional complexities of rural life in important ways. In this moment when division, marginalization, and erasure continue to impact our national (and global) story, we committed ourselves to selecting books that provide narratives offering a nuanced examination of the complex ways our identities and experiences intersect with rurality. This conversation recognizes that the winner and honor books offer opportunities for celebrating our stories, our struggles, and our unwavering commitment to living our rural lives with authenticity, love, and joy.

Reading About Gender Identity In A Rural Community: Discourse Around Young Adult Literature And Social Justice, Ashley S. Boyd, Rachael R. Wolney

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This study explores how a rural adult book club engaged with gender identity through young adult literature (YAL), focusing on Mason Deaver’s I Wish You All the Best. Facilitated by two teacher educators, the club brought together local residents and a guest speaker from a regional support organization to discuss gender, pronouns, and the experiences of nonbinary youth. Using critical discourse analysis and thematic coding, the authors examine how participants, cisgender adults, navigated unfamiliar concepts, reflected on their own beliefs, and considered implications for their personal and professional lives. Findings highlight the power of YAL to serve as a …

Trauma, Recovery, And Adolescent Relationships In Stephen Chbosky’S The Perks Of Being A Wallflower: An In-Depth Analysis, Rachel Rosen

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research

The development of adolescent identity after traumatic experiences is a fragile process. In this essay, I use Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999) to explore how adolescent relationships influence the path to recovery after traumatic experiences. After losing both his friend and aunt, Charlie, the novel’s protagonist, begins to write letters, which form the basis of the book. Recounting his journey to recovery, these letters ultimately reveal that Charlie’s aunt molested him when he was a child—a memory that he represses for years. Despite the importance of writing as a way for Charlie to cope with this …

Word Reimagined: Analyzing Fanfiction's Transformative Force And Relationship With The Young Adult Literary Landscape, Megan Louise Reaves

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In exploring the reciprocal relationship between fanfiction and Young Adult (YA) literature, this thesis investigates how these two forms of storytelling, influenced by authors such as Marissa Meyer and Rainbow Rowell, have profoundly impacted the literary landscape. Marissa Meyer's The Lunar Chronicles series and Rainbow Rowell's novels Fangirl and Carry On serve as prime examples of this dynamic interaction. Drawing from the rich traditions of oral storytelling and folklore, fanfiction and YA literature have undergone significant development and popularity, particularly in the twenty-first century, thanks to technological advancements and the rise of online communities. This thesis contends that despite their …

An Investigation Of Trauma Cycles And The Omnipresent Parent In A.S. King's Please Ignore Vera Dietz, Emily Orlando

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In 2010 A.S. King published her young adult novel Please Ignore Vera Dietz. The novel focuses on several characters who are navigating both intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts while also coping with various traumas. While Young Adult Literature does not usually prominently feature parental figures, King chooses to include several parents in the text, and even gives one parent a first-person narrative. Due to King’s unusual choice she is able to illustrate the manner in which trauma can move from one generation to the next. These depictions of complete “trauma cycles” allows for a more comprehensive and empathetic understanding of how …

Teaching Empathy For Others Through Young Adult Literature, Madison Boeckman

Honors Projects

Literature can let a reader grow in empathy by learning about a character’s experiences and cultures. Teaching literature with diverse characters to young people can help combat bias and hatred towards people who are perceived as different.

This project uses Rudine Sims Bishop’s metaphor of mirrors, windows, and doors, Gloria Ladson Billings’ Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, and Gholdy Muhammad’s Culturally Responsive Pedagogy as foundation for creating activities for diverse literature. These activities are for the texts Ms. Marvel: No Normal, The Poet X, and The Marrow Thieves, all texts that are academically enriching with diverse characters that would …

Nothing About Us: Three Models Of Disability In Three Works Of Literary Fiction, Mary Lipiec

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project explores how the three umbrella models of disability (medical, functional, and social) are shown in several disabled characters from three novels published after the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and Good Kings, Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum. Through the utilization of literary analysis from a cultural studies perspective, this project shows that the models of disability, despite the various flaws in their respective designs, prove to be useful lenses to see disability through, both in these novels and in real life, …

Young Adult And Canonical Literature Instruction In The High School Classroom: Assessing Students’ Reading Interest, Alexis Yang

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

In the high school English classroom, classic novels are taught as cornerstones of the curriculum. Although these canonical works such as To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) are revered for their literary merit, students often find them boring and skim through the readings or decline to read altogether. Young adult literature (YAL), a genre written for teens, may be an effective genre to teach in high school to boost students’ reading interest. This study aims to determine how teaching young adult literature in the high school classroom, as opposed to canonical works, might affect …

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Examining The Power And Privilege Of Escapism In Young Adult Literature And Its Culture, Stacey Watson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will explore the systematic biases embedded within this genre, highlighting the ongoing battle between tokenism and inclusive storytelling. Thesis will also emphasize the importance of this genre, its tight grasp on popular culture, and showcase positive representations introduced by new creators over the years.

Integrating Social And Emotional Learning Into Language Arts Classrooms Through Diverse Young Adult Literature, Rachael Schmidt

Honors Projects

This paper discusses the growing integration of social and emotional learning (SEL) in high schools. The project provides an explanation of why SEL should be integrated into classroom instruction, specifically focusing on the language arts classroom. The included teaching guide provides six lessons for integrating SEL in the language arts classroom using diverse young adult literature.

Muffintops, Fat Rolls, And Self Love: Using Fat Young Adult Texts To Promote Body Positivity, Laura M. Davis

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

With the findings of Wood-Barcalow, Tylka, and Augustus-Horwath (2009) as a framework, this essay offers an analysis of two texts portraying fat protagonists: The Summer of Jordi Perez and the Best Burger in L.A. by Amy Spalding and To Be Honest by Maggie Ann Martin. I examine the authors’ depictions of fat characters to determine if the characters align with Wood-Barcalow, Tylka, and Augustus-Horwath’s (2009) definition of body positivity. Using critical content analysis (Short, 2017), I consider how relationships, environment, and self-concept support and work against body positive attitudes. This essay also includes suggestions for how educators can use these …

To Read Or Not To Read: Navigating Young Adult Literature In The Classroom In The Age Of Trigger Warnings And Banned Books, Ashley Sell

Honors Projects

Most public school libraries or English classrooms celebrate Banned Books Week during the school year, featuring dozens of Young Adult novels that have been challenged or banned in public schools across the country. However, books aimed towards young readers are typically not optimized for educational use in the classroom. In this project, I will explore the benefits of using Young Adult literature in the classroom, while also investigating the obstacles that one might face in order to do so, i.e. censorship, sensitive subject matter. I also want to summarize and respond to an argument for the retainment of classic literature …

Representation Matters: African American Female Readers’ Perceptions Of Young Adult Literature, Asia Harden

Honors Theses

In 2019, only 6% of U.S. children’s books published were written by black authors. This portion of the publishing industry, and particularly the category of young adult literature (YA) has room for improvement when it comes to African American representation. To identify how this lack of representation affects readers, this study was broken into two parts which resulted in obtaining the African American female YA author perspective, as well as African American female readers. J. Elle and Kristina Forest were interviewed in the first portion of the study, and three focus groups were conducted in the second study with 13 …

"What Camelot Means": Women And Lgbtq+ Authors Paving The Way For A More Inclusive Arthuriana Through Young Adult Literature, Jeddie Mae Bristow

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Arthurian literature has long been regarded as the domain of “dead white men,” dominated by Thomas Malory and Lord Alfred Tennyson. However, since medieval times, women have also been producing Arthurian literature that not only treats the women characters of the story more equitably, but makes social commentary on how the marginalized of their societies are treated. More recently, women and LGBTQ+ authors (basically, authors who are not cisgender white men) have answered the call for more diverse Young Adult literature with an Arthuriana that has a place for all, both creating a more diverse and equitable Camelot and giving …

Silver Girls: A Modern Retelling Of Little Women, Jessica A. Rinker

Honors Program Theses and Projects

When one thinks of a “reader” they might picture a person with large wire-rimmed glasses, their nose buried deep into the binding of a thick book, perhaps with a cat curled up next to them and maybe a mug of tea. If one had to guess what such a literary person was reading, one would assume something very old and wise like Tolstoy or Wordsworth or Austin. What about the twelve-year-old hanging upside down on his bean bag chair devouring James Dashner’s Maze Runner or the fifteen-year-old laying across her bed, lost in the plot of Elizabeth Acevedo’s Poet X? …

Billion-Dollar Bride: Book 1—Godric's Academy For Young Ladies, Kaylin N. Stickley

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis contains the first five chapters of a young adult romance novel featuring a young woman named Theadosia Lee. The plot is heavily influenced by Cinderella, and the biblical braiding technique is heavily influenced by that of Kiera Cass and C. S. Lewis. The piece was inspired by my desire to create more young adult romance novels that contain the biblical values that are sorely lacking in most modern young adult literature. I seek to write a love story that is based on mutual respect, a strong foundation of friendship, and an intentional decision to avoid sexual activities …

De-Stigmatizing Mental Health Through First Person Narration In Young Adult Literature, Tatum E. Francis

University Honors Theses

This thesis project includes a written short story titled "Quiet Dissonance" that explicitly depicts anxiety and depression within the genre of Young Adult literature. The purpose of this story is to consciously de-stigmatize the mental health issues by depicting these mental disorders as authentically as possible with both research and my own real-life experience of being diagnosed with both anxiety and depression, rather than relying upon stereotypes and the influence of the media. This story is consciously written through the point of view of first person narration, allowing for further exploration into the interiority of the thoughts of the protagonist …

Experimenting With Adulthood: Liminal Play In Young Adult Literature., Kylee Auten

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Play is an unavoidable element of literature intended for younger audiences. Many scholars have taken up the task of describing, analyzing, and criticizing displays of play in young adult (YA) literature. Involved in discussions of play are the concepts of performance and innocence. Another way of examining play is through the characters’ state of liminality. Their in-between status provides them with the possibility to push against social expectations, escape the realities of their daily lives, and subvert authority figures. Because characters occupy both childhood and adulthood in terms of societal expectations, they possess some positive and some negative qualities of …

Book Review: The Book Of Joshua: A Novel By Jennifer Anne Moses, University Of Wisconsin Press, 2018, Kia Jane Richmond

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

Jennifer Anne Moses’s (2018) young adult novel, The Book of Joshua: A Novel, begins with a letter from eighteen-year-old protagonist Joshua Cushing; he is writing in response to a college admissions essay prompt about overcoming a challenge or experience that shaped his life. For Josh, that experience began with his awakening in a New Jersey psychiatric hospital; he was missing his left eye and his girlfriend, Sophie, and could not remember losing either one. Moses’s book unravels the mystery for the reader, explaining how Josh lost his left eye, what happened to Sophie, and how mental illness fits into …

Teaching Issues Of Identity Through Multicultural Young Adult Literature, Emily M. Withers

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Despite changing demographics of high school classrooms, teaching practices and literature remain similar to decades-old practices focusing more on literary devices and symbolism than on topics relevant to the students. Many teachers don’t have the time to find new novels. And when they do find the texts, they are often at a loss for how to properly teach the novels. This thesis is a three-part paper advocating for teaching identity to high school students using a blend of classic literature and contemporary multicultural young adult literature. The first section focuses on personal experiences and research illustrating the need for more …

Remembering How To Listen: A Theoretical And Pedagogical Approach To Literacy, Adolescence, And Young Adult Literature, Stuart A. Morris

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a substantial and growing body of critical theory on young adult literature (YAL), and there are a multitude of publications dealing with how secondary English/ELA teachers incorporate YAL in their classroom. From a curricular perspective, however, YAL is still most often considered inferior to canonical novels (i.e., “classics” or “great books”); thus, there has been no substantive or concerted movement to include YAL in secondary English/ELA at a curricular level, particularly in grades ten, eleven, and twelve. While the scholarship on YAL is extensive, discussion of YAL is most often devoted to pedagogy or literary theory, as if …

“Rewriting The Rules:” Postcolonial Perspectives On Contemporary Young Adult Literature, Ryan Moore

Augsburg Honors Review

Literature has long been the foundation of the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. It is through the reading and exploration of literature that ELA teachers and their students achieve learning objectives and course standards; additionally, it should be a goal of every ELA teacher to present students with literature that they will find engaging, challenging, and enjoyable. When the importance of literature to the ELA classroom is fully considered, it is logical to assume great care should go into the selection of the texts used. There seems, however, to be a tendency for schools to lean back on the same …

See And Be Seen: Young Adult Refugee Literature In The High School Curriculum, Patrice Splan

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are more than 25 million refugees in the world today, over half of whom are under the age of 18. As these young people adapt to new schools and communities, it is essential that all students have opportunities to see themselves represented in literature and to develop understandings of the experiences of others. This project provides an analysis of young adult refugee literature with a unit plan for application of texts in a ninth-grade Virginia English classroom, stressing the importance of education as a tool for awareness, reflection, and empathy.

From Beyond The Grave: Dead Narrators In Young Adult Literature, Jessica L. Branton

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

While scholars and critics have explored various aspects of young adult literature, few have focused on the popular, but odd, use of dead narrators. When examining the dead narrators of Veronica Roth’s Allegiant, Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why, Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall, and Jess Rothenberg’s The Catastrophic History of You and Me, it becomes clear that the dead narrators are used as a foil for adolescent growth and maturation, and they also allow young readers to empathize with and accept death through the protagonists. These protagonists experience a proto-adulthood as they die too soon to …

Representations Of Immigrants In Young Adult Literature, Frances Augusta Ramos Verbruggen

Dissertations and Theses

This study was conducted to determine how immigrants and the immigration experience are represented in current young adult (YA) literature. In the study, I asked the following questions: Who are the immigrant characters in recent YA books? Why do they come? How do they experience immigration? How are they perceived or treated by others? A content analysis methodology was used to examine, from a critical literacy viewpoint, recent young adult novels with immigration themes. Data were analyzed by identifying and interpreting patterns in themes across 22 YA novels with immigrant protagonists or other important characters, published between 2013 and 2017. …

Language And Representations Of Mental Illness: Teaching Wintergirls And The Impossible Knife Of Memory, Kia Jane Richmond

Conference Presentations

No abstract provided.

A Critical Inquiry Approach To Teaching Young Adult Literature, Steffany Comfort Maher

Dissertations

This dissertation presents a critical inquiry approach to teaching young adult literature in English language arts classrooms. Critical inquiry is derived from critical theory and critical pedagogy approaches, as well as pragmatic philosophies of inquiry. The author shows from convincing examples that a critical inquiry approach to teaching empowers students to ask meaningful questions about both what they are reading and the world they live in.

Chapter One: Methods of Teaching Young Adult Literature: Past, Present, and Future is an introduction to critical inquiry and the teaching of young adult literature. Chapter Two: Critical Inquiry in Teaching Young Adult Literature: …

Tracing Writer/Reader Identity In, And In Response To, Queer Latinx Autohistoria-Teorìa, Corrina Wells

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project examines how diverse representation changes the discourse around queer latinx identities. This project extends theories of representation that show how a text changes the imaginary of the reader through a two-part methodology. First, through explicating Spit & Passion and A Cup of Water Under My Bed, this project examines how these texts construct a readers’ imaginary. Then, through a corresponding qualitative assessment on readers’ responses to the texts, this project identifies the extent to which the texts change the beliefs and understandings of a small group of students. Articulating an ecology of identity using the texts under examination, …

Disrupting Notions Of Stigma While Empowering Voices: Examining Language Identity, Mental Illness, And Disability Through Young Adult Literature, Elsie L. Olan, Wendy Farkas, Kia Jane Richmond

Conference Presentations

Presenter Two will share new research on young adult literature which features characters with mental illness. She will describe strategies for using texts such as Your Voice is All I Hear (2015), Thirteen Reasons Why (2007), and The Impossible Knife of Memory (2014) to analyze and critique representations of mental illness in young adult literature. Drawing on research by Koss & Teale (2009) and Richmond (2014), this presenter will help session attendees interrogate “the power of language choices” and “become empowered to confront the stigma associated with mental illness and confront bullying” (p. 24).