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Introduction

Gwen Athene Tarbox and Michelle Ann Abate

in Graphic Novels for Children and Young Adults: A Collection of Critical Essays

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the varied landscape of contemporary children's and young adult literature. The closing decades of the twentieth century and the opening years of ... More

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the varied landscape of contemporary children's and young adult literature. The closing decades of the twentieth century and the opening years of the new millennium witnessed profound literary, artistic, and commercial changes in children's and young adult literature. Arguably one of the most significant transformations that took place during this period was the resurgence of comics geared toward a youth readership. The chapter then considers scholarship on children's and young adult comics, suggesting that despite the popularity and influence enjoyed by children's and young adult graphic novels, contemporary developments in the genre have received surprisingly scant critical attention. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.Less

Cryin’ and Dyin’ in the Age of Aliteracy: Romancing Teen Sick-Lit

Julie Passanante Elman

in Chronic Youth: Disability, Sexuality, and U.S. Media Cultures of Rehabilitation

This chapter focuses on the young adult (YA) literature market. Published largely in the 1980s as part of a long history of sentimental literature about illness for women, these books catered to teen ... More

This chapter focuses on the young adult (YA) literature market. Published largely in the 1980s as part of a long history of sentimental literature about illness for women, these books catered to teen girl readers by featuring love stories about teen girls and boys with life-threatening illnesses. The books issued emotional challenges to teen readers through yet more representations of teens as physically imperiled patients who needed to be overcome and rehabilitate. Surveying the work of the best-selling YA authors Lurlene McDaniel and Jean Ferris, this chapter analyzes the affective labor of sadness as a crucial growth-inducing emotion that tragic disability narratives are more likely to convey.Less

Inquiry at and in the Margins: How Peritexts Encourage Critical Reading

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

Chapter four extends and complicates Gérard Genette’s idea of the peritext—the sidebars, captions, footnotes, introduction, notes for teachers, and other aspects of textual apparatus—to look at how ... More

Chapter four extends and complicates Gérard Genette’s idea of the peritext—the sidebars, captions, footnotes, introduction, notes for teachers, and other aspects of textual apparatus—to look at how nonfiction employs these devices to centralize debate or push it to the marginsLess

The Literary Study of Children’s Nonfiction

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

Clearly lays out a series of techniques for analysis and then applies and nuances those techniques through extensive close readings and case studies

Critical Engagement’s Moral Imperative

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

The Conclusion anticipates the argument that children are not capable of the critical engagement to which my theory argues that they are being invited. The final pages of Humble Truths offer evidence ... More

The Conclusion anticipates the argument that children are not capable of the critical engagement to which my theory argues that they are being invited. The final pages of Humble Truths offer evidence from across many countries and disciplines that children are more than capable of the kind of nuanced, careful engagement to which contemporary children’s nonfiction increasingly invites them. I end by pointing out how adults—authors, teachers, parents, scholars, and caregivers—can see to it that children’s books invite that sort of engagement, and I make an argument that we should.Less

Beyond Authority: Questioning the Literature of Facts

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

Chapter one explains that the standard definition of nonfiction is that it is a literature of answers, but this chapter argues that the genre and the children for whom it is written are better served ... More

Chapter one explains that the standard definition of nonfiction is that it is a literature of answers, but this chapter argues that the genre and the children for whom it is written are better served if we think of it as a literature of questions.Less

Seeing Photographs: Breaking the Authority of Nonfiction’s Favorite Medium

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

Chapter five argues that children’s nonfiction has both accepted and resisted an anti-critical inclination that is all but endemic to photography, and it teases out the social construction of ... More

Chapter five argues that children’s nonfiction has both accepted and resisted an anti-critical inclination that is all but endemic to photography, and it teases out the social construction of childhood reinforced by both positions.Less

The Empathy of Critical Engagement: Emotion and Sentimentality in Children’s Nonfiction

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

Chapter seven argues that emotional engagement can and has dovetailed with critical engagement. Here, I use feminist theory to index the link between emotion and intellect, between the passion of ... More

Chapter seven argues that emotional engagement can and has dovetailed with critical engagement. Here, I use feminist theory to index the link between emotion and intellect, between the passion of civic engagement and the objectivity of inquiry.Less

Epilogue

Sheila Murnaghan and Deborah H. Roberts

in Childhood and the Classics: Britain and America, 1850-1965

The preceding work is summed up as a study of adults’ attempts over a century-long period to make sense of their own childhood experiences of antiquity and to recreate those experiences for new ... More

The preceding work is summed up as a study of adults’ attempts over a century-long period to make sense of their own childhood experiences of antiquity and to recreate those experiences for new generations through the medium of absorbing pleasure reading. Such experiences are valued for their capacity to stimulate the imagination, to expand moral understanding, to pave the way for further education, and to bring renewal or redemption to the disturbed modern world. The chapter ends with a brief survey of developments in classical mythology and historical fiction for children and young adults from the mid-1960s until the present, including the emergence of new forms of fantasy literature and the role of new media such as video games and fan fiction.Less

Nonfiction’s Unfinished Characters: The People Who Are Wrong, Flawed, and Incomplete

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

Chapter three examines places where nonfiction points to the flaws in its characters, the times they have made mistakes, failed, or simply looked foolish. In these instances, as well as moments in ... More

Chapter three examines places where nonfiction points to the flaws in its characters, the times they have made mistakes, failed, or simply looked foolish. In these instances, as well as moments in which the characters of nonfiction are shown in the process of testing or even finishing one line of inquiry only to find new questions that remain unanswered, the genre demonstrates an ability to convey information while simultaneously making room for critical engagement with the people who produce knowledgeLess

The Pursuit of Reliability in Almost Astronauts

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

Chapter six applies the observations of the previous chapters to a case study of Almost Astronauts (2009), which won the American Library Association’s highest award for nonfiction in 2010. This ... More

Chapter six applies the observations of the previous chapters to a case study of Almost Astronauts (2009), which won the American Library Association’s highest award for nonfiction in 2010. This reading examines how the pursuit of authority and an understanding of children as vulnerable recipients of data requires the sacrifice of critical engagement and, ironically, results in a less honest book.Less

Voice and the Seamless Narrative of Knowledge

Joe Sutliff Sanders

in A Literature of Questions: Nonfiction for the Critical Child

Chapter two examines how the voice of a book—in its use of hedges and a visible author as well as its dramatization of debate between sources—can attempt to invite or close off critical engagement