Being literate increases a person's chances of enjoying good mental health, but many of today's teenagers come from backgrounds or circumstances that interfere with their literacy development. This unique resource for teachers, librarians, counselors and parents combines the expertise of two professionals: literacy experts and therapists. Together they provide guidance, through the examination and analysis of characters in young adult literature, to those working with troubled teens. Thereby helping professionals and parents gain insight into the inner workings of teenagers and encourage them to deal with their family issues and emotional problems while improving their reading and writing skills.

A young adult literature expert and a therapist, including such authors as Chris Crutcher and Anne LeMieux, team up for each chapter. They provide possible treatment options for young adult protagonists in popular novels that address issues associated with families. These issues include divorce, parental illness, alcoholism, foster care, eating disorders, gay and lesbian teenagers, and suicide. Readers are provided with the insight into helping teenagers with similar problems, and with the tools to get teenagers reading and addressing their problems. Extensive annotated bibliographies in each chapter help the reader choose the best sources for each particular case.

First published in 1980. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Reissuing works originally published between 1981 and 2000 this set offers an outstanding small collection of scholarship. It includes volumes on Victorian fiction for children, boys' school stories, heroes in children's literature, boyhood and children's literature as art and how criticism developed for the genre.

This book investigates major linguistic transformations in the translation of children's literature, focusing on the English-language translations of Janusz Korczak, a Polish-Jewish children's writer known for his innovative pedagogical methods as the head of a Warsaw orphanage for Jewish children in pre-war Poland. The author outlines fourteen tendencies in translated children's literature, including mitigation, simplification, stylization, hyperbolization, cultural assimilation and fairytalization, in order to analyse various translations of King Matt the First, Big Business Billy and Kaytek the Wizard. The author then addresses the translators' treatment of racial issues based on the socio-cultural context. The book will be of use to students and researchers in the field of translation studies, and researchers interested in children's literature or Janusz Korczak.

Children's literature is a rapidly expanding field of research which presents students and researchers with a number of practical and intellectual challenges. This research handbook is the first devoted to the specialist skills and complexities of studying children's literature at university level. Bringing together the expertise of leading international scholars, it combines practical advice with in-depth discussion of critical approaches. Wide- ranging in approach, "Children's Literature Studies: A Research Handbook: " * Considers 'children's literature' in its fullest sense, examining visual texts (such as picturebooks), films, computer games and other 'transformed' texts, as well as more traditional modes of writing for children* Offers a step-by-step guide to devising, starting and carrying out a research project (such as a dissertation or thesis), and advice on what kinds of research it is possible and profitable to undertake* Surveys the different methodologies and theoretical approaches used by children's literature scholars* Includes case studies, questions and exercises to reinforce ideas discussed in each chapter* Provides lists of further reading and a specialist glossary that will remain a useful reference resource. This handbook will be an essential companion for those studying children's literature, whether as undergraduates, postgraduates, or beyond.

Children, Film and Literacy explores the role of film in children's lives. The films children engage in provide them with imaginative spaces in which they create, play and perform familiar and unfamiliar, fantasy and everyday narratives and this narrative play is closely connected to identity, literacy and textual practices. Family is key to the encouragement of this social play and, at school, the playground is also an important site for this activity. However, in the literacy classroom, some children encounter a discontinuity between their experiences of narrative at home and those that are valued in school. Through film children develop understandings of the common characteristics of narrative and the particular 'language' of film. This book demonstrates the ways in which children are able to express and develop distinct and complex understandings of narrative, that is to say, where they can draw on their own experiences (including those in a moving image form). Children whose primary experiences of narrative are moving images face particular challenges when their experiences are not given opportunities for expression in the classroom, and this has urgent implications for the teaching of literacy.

Young adult readers have special needs and concerns, and librarians have become increasingly interested in selecting books suitable for them. This reference provides information about 290 books for young adults. These books received major awards between 1997 and 2001, reflect the voices of 242 different authors, and range from new to familiar themes. Included are nearly 750 alphabetically arranged entries for individual works, authors, characters, and settings. Many of these books were originally written for adults but have become popular among younger readers. Entries for works provide plot summaries and critical assessments, while author entries focus on those aspects of the writers' lives most relevant to literature for young people. The reference is a valuable selection tool for librarians and teachers and a useful guide for students.

J. K. Rowling's popular series of books about the boy wizard Harry Potter has captivated readers of all ages around the world. Selling more than 400 million copies, and adapted into highly successful feature films, the stories have attracted both critical acclaim and controversy. In this collection of brand new essays, an international team of contributors examines the complete Harry Potter series from a variety of critical angles and approaches. There are discussions on topics ranging from fairytale, race and gender, through to food, medicine, queer theory and the occult. The volume also includes coverage of the films and the afterlife of the series with the opening of Rowling's 'Pottermore' website. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in the Harry Potter phenomenon, this exciting resource provides thoughtful new ways of exploring the issues and concepts found within Rowling's world.

This book allows philosophers, literary theorists, and education specialists to come together to offer a series of readings on works of children's literature. Each of their readings is focused on pairing a particular, popular picture book or a chapter book with philosophical texts or themes. The book has three sections--the first, on picturebooks; the second, on chapter books; and the third, on two sets of paired readings of two very popular picturebooks. By means of its three sections, the book sets forth as its goal to show how philosophy can be helpful in reappraising books aimed at children from early childhood on. Particularly in the third section, the book emphasizes how philosophy can help to multiply the type of interpretative stances that are possible when readers listen again to what they thought they knew so well.The kinds of questions this book raises are the following: How are children's books already anticipating or articulating philosophical problems and discussions? How does children's literature work by means of philosophical puzzles or language games? What do children's books reveal about the existential situation the child reader faces? In posing and answering these kinds of questions, the readings within the book thus intersect with recent, developing scholarship in children's literature studies as well as in the psychology and philosophy of childhood.

The search for one's identity is an ancient quest reflected throughout history in stories where human glory and conquest are often layered with great pain and self doubt, meant to help people discover themselves and who they are. Today, this quest is found prevalently in young adult novels, where characters wrestle with modern dilemmas in order to find themselves. This reference resource provides a link for teachers, media specialists, parents, and other adults to those novels and how to use them effectively. Educators and therapists explore the literature where common identity issues are addressed in ways intriguing to teens. Using fictional characters, these experts provide guidance on how to encourage adolescents to cope while improving their reading and writing skills.

Twelve novels are examined from both a literary and psychological perspective, allowing the readers to meet the central figures as if they were living human beings. Each chapter is written by a literature specialist who has teamed up with a therapist and confronts a different identity issue, examining such dilemmas as body image, the father/son relationship, bigotry, and peer relations. This pair of experts tries to define the central character's struggle in each novel to discover who they are and to become self-actualized individuals. Each chapter also provides an annotated bibliography of other works, both fiction and nonfiction, that explore these same issues to give readers not only the insight into helping teenagers with similar problems, but also the tools with which to get teenagers reading and addressing these problems. This innovative approach is meant to provide the opportunity for adults and adolescents to better understand each other.

'Internationalism in Children's Series' investigates 'internationalism' through various cultural, historical and theoretical lenses in series created for a child readership. Using the familiarity of the series character and format to form a bridge to the wider world, authors from the 19th century to contemporary times have expanded the definition of internationalism. This volume examines these definitions as they vary from series to series and even book to book in a rapidly changing, ever-shrinking world.

Today, traditional illnesses and high risk behaviors of adolescents have become interrelated through the multitude of physical, social and emotional changes young people experience. Good literature which gives adolescents the truth has incredible power to heal and to renew. This reference resource provides a link for teachers, media specialists, parents, and other adults to those novels that can help adolescents struggling with health issues. Educators and therapists explore novels where common health issues are addressed in ways to captivate teens. Using fictional characters, these experts provide guidance on encouraging adolescents to cope while improving their reading and writing skills.

With the advancement in medicine, traditional types of health issues such as birth defects, cancer, and sensory impairment have shifted to more behavior related problems such as depression, alcoholism, and eating disorders. All of these issues and others are examined from both a literary and psychological perspective in thirteen chapters that explore health issues through fiction. Each chapter confronts a different health issue and is written by a literature specialist who has teamed up with a therapist. In each novel, these experts define the central character's struggle in coming to terms with an issue and growing in response to their difficulties. Annotated bibliographies of other works, both fiction and nonfiction, explore these same issues give readers insight into helping teenagers with similar problems, and provide the tools with which to get teenagers reading and addressing these problems.

Must a folktale be connected to its culture? Can a tale with universal applications be transmitted from one culture to another without loss? Does a teller from one culture have the ability--or even the right--to relate a tale from another culture? What happens to a tale when it leaves the oral and adult arenas and appears in print for children? Is it legitimate for a reteller to create variants to suit a child audience? Children's literature is today the major conduit for folklore, and professionals in the field must consider these questions. Editors Gary Schmidt and Donald Hettinga have brought together twenty-three writers of children's literature, illustrators, storytellers, and literary critics, who explore the issues and offer their experiences and views. The scope of the volume is the North American folktale, a rich amalgam of four major distinct traditions: the Native American folktale, the African American folktale, the retold Western European folktale, and the American tall tale. Each tradition is separately presented with an introductory survey and a selection of essays by the writers and critics. This focused collection will be valuable to scholars and professions in folklore, anthropology, American literature, and children's literature and useful also as a text in courses on children's literature and folklore.

Applying a range of critical approaches to works by authors including Susan Cooper, Catherine Fisher, Geraldine McCaughrean, Anthony Horowitz and Philip Pullman, this book looks at the formative and interrogative relationship between recent children's literature and fashionable but controversial aspects of modern Paganism.

Bringing together the voices of leading and emerging scholars, this book provides an innovative and accessible guide to using theory to study children's literature and film. Integrating key theoretical approaches and thinkers from across feminism, ecocriticism, postcolonialism and poststructuralism, the book shows how these can be used as tools to analyse a range of contemporary children's literature and film texts. The book will be at the cutting-edge of scholarship, combining new approaches to not only locate children's texts within changing social, cultural and political contexts, but also to help navigate a changing 'post-theory' era.

Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation, and Appreciation is an exciting new book developed to identify for teachers how to better connect adolescents with good literature. Comprehensive enough to ensure that teachers understand today's adolescents and the literature that will engage them, yet slim enough to ensure readers have the opportunity to read the books themselves, this book will help teachers provide a rich educational experience for adolescents throughout the middle and secondary curriculum while nourishing their love of reading. This book addresses adolescent culture and the types of literature that engage adolescents, including horror, graphic novels, comic books, and many forms of media, more thoroughly and insightfully than any other on the market. Middle and Secondary Inservice Teachers and Reading Specialists.

Multicultural fiction is an essential part of the American literary landscape. This reference helps scholars, teachers, and librarians choose significant texts from both the past and present, and provides guidance in approaching multicultural issues as they are discussed in fiction for young adults. Included are entries for 51 writers, some of whom have nearly been forgotten, others who are just emerging. Each entry provides biographical, critical, and bibliographical information, while a general bibliography of works on multicultural literature concludes the book.

Authors included range from the nearly forgotten, such as Laura Adams Armer, to the newly discovered, such as Graham Salisbury, winner of the 1994 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. The breadth of authors covered ensures an historical context for the issues raised by multiculturalism, and the sections on the critical reception of each author address such important issues as the authority and authenticity of the writer to comment on a different culture. Contributors are of many different ethnicities and include important scholars of children's literature, lending authenticity and authority to the volume itself.

In this pioneering historical study, Anne Lundin argues that schools, libraries, professional organizations, and the media together create and influence the constantly changing canon of children's literature. Lundin examines the circumstances out of which the canon emerges, and its effect on the production of children's literature. The volume includes a comprehensive list of canonical titles for reference.

Monsters Under the Bed is an essential text focussing on critical and contemporary issues surrounding writing for early years children. Containing a critically creative and a creatively critical investigation of the cult and culture of the child and childhood in fiction and non-fictional writing, it also contains a wealth of ideas and critical advice.

This text dynamically explores the issue of picture books, literacy and writing for early years children with a wider view on child-centred culture, communication and media. Internationally recognised as an expert in the field, Andrew Melrose encourages academics, researchers and students to examine the fundamental questions in writing for and addressing early years children, through an exploration of text and images. Accessibly written and lively in its approach, this book includes:

• an accessible and critically important challenge to the latest international academic research and debates in the field of children 's literature and creative writing;
• an extensive investigation of early years writing and reading;
• a pathway to developing critical awareness of children 's literature, allowing students to develop their own critical ability and writing skills;
• constant checkpoints throughout, in which the reader is encouraged to reflect on critically creative and creatively critical development.

Providing a coherent and pedagogical approach, this compelling text will be an indispensable resource for critics, writers and students interested in children's writing, as well as those on Creative Writing, Children's Literature and English BA and MA programmes. It will also be of great interest to those in teacher training, PGCE students and for those studying at Doctoral and Post-Doctoral level.

Here Comes the Bogeyman is an essential text focussing on critical and contemporary issues surrounding writing for children. Containing a critically creative and a creatively critical investigation of the cult and culture of the child and childhood in fiction and non-fictional writing, it also contains a wealth of ideas and critical advice to be shared with writers, students of children 's writing and students of writing. With scores of published children 's fiction books and films to his name, Andrew Melrose shares his extensive critical, teaching, writing and research experience to provide:

• a critical and creative investigation of writing and reading for children in the early, middle and pre-teen years
• an accessible and critically important challenge to the latest international academic research and debates in the field of children 's literature and creative writing.
• an evaluation of what it means to write for a generation of media-savvy children
• encouragement for critics, writers and students to develop their own critical, creative and writing skills in a stimulating and supportive manner
• guidance on writing non-fiction and poetry
• creative writing craftwork ideas which could be used as seminar topics or as individual reflections

This one-stop critical and creative text will be an indispensable resource for critics, writers and students interested in the cult and culture of writing for children; on Creative Writing BA and MA programmes; Children's Literature BA and MA programmes; English BA and MA programmes; Teacher Training, PGCE students and for those studying at Doctoral and Post-Doctoral level who are interested in writing for children.

Representing Africa in Children's Literature explores how African and Western authors portray youth in contemporary African societies, critically examining the dominant images of Africa and Africans in books published between 1960 and 2005. The book focuses on contemporary children's and young adult literature set in Africa, examining issues regarding colonialism, the politics of representation, and the challenges posed to both "insiders" and "outsiders" writing about Africa for children.

Recent scholarship on children 's literature displays a wide variety of interests in classic and contemporary children 's books. While environmental and ecological concerns have led to an interest in ecocriticism, as yet there is little on the significance of the ecological imagination and experience to both the authors and readers young and old of these texts. This edited collection brings together a set of original international research-based chapters to explore the role of children 's literature in learning about environments and places, with a focus on how children 's literature may inform and enrich our imagination, experiences and responses to environmental challenges and injustice. Contributions from Australia, Canada, USA and UK explore the diverse ways in which children 's literature can provide what are arguably some of the first and possibly most formative engagements that some children might have with nature . Chapters examine classic and new storybooks, mythic tales, and image-based and/or written texts read at home, in school and in the field. Contributors focus on exploring how children 's literature mediates and informs our imagination and understandings of diverse environments and places, and how it might open our eyes and lives to other presences, understandings and priorities through stories, their telling and re-telling, and their analysis.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Environmental Education Research.

Handbooks, guides, and articles on the Harry Potter books have been produced, but there is as yet no sustained discussion of the series as a literary work. Shira Wolosky shows here that the Harry Potter books take part in a rich literary tradition, including allegorical double meanings, mirror images among characters, psychological explorations of family dynamics, political and social critique, and complex moral questions. This book draws readers into deeper meanings of Harry Potter, arguing that the books launch and pursue interpretive quests in an ongoing effort to understand patterns and their attendant meanings, implications, and consequences.