Children's literature today is dominated by the gothic mode, and it is in children's gothic fictions that we find the implications of cultural change most radically questioned and explored. This collection of essays looks at what is happening in the children's Gothic now when traditional monsters have become the heroes, when new monsters have come into play, when globalisation brings Harry Potter into China and yaoguai into the children's Gothic, and when childhood itself and children's literature as a genre can no longer be thought of as an uncontested space apart from the debates and power struggles of an adult domain. We look in detail at series such as The Mortal Instruments, Twilight, Chaos Walking, The Power of Five, Skulduggery Pleasant, and Cirque du Freak; at novels about witches and novels about changelings; at the Gothic in China, Japan and Oceania; and at authors including Celia Rees, Frances Hardinge, Alan Garner and Laini Taylor amongst many others. At a time when the energies and anxieties of children's novels can barely be contained anymore within the genre of children's literature, spilling over into YA and adult literature, we need to pay attention. Weird things are happening and they matter.

Bringing together new perspectives in childhood studies and animal studies, this book is the first collection to critically address the manifold alignments and frequent co-constitutions of children and pets in our families, our cultures, and our societies. The cultural politics of power shaping relationships between children, pets, and adults inform the wide range of essays included in this collection, as they explore issues such as protection, discipline, mastery, wildness, play, and domestication. The volume use the frequent social and cultural intersections between children and pets as an opportunity to analyze institutions that create pet and child subjectivity, from education and training to putting children and pets on display for entertainment purposes. Essays analyze legal discourses, visual culture, literature for children and adults, migration narratives, magazines for children, music, and language socialization to discuss how notions of nationalism, race, gender, heteronormativity, and speciesism shape cultural constructions of children and pets. Examining childhood and pethood in America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, this collection shows how discourses linking children and pets are pervasive and work across cultures. By presenting innovative approaches to the child and the pet, the book brings to light alternative paths toward understanding these figures, leading to new openings and questions about kinship, agency, and the power of care that so often shapes our relationships with children and animals. This will be an important volume for scholars of animal studies, childhood studies, children's literature, cultural studies, political theory, education, art history, and sociology.

Children's book awards have mushroomed since the early twentieth-century and especially since the 1960s, when literary prizing became a favored strategy for both commercial promotion and canon-making. There are over 300 awards for English-language titles alone, but despite the profound impact of children's book awards, scholars have paid relatively little attention to them. This book is the first scholarly volume devoted to the analysis of Anglophone children's book awards in historical and cultural context. With attention to both political and aesthetic concerns, the book offers original and diverse scholarship on prizing practices and their consequences in Australia, Canada, and especially the United States. Contributors offer both case studies of particular awards and analysis of broader trends in literary evaluation and elevation, drawing on theoretical work on canonization and cultural capital. Sections interrogate the complex and often unconscious ideological work of prizing, the ongoing tension between formalist awards and so-called identity-based awards - all the more urgent in light of the "We Need Diverse Books" campaign - the ever-morphing forms and parameters of prizing, and scholarly practices of prizing. Among the many awards discussed are the Pura Belpre Medal, the Inky Awards, the Canada Governor General Literary Award, the Printz Award, the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the Phoenix Award, and the John Newbery Medal, giving due attention to prizes for fiction as well as for non-fiction, poetry, and film. This volume will interest scholars in literary and cultural studies, social history, book history, sociology, education, library and information science, and anyone concerned with children's literature.

Although the United States prides itself as a nation of diversity, the country that boasts of its immigrant past also wrestles with much of its immigrant present. While conflicting attitudes about immigration are debated, newcomers both legal and otherwise continue to arrive on American soil. And books about the immigrant experience aimed at both adults and youth are published with a fair amount of frequency. In Immigration Narrative in Young Adult Literature: Crossing Borders, Joanne Brown explores the experiences of adolescents as portrayed in young adult novels. Her study features protagonists from a wide variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds in order to provide a complete discussion of the immigration experience of young adults. In this volume, Brown analyzes young adult novels that portray various aspects of the immigrant experience journeys to the shores of the United States, the difficulties of adjustment, and the tensions that develop within family units as a result of immigration. Brown also examines how ethnicity, religion, and country of origin affect the adolescent characters' adjustment to their new country, as well as the process of moving from social outsiders to accepted citizens. This thoroughly researched book includes theories of adolescent development and perspectives on immigration itself applied to the literary analyses. It also offers a framework for anticipating the success of young immigrants and relates this analysis to the novels Brown discusses. With an appendix of additional novels for further reading, this book will be a useful resource for librarians and teachers of adolescent literature, as well as for students, both those born in the United States and those who are immigrants themselves.

Celebrates the accomplishments of YA authors acclaimed for producing high-quality comedies, who have not yet been treated in a book-length bio-critical study. Simultaneously, it reminds readers that no matter how funny an author of fiction may be, if he shows off his wit in ways that fail to play a natural role in advancing his narrative, he is not writing good fiction. To demonstrate this, humorous passages are presented to illustrate the contribution a sense of humor can make to a work of fiction. The book is arranged topically to facilitate a comparison of distinctive treatments by various authors of adolescent life events, such as sibling rivalry, bullies, and first dates.

In 1908, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows was published to surprisingly little critical fanfare. But readers championed its cause, and Grahame's novel of a riverbank life soon proved both a commercial and ultimately critical success. One hundred years after its first publication, Grahame's book and its memorable characters continue their hold on the public imagination and have taken their place in the canon of children's literature. However, little academic criticism emerged in the wake of the book's initial publication. Only after the appearance of Peter Green's biocritical study did the academy begin to wrestle with Grahame's complex work, though many read it in terms of Grahame's often unhappy personal life. The essays in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows: A Children's Classic at 100 focus on recent discussions of the book in regards to class, gender, and nationality but also examine issues previously not addressed by Grahame criticism, such as the construction of heteronormative masculinity, the appeal of this very English novel to Chinese readers, and the meaning of a text in which animals can be human-like, pets, servants, and even food. This volume also revisits some of the issues that have engaged critics from the start, including the book's dual-strand narrative structure, the function of home, and the psychological connections between Toad and Grahame. Scholars of fantasy and children's literature will find great value in this collection that sheds new light on this enduring classic."

The award-winning fiction of Katherine Paterson has, for decades, warmed the hearts of children and adults alike. From Bridge to Terabithia and Come Sing, Jimmy Jo to Jacob Have I Loved and The Great Gilly Hopkins, her stories are taught in classrooms and read by librarians eager to share her moral-driven fiction to inspire young minds. Bridges for the Young is a book of essays written by reputable critics of children's literature, including many established Paterson scholars, who examine the various themes of hope, peace, and story, as well as other important issues that grow out of her work. In addition to the assortment of perspectives on her writing, Paterson herself offers a detailed essay written specifically for this collection that discusses the allegorical bridges that she builds for her readers.

When creating her post-apocalyptic world of The Hunger Games, author Suzanne Collins drew from various real-world history and geography, particularly from Appalachia, which is reflected in the culture and location of District 12. With the release of her 2019 prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Collins brought readers deeper into Appalachia's extraordinary cultural diversity and its storied musical traditions. This book provides a tour of human geography, history and culture that establishes the foundation for the saga's novels and films. Told from the expertise of a geographer, it explores how place can shape culture, how social and geographical concepts intersect and how these ideas apply to The Hunger Games. Specifically, the work explores the idea of "home," and how attachment to a place is strengthened through landscape, geography and song.

Over a century before Monopoly invited child players to bankrupt one another with merry ruthlessness, a lively and profitable board game industry thrived in Britain from the 1750s onward, thanks to publishers like John Wallis, John Betts, and William Spooner. As part of the new wave of materials catering to the developing mass market of child consumers, the games steadily acquainted future upper- and middle-class empire builders (even the royal family themselves) with the strategies of imperial rule: cultivating, trading, engaging in conflict, displaying, and competing. In their parlors, these players learned the techniques of successful colonial management by playing games such as Spooner's A Voyage of Discovery, or Betts' A Tour of the British Colonies and Foreign Possessions. These games shaped ideologies about nation, race, and imperial duty, challenging the portrait of Britons as "absent-minded imperialists." Considered on a continuum with children's geography primers and adventure tales, these games offer a new way to historicize the Victorians, Britain, and Empire itself. The archival research conducted here illustrates the changing disciplinary landscape of children's literature/culture studies, as well as nineteenth-century imperial studies, by situating the games at the intersection of material and literary culture.

This book comprises studies on death in Spanish, British/American and German children's literature, cinema and audiovisual fiction; several translations from English and German into Spain are analysed. References to death were censored in Spain, as they were omitted or softened not to traumatise young readers. However, in the last twenty years, this taboo theme has been included to enable children and young adults to overcome the loss of a loved one as a necessary part of growing up. Contributions to this book show the historical development of this topic in different films and literary genres following, among others, a fantasy-mythological approach or a realist and objective one, helping children and young adults face death maturely and constructively.

With a focus on fostering democratic, equitable education for young people, Ginsberg and Glenn's engaging text showcases a wide variety of innovative, critical classroom approaches that extend beyond traditional literary theories commonly used in K-12 and higher education classrooms and provides opportunities to explore young adult (YA) texts in new and essential ways. The chapters pair YA texts with critical practices and perspectives for culturally affirming and sustaining teaching and include resources, suggested titles, and classroom strategies. Following a consistent structure, each chapter provides foundational background on a key critical approach, applies the approach to a focal YA text, and connects the approach to classroom strategies designed to encourage students to think deeply and critically about texts, themselves, and the world. Offering a wealth of innovative pedagogical tools, this comprehensive volume offers opportunities for students and their teachers to explore key and emerging topics, including culture, (dis)ability, ethnicity, gender, immigration, race, sexual orientation, and social class.

This resource provides teachers, librarians, parents, and others who work with children with an annotated bibliography of children's books that contain characters who display positive values as they relate to others. These stories will help children build associations related to their family values, help them understand the importance of the way values support a family, and recognize how values help overcome certain obstacles. A feature of this volume is the inclusion of sample activities and lessons related to the books in the bibliography. Educators and parents can use the activities as Dr. Roberts presents them, or they can use them as starting points for their own activities and lessons. The activities extend the literature by providing thought-provoking exercises and topics for discussion. They reinforce the sometimes subtle presentation of moral qualities by focussing the student's attention on the decision and actions that express them. Parents and educators, including home schooling parents and instructors in religious settings, will benefit from this helpful resource.

The publication of the Harry Potter series in the United States coincided with the coming-of-age of its main target audience, the millennial generation. Harry Potter and the Myth of Millennials: Identity, Reception, and Politics takes an interdisciplinary view of Harry Potter, as a series and a phenomenon, to uncover how the appeal of Harry became a lifestyle, a moral compass, and a guiding light in an era fraught with turbulence and disharmony. As a new phenomenon at the time, Harry Potter provided comfort through the heroism of the main characters, showing that perseverance and "constant vigilance," to quote one of the professors, could overcome the darkest of times. Hobbs argues that Harry Potter prepared an entire generation for the chaotic present marked by the 2016 Election and 2020 Pandemic by shaping the political attitudes of its readers, many of whom were developing their political identities alongside Harry. Her analysis focuses on both the novels themselves and the ways in which fans connected globally through the Internet to discuss the books, commiserate about the events swirling around them, and answer calls to action through Harry Potter-inspired activism. In short, Harry Potter and the Myth of Millennials examines how Harry Potter became a generation's defining mythology of love, unity, and transformation.

Examining nineteenth-century British hymns for children, Alisa Clapp-Itnyre argues that the unique qualities of children's hymnody created a space for children's empowerment. Unlike other literature of the era, hymn books were often compilations of many writers' hymns, presenting the discerning child with a multitude of perspectives on religion and childhood. In addition, the agency afforded children as singers meant that they were actively engaged with the text, music, and pictures of their hymnals. Clapp-Itnyre charts the history of children's hymn-book publications from early to late nineteenth century, considering major denominational movements, the importance of musical tonality as it affected the popularity of hymns to both adults and children, and children's reformation of adult society provided by such genres as missionary and temperance hymns. While hymn books appear to distinguish 'the child' from 'the adult', intricate issues of theology and poetry - typically kept within the domain of adulthood - were purposely conveyed to those of younger years and comprehension. Ultimately, Clapp-Itnyre shows how children's hymns complicate our understanding of the child-adult binary traditionally seen to be a hallmark of Victorian society. Intersecting with major aesthetic movements of the period, from the peaking of Victorian hymnody to the Golden Age of Illustration, children's hymn books require scholarly attention to deepen our understanding of the complex aesthetic network for children and adults. Informed by extensive archival research, British Hymn Books for Children, 1800-1900 brings this understudied genre of Victorian culture to critical light.

Children are the future architects, clients and users of our buildings. The kinds of architectural worlds they are exposed to in picture books during their formative years may be assumed to influence how they regard such architecture as adults. Contemporary urban environments the world over represent the various stages of modernism in architecture. This book reads that history through picturebooks and considers the kinds of national identities and histories they construct. 12 specialist essays from international scholars address questions such as: Is modern architecture used to construct specific narratives of childhood? Is it taken to support 'negative' narratives of alienation, on the one hand, and 'positive' narratives of happiness, on the other? Do images of modern architecture support ideas of 'community'? reinforce 'family values'? If so, what kinds of architecture, community and family? How is modern architecture placed vis-a-vis the promotion of diversity (ethnic, religious, gender etc.)? How might the use of architecture in comic strips or the presence of specific kinds of building in fiction aimed at younger adults be related to the groundwork laid in picturebooks for younger readers? This book reveals what stories are told about modern architecture and shows how those stories affect future attitudes towards and expectations of the built environment.

When Harry Potter first boards the Hogwarts Express, he journeys to a world which Rowling says has alchemy as its "internal logic." The Philosopher's Stone, known for its power to transform base metals into gold and to give immortality to its maker, is the subject of the conflict between Harry and Voldemort in the first book of the series. But alchemy is not about money or eternal life, it is much more about the transformations of desire, of power and of people-through love. Harry's equally remarkable and ordinary power to love leads to his desire to find but not use the Philosopher's Stone at the start of the series and his wish to end the destructive power of the Elder Wand at the end. This collection of essays on alchemical symbolism and transformations in Rowling's series demonstrates how Harry's work with magical objects, people, and creatures transfigure desire, power, and identity. As Harry's leaden existence on Privet Drive is transformed in the company of his friends and teachers, the Harry Potter novels have transformed millions of readers, inspiring us to find the gold in our ordinary lives.

Girls series books have been popular since the early 1840s, when books about Cousin Lucy, a young girl who learns about the world around her, first appeared. Since then, scores of series books have followed, several of them highly successful, and featuring some of the most enduring characters in fiction, such as Nancy Drew. In recent decades, series books like The Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High have become staples for young readers everywhere. In Sisters, Schoolgirls, and Sleuths: Girls' Series Books in America, Carolyn Carpan provides a social history of girls' series fiction published in America from the mid-19th century through the early 21st century. Carpan examines popular series, subgenres, themes, and characters found in approximately 100 series, noting how teenage girls are portrayed in girls' series fiction and how girls' series reflect or subvert the culture of the era in which they are produced. Her study also focuses on the creation, writing, and production of such books. This is the first study of American girls' series books to examine the entire genre from its beginnings in the 1840s to the present day, revealing facts about a sub-genre of children's and young adult literature that has rarely been studied. Appendixes in this volume include a listing of the girls' series covered in the book as well as important books about girls' series fiction.

Common Core is an instructive book that enhances classroom teacher knowledge-base of global and multicultural literature texts, which as a result, deepens student appreciation for cultures around the world. Through use of technology and multicultural literature, Dr. Saine fires up the imagination of students, as she transports them to other cultures, countries and regions of the world. It is a highly nuanced text that builds bridges across cultures while meeting English Language Arts (ELA) standards. The text is likely to make a lasting contribution to this mostly neglected area of student cultural awareness and development.

Professional development activities have proven adequate to facilitate mastery of new content, inform teachers of best practice, and for dissemination of information, however, such efforts fail to address the emotional and personal aspects of the teaching profession. Here is a hands-on activities book that provides school leaders an easy-to-use format for the delivery of professional development sessions for K-12 personnel. It details three major topics: social realities (e.g. societal trauma), diversity (e.g. Disabilities), and community conundrums (e.g. economic uncertainties). The uniqueness of this book is the activity design using children's literature to provide a neutral framework for discussion of often-difficult issues. The authors provide an opportunity for teachers to explore their underlying assumptions, unacknowledged biases, or often unspoken feelings about issues that are central to student success. They seek to regain professional responsibility to solve problems and improve education in our ever-changing world. For administrators or teacher leaders who are on the cutting edge of facilitating professional development for problem solving issues in our schools.

Beyond Borders compiles essays from various authors who explore the queerness of young adult literature that contains lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and questioning characters, some written by LGBTQ identified authors, while presenting lessons for secondary English classrooms. As queer theorists, the authors ask if young adult literature can imagine other spaces, representations, ways of being, identifications, and inclusion of LGBTQ characters and stories. This collection examines questions of theory as well as classroom literacy practices, while employing new theories in novel and creative intersections with literary texts. The book is perfect for teacher education courses focused on young adult literature, as well as secondary English education courses including methods of teaching English courses, teaching literature methods courses, queer theory in education courses, teaching of writing courses, and content area literacy courses.

Common Core is an instructive book that enhances classroom teacher knowledge-base of global and multicultural literature texts, which as a result, deepens student appreciation for cultures around the world. Through use of technology and multicultural literature, Dr. Saine fires up the imagination of students, as she transports them to other cultures, countries and regions of the world. It is a highly nuanced text that builds bridges across cultures while meeting English Language Arts (ELA) standards. The text is likely to make a lasting contribution to this mostly neglected area of student cultural awareness and development.

Drawing on over thirty years of teaching children's literature and education, including special topics courses on pedagogical imagery in popular media, the author has drawn those two enterprises together to apply an educational perspective to several giants in the canon of children's literature. Albritton finds and explores images of teaching and learning in Lewis Carroll's two Alice novels, a selection of tales by Beatrix Potter, both play and novel versions of Peter Pan, Kenneth Grahamme's The Wind in the Willows, selected stories featuring Winnie-the-Pooh, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Hobbit, and the first three of J.K. Rowling's novels featuring the young wizard in training, Harry Potter. Through these works, the author finds traces of Plato, Rousseau, Dewey, and Vygotsky, portrayals of growth mindset and high stakes testing, and evidence of the pedagogical power of inquiry, teacher personality, and project-based learning. Albritton's intention is to give equal play to each analytical focus, resulting in a richer appreciation for the literature and a deeper understanding of the theory.

How, and what, children and young adults read are questions bound up with both aspirations and concerns. This book brings together experts from a range of academic disciplines to examine how this reading has been mediated in Anglo-American contexts. Reading Mediation explores mediation across case studies of different reading experiences, practices and modes: It considers social and solitary reading; it analyzes ideas of text-reader interaction through book design and textual strategies; and it examines methods readers use for orienting themselves in relation to the text. Throughout it interrogates how values and assumptions about the effects of reading are implicated in its mediation, underpinning book collections, programmatic and parental intervention and facilitation of reading as well as the study of children's reading and literature. Employing a variety of methodologies, the essays elaborate how using "mediation" as a connecting node of analysis promotes interdisciplinary dialogue, and they demonstrate its value as a critical term for the study of children's reading, literacy and print culture.

Around 2005 something surprising happened in young adult literature: YA books became obsessed with presenting characters who wanted to have sex but couldn't-at least not without losing something vital to their identity. Since the publication of Twilight, the YA market has been flooded with books that feature naive virgins finding true love. While some YA novels do present nuanced depictions of sex and of healthy sexual relationships, the fiction most popular with young adult readers presents adolescent girls as virginal sex objects waiting to be fulfilled by their love interests. In Virginity in Young Adult Literature after Twilight, Christine Seifert looks at an alarming trend in YA novels. Labeling this phenomenon "abstinence porn," Seifert argues that these novels that fetishize virginity are harmful to readers. Like pornography, such works reduce female characters to objects whose sexual acts are the sole expression of their identities. Chapters in this book examine paranormal, dystopian, and contemporary romance, paying particular attention to recurring virginity themes or tropes. The book also provides an antidote by showing how some sex-positive teen novels provide more empowering messages to readers. Organized by genre, the books were selected for this study based on their popularity with teens. Exploring how messages about virginity are sustained and repeated from text to text, this book also calls out key reader reactions to demonstrate how they are responding to these messages. Featuring a list of discussion questions, Virginity in Young Adult Literature after Twilight will be a valuable resource for teachers, librarians, parents, and mature young adult readers.