This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 24 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) humorous children's literature and divergent thinking; (2) the development of children's ability to apprehend and distribute attention to important elements in prose; (3) death in selected Puritan works of children's literature; (4) humor in the science fiction short story from 1940 to 1960; (5) the credibility of foster home situations portrayed in contemporary realistic fiction for purposes of reading guidance; (6) differences in the literary response of fourth grade students to a fairy tale and to an instructional story; (7) the effects of reading literature and teaching concept development on ninth grade students' attitudes toward the mentally handicapped; (8) a curriculum plan for problem solving using children's literature; (9) male and female sex roles in literature for adolescents; (10) the theory, style, and politics of feminist literary criticism; (11) changes in adolescent literature with homosexual motifs, themes, and characters; (12) goals for teaching literature to college bound students as perceived by high school teachers, college professors, and college students; and (13) the portrayal of Blacks, Mexican Americans, and American Indians in selected secondary school American literature textbooks adopted in Texas. (HTH)