Katniss Everdeen, the narrator and protagonist of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy, survives the grueling ordeal of forced participation in two games to the death through both physical prowess and mental agility. Both within and outside of the Games, she demonstrates information and media literacies. By becoming adept at interpreting and…

Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" Saga has achieved extraordinary popularity and scholars have interrogated the nature of its appeal from a variety of perspectives. Its popularity raises questions because in many ways it mirrors romantic fictions from the 1960s and 1970s. Such fictions have been read by critics as expressions of female…

The depictions of cruel witches in Roald Dahl's novel "The Witches" echo the cruel, abusive measures taken by adults in the historical treatment of children. The concept of child-hatred, described by Lloyd Demause and other critics, is an effective lens through which to view the hyperbolized hatred of children described in "The…

Laurie Halse Anderson's young adult novel "Speak" concerns the rape and subsequent silence of ninth grade protagonist Melinda Sordino. By relying on extensive literary allusions involving trees, rape, silence, and transformation, Anderson creates a young adult problem novel that is both of the moment and timeless in its themes. The…

This paper examines the work of one of New Zealand's most acclaimed writers, Maurice Gee, and the use of his children's fiction as an experimental ground for postmodernist techniques further developed in his writing for adults. In particular, it considers Gee's borrowings of his own and others' non-fictional and fictional…

The position of authors of fiction in relation to critical discussion of their work is an unsettled one. While recognized as having knowledge and expertise regarding their texts, they are typically regarded as unreliable sources when it comes to critical analysis, and as partial witnesses whose personal association with the text is liable to…

This article provides a close reading of Meg Rosoff's award-winning novel "How I Live Now". It argues that an understanding of the text can be extended through an application of ideas found in contemporary spatial discourse concerning place. Reading the novel within this context allows a discussion of ways in which it draws on…

This paper explores the representation of magic and madness in Justine Larbalestier's "Magic or Madness" trilogy (2005-2007). Throughout the series, magic is constructed as an abject and disabling force that threatens to disable magic-wielders, either through madness or death. Despite being represented as a ubiquitous force, the…

This essay follows the insights of reader response theory to examine how readers of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice McKinley series negotiate textual meaning and construct particular identities in relation to the series' controversial content. Ranking second on the American Library Association's top one hundred list of banned and challenged books…

This paper examines two Canadian (Quebecois) novels for young adults, translated from French to English in Canada: "The Road to Chlifa" by Michele Marineau, and "Pieces of Me" by Charlotte Gingras. We examine the representation of adolescent bodies in space and movement, and how these coming of age narratives play out in relation to discourses…

This study identifies patterns in 11 English language young adult novels from the past three decades (1981-2011) which depict undocumented migration between Mexico and the United States. The increase in YA novels on this topic demonstrates rising public concern. These books offer sympathetic identification with border crossing youth. Eight of the…

This literary analysis examines constructions of normalcy and disability within contemporary young adult literature, including "Jerk," "California" (Friesen, 2008), "Marcelo in the Real World" (Stork, 2009), and "Five Flavors of Dumb" (John, 2010). As recent winners of the Schneider Family Book Award from the American Library Association, these…

As art objects, picturebooks have the potential to contribute to readers' aesthetic development. Many scholars and practitioners have recognized how using picturebooks with older students can augment their reading motivation and extend their understanding of visual elements of art and design, as well as develop their literacy, language, and…

This article describes a theory of how culture enables literary interpretations of texts. We begin with a brief overview of the reader response field. From there, we introduce the theory and provide illustrative participant data examples. These data examples illustrate the four cultural positions middle grade students in our research assumed when…

Susan Price's "Odin Trilogy" (2005-2008) is a juvenile science fiction series that depicts a future where class relations have become polarised due to late capitalist and technological developments and where ways of doing gender continue to be strongly connected with class. The society in the novels is based on slavery: people are either…