This article reflects on insights gained from a larger study that explored how a class of ten- and eleven-year-olds read and responded to David Almond's hybrid novel, "My Name is Mina." Through focusing on the children's performances of the poems contained within the text, the discussion examines embodied aspects of the children's…

David Almond and Dave McKean's "The Savage" is a hybrid prose and graphic novel which tells the story of one young man's maturation through literacy. The protagonist learns to deal with the death of his father and his own "savage" self by writing a graphic novel. This article reads "The Savage" in the context of earlier, "Northern" literacy…

The debates that have arisen regarding Darwin's theories of evolution and Christian views of creation and their place in education in the United States have frequently been extremely heated, resulting in trials, hearings, and laws. This article provides an overview of some of the disagreements and illustrates how David Almond's British novel,…

In "Skellig," "Kit's Wilderness," and "Clay", David Almond employs various types of intertextuality to enrich his narratives. Through the use of allusion, adaptation, collage, and mise-en-abyme, he encourages his adolescent readers to seek out precursor texts and to consider the interrelationships between these texts and his own. By so doing, he…

Magical realism as a literary mode is often subversive and transgressive, questioning the values and assumptions of the dominant society that it depicts. Young adult literature, by contrast, is typically thought to serve a socializing function, helping to integrate young readers into adult society. What then is the cultural work of magical realism…