The purpose of this collective case study was to explore the impact of using young adult literature in a content area literacy course to leverage the development of professional identities in preservice agriculture teachers (n= 4). Empirical studies of the literacy-based experiences and professional development of agricultural education majors are…

This article argues that two significant recent influential historical novels about the Holocaust, "Hitler's Daughter" (1999) and "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas" (2006), reprise the genre traits of the "Bildungsroman" or novel of development and can be regarded as remarkably effective in engaging an active reader.…

Research suggests that students need authenticity by welcoming their stories, even causing tension and discomfort with complex topics, encouraging discussion, and questioning. Our study explores undergraduates' open-ended reflections on using young adult literature to challenge dominant, deficit perspectives about themselves and others, which is…

In this practitioner article, we detail how American English language arts and social studies teachers can select and teach young adult literature using LaGarrett King's Black historical consciousness framework. We provide supplemental, related research along with teaching suggestions and titles for each of the Black historical consciousness…

Based in anthropology (Cole & Knowles, 2001), life history inquiry into literature emphasizes deep understandings of literary characters that are expressed through dramatic performance. For teachers or teacher-educators, life histories offer a powerful teaching strategy. Life histories support locating readers in a particular pattern or…

From the authors of the popular blog and resource for teachers, The Classroom Bookshelf, this book offers a framework and teaching ideas for using recently released children's and young adult literature to build a culture of inquiry and engagement from a text-first approach. "Reading With Purpose" is designed to help K-8 teachers tap…

This paper examines analyses of adolescent romance fiction, highlighting key themes and debates over time. I will argue that contemporary social conditions underline the need to reconsider the value of this genre in the secondary English classroom. However, working effectively with genre literature (including romance) requires educators to…

This paper focuses on the ways in which multiple constructions of childhood are produced, consumed and exchanged as child characters negotiate the adult world in "Homecoming" (1981), the first of Cynthia Voigt's Tillerman novels. Drawing on Peter Hollindale's ideas about interactions and exchanges between children and adults, the paper…

Drawing on feminist and critical theories of politics and emotions, this paper attends to the hegemony of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for multiply-marginalized students and explores what exemplary Young Adult (YA) novels can teach scholars, educators, and students about the productive use of anger in the face of injustice. Two acclaimed young…

In this discussion, we argue for those who are literacy educators to reframe gossip as a dialogic, feminist act in their teaching and interpretation of gossip as framed in the literature they teach in secondary English language arts (ELA) classrooms. Reframing gossip as a feminist act invites meaning-makers to view those conversations and…

New developments in the field of youth studies are calling for a reorientation of discourses of adolescence away from developmental tropes of transition, crisis, and dysfunction, and towards a more fluid sociocultural framework. Meg Rosoff's acclaimed novel "How I Live Now" (2004) achieves a balance that transcends the pitfalls of…

The early reception of D.B.C. Pierre's "Vernon God Little" (2003) has been characterized by comparisons with two canonical literary antecedents: J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" (1991/1951) and, at a greater remove, Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884). The three novels capitalize on the…

Sexuality is both everywhere and nowhere in children's literature since it collides with an ideology of childhood innocence that works to erase childhood sexuality altogether. Debates about identity, self-expression, the boundary between childhood and adulthood--and attempts to police that boundary--often center on sexuality. Anxiety around…

Learn how to disrupt the reproduction of White supremacy in curriculum and instruction. This volume directly confronts persistent iterations of whiteness in English education through advancing antiracist dispositions and practices. Readers will find a variety of practical implementations of teaching and learning in English Language Arts, English…

Issues surrounding gender and sexuality are fundamental determinants of either a liberated or restricted human experience, and comprehensive sex education has been recognized as an essential mechanism to help youth process their gender and sexuality in a standardized, open, safe, and healthy atmosphere. In the absence of such education, Y novels…