Reconstructed fairy tales provide a different point of view and challenge the assumptions of a common set of values; for that reason, these stories provide a medium in which to examine power relationships in texts by applying a critical multicultural analysis (Botelho & Rudman, forthcoming, 2008, "A critical multicultural analysis of children's…

To compensate for her feelings of anger and helplessness over her mother's abandonment and subsequent displacements, the foster child Gilly Hopkins seeks power and agency through the primary means at her disposal: through the use of language and fairy tales. She constructs a Cinderella fantasy of an idealized mother who will rescue her. She also…

The anecdotes of Nasreddin Hodja, who lived in Anatolia in the 13th century, have always attracted people due to the humour they contain, but this discussion also focuses on exploring the educational value of the anecdotes. According to teachers who contributed to this study, the anecdotes stimulate students' interest in language work, create a…

In the last two decades there have been significant numbers of children's books written about various aspects of the refugee experience. Previously authors had tended to approach this sensitive area principally through an historical perspective. However as the number of refugees in British schools increases, books dealing with contemporary…

JK Rowling's "Harry Potter" novels situate their child protagonists in a fantastical world side by side with present day British society. Through the characters' choices and realizations, young readers are introduced to the complexities and ambiguities of the contemporary world. Harry and his friends embrace these qualities of postmodern…

The paper analyzes five historical fictions for children in the Batang Historyador (Young Historian) series which detail five periods in Philippine history. The books discuss the issues of child labor in precolonial Philippines, child labor and the right to education regardless of gender during the Spanish colonial period, child labor during the…

This article examines adaptations in their capacity of preserving literary heritage. It describes how the Middle Dutch beast epic "Reynard the Fox" lost its position in literature for adults and became part of a literary heritage that was no longer read but only studied for its historical value. Versions for children kept the story…

The author analyzes two texts, Gloria Whelan's "Homeless Bird" and Deborah Ellis's "Parvana's Journey", in an attempt to explain some of the problems and difficulties associated with those texts. The author examines Whelan's representations of India and finds troubling binaries associated with that text. In comparison, the…

The "Touchstones" series of poetry anthologies was first published in the UK between 1968 and 1972 in five volumes. Over a million copies and three revisions later, "Touchstones Now 11-14" appeared in the summer of 2008. Few, if any, books for the classroom can claim such longevity. In this article, the compilers of the…

A recent controversy in the USA centres on classroom use of Yoko Kawashima Watkins's semi-autobiographical "So Far from the Bamboo Grove" (1986), a novel focused on the flight of Japanese settler families to Japan after the liberation of Korea at the end of World War II. Taught in a literary and historical vacuum under the thematic…

We are made up of stories: the stories we hear, the stories we tell. Intertextual connections form through repeatedly hearing stories, many of which stem back to childhood. This paper foregrounds a teachers-as-readers literature circle in which a group of Indigenous teachers in Canada discussed, among other titles, Rafe Martin's "The Rough…

This article discusses Philip Reeve's young adult science fiction novels as literary collages. It explores the ways in which the author uses postmodernisms to introduce big ideas and construct a compelling futuristic world that combines fast-paced adventure with the "bildungsroman".

In 1991, David Macaulay was awarded the Randolph Caldecott Medal for his picturebook, "Black and White" (1990). He believed the Caldecott committee's choice communicated many messages to readers of all ages: "that it is essential to see, not merely to look; that words and pictures can support each other; that it isn't necessary to think in a…

This article explores how Sandra Cisneros alludes to and recasts popular fairy tales in "The House on Mango Street" to reveal their troubled legacy in the lives of many women in the novel. Drawing upon Latina feminist theory and Cisneros's autobiographical writing, this article posits that the main character Esperanza's alternative "happily ever…

The American Civil War has been a popular topic for young-adult writers for years, with new books now being written from young women's perspectives. In this paper, I will examine the gender ideologies that infiltrate contemporary Civil War books for young adults. I will examine four recent young-adult Civil-War novels: G. Clifton Wisler's "Mr.…