In this article, the life and writings of Antonia Forest, who died in 2003, are considered. An attempt is made to put her books into their literary, cultural and religious contexts, and to examine possible reasons for the critical reception of her books during the last 30 years of the twentieth century; from neglect and even disapproval to…

This article presents a case study class response to Mildred Taylor's now classic and widely read novel, "Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry." Through data collected during one school year, the ways urban, adolescent students use their contemporary lenses to interpret the literary theme of "confronting, overcoming and challenging racism" are discussed.…

This article examines the historical fantasy world created by Joan Aiken in the eleven volumes of her "Wolves of Willoughby Chase" series. In particular it looks at her subversion of historical reality by the creation of an alternative yet recognisable representation of our own world, using a wide range of events, and the remoulding of aspects of…

This essay identifies a genre of popular fiction for children and young adults, prevalent in the 1990s and continuing into the early twenty-first century, that incorporates computers and the internet, e-mails and chat rooms, into its plots. However, along with a focus on technology, this fiction frequently features the supernatural. So, too,…

In this article, it is shown how authors of fairy tale retellings have incorporated ideas of feminist literary criticism into a fictional form. As such, these retellings display the tension between the pedagogic and aesthetic aspects of all children's literature. Jane Yolen's "Sleeping Ugly" is chosen as a case study: although it can be argued…

Gustavson (Gustavson, L., "Journal of Children's Literature," 2000, 26(1), 16) used the award-winning novel "The View From Saturday" (Konigsburg, 1996) to investigate the discourses constructed by adolescent readers in after-school discussion groups. Participants in his study, instead of constructing interpretive discourse as Gustavson expected,…

This article, written in response to an invitation from "CLE," describes the origins and controversial content of "dunno," a first novel, self-published by Peter Inson, a former teacher and headmaster. Inson considers influences upon his writing, the thinking which led him towards self-publication and the process of personally launching and…

This article discusses Korean-American juvenile literature published in the United States in the last century. Teachers and students are invited to discover the knowledge and the pleasure that this collection offers to them. Focusing on the traditional values and changing times in the Korean-American community, this article helps readers…

The centenary of the first performance of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan was celebrated in December 2004. Taking account of the various events in Britain to mark the occasion--newspaper articles, radio and television programmes, retrospects in the original theatre--this article examines the status and popularity of Peter Pan after a hundred years. The…

This article provides a rationale for using literature in the classroom to explore conceptions of curriculum and teaching. We discuss a number of exemplars from children's and young adult fiction, both mainstream and less well known; offer a taxonomy for categorizing the range of visions of curriculum and teaching in the literature; and describe…

Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" was the crossover publishing sensation of 2003. It has been the subject of widespread critical and commercial acclaim and has won prestigious UK prizes including the Whitbread Book of the Year and the Guardian's Children's Fiction Prize. It is still enjoying considerable commercial…

Critics and teachers tend to pay attention to genre and ignore mode as an area of consideration. This study examines three novels for young readers that are comparable in terms of their entwining opposing modes (irony and romance, comedy and tragedy) as a successful crossover strategy for appeal to readers young and old. I share implications for…

In this article I question whether or not African American young adult literature serves as a primer for, and a version of, African American adult literature. Using the Black Aesthetic as my literary theory and the Coretta Scott King Award as the young adult canon, I note that while the content of adolescent literature is consistent with the…

An account of the publishing history of four picturebooks with texts by the major 20th century British author, Graham Greene, and illustrations by Dorothy Craigie and, later, by Edward Ardizzone is presented. Concluding section questions whether the texts of three other books, nominally by Dorothy--or "David"--Craigie, ought more accurately to be…

This article examines the responses of eight sixth grade students discussing four realistic fiction Hispanic-American multicultural stories with universal themes by Gary Soto in peer-led literature discussion groups. The results indicate the importance of a reader's sociocultural frame--class, race, and gender, on their interpretation of…