Justice In Young Adult Speculative Fiction

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Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Author : Marek C. Oziewicz
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317610814
Total Pages : 245 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

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Book Synopsis Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction by : Marek C. Oziewicz

Download or read book Justice in Young Adult Speculative Fiction written by Marek C. Oziewicz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-17 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first to offer a justice-focused cognitive reading of modern YA speculative fiction in its narrative and filmic forms. It links the expansion of YA speculative fiction in the 20th century with the emergence of human and civil rights movements, with the communitarian revolution in conceptualizations of justice, and with spectacular advances in cognitive sciences as applied to the examination of narrative fiction. Oziewicz argues that complex ideas such as justice are processed by the human mind as cognitive scripts; that scripts, when narrated, take the form of multiply indexable stories; and that YA speculative fiction is currently the largest conceptual testing ground in the forging of justice consciousness for the 21st century world. Drawing on recent research in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences, Oziewicz explains how poetic, retributive, restorative, environmental, social, and global types of justice have been represented in narrative fiction, from 19th century folk and fairy tales through 21st century fantasy, dystopia, and science fiction. Suggesting that the appeal of these and other nonmimetic genres is largely predicated on the dream of justice, Oziewicz theorizes new justice scripts as conceptual tools essential to help humanity survive the qualitative leap toward an environmentally conscious, culturally diversified global world. This book is an important contribution to studies of children’s and YA speculative fiction, adding a new perspective to discussions about the educational as well as social potential of nonmimetic genres. It demonstrates that the justice imperative is very much alive in YA speculative fiction, creating new visions of justice relevant to contemporary challenges.

Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction

Author : Meghan Gilbert-Hickey
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 149683383X
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction by : Meghan Gilbert-Hickey

Download or read book Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction written by Meghan Gilbert-Hickey and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Children’s Literature Association’s 2023 Edited Book Award Contributions by Malin Alkestrand, Joshua Yu Burnett, Sean P. Connors, Jill Coste, Meghan Gilbert-Hickey, Miranda A. Green-Barteet, Sierra Hale, Kathryn Strong Hansen, Elizabeth Ho, Esther L. Jones, Sarah Olutola, Alex Polish, Zara Rix, Susan Tan, and Roberta Seelinger Trites Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction offers a sustained analysis of race and representation in young adult speculative fiction (YASF). The collection considers how characters of color are represented in YASF, how they contribute to and participate in speculative worlds, how race affects or influences the structures of speculative worlds, and how race and racial ideologies are implicated in YASF. This collection also examines how race and racism are discussed in YASF or if, indeed, race and racism are discussed at all. Essays explore such notable and popular works as the Divergent series, The Red Queen, The Lunar Chronicles, and the Infernal Devices trilogy. They consider the effects of colorblind ideology and postracialism on YASF, a genre that is often seen as progressive in its representation of adolescent protagonists. Simply put, colorblindness silences those who believe—and whose experiences demonstrate—that race and racism do continue to matter. In examining how some YASF texts normalize many of our social structures and hierarchies, this collection examines how race and racism are represented in the genre and considers how hierarchies of race are reinscribed in some texts and transgressed in others. Contributors point toward the potential of YASF to address and interrogate racial inequities in the contemporary West and beyond. They critique texts that fall short of this possibility, and they articulate ways in which readers and critics alike might nonetheless locate diversity within narratives. This is a collection troubled by the lingering emphasis on colorblindness in YASF, but it is also the work of scholars who love the genre and celebrate its progress toward inclusivity, and who further see in it an enduring future for intersectional identity.

Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction

Author : Jennifer Harrison
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1498573363
Total Pages : 146 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction by : Jennifer Harrison

Download or read book Posthumanist Readings in Dystopian Young Adult Fiction written by Jennifer Harrison and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-04-29 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the deployment of posthumanist ideology in young adult dystopian fiction. It applies this theory to the presentation of social issues in select novels.

Embodying Gender and Age in Speculative Fiction

Author : Derek J. Thiess
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131755194X
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis Embodying Gender and Age in Speculative Fiction by : Derek J. Thiess

Download or read book Embodying Gender and Age in Speculative Fiction written by Derek J. Thiess and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-14 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following scholarship on gender in science fiction, this book explores the limits of considering age as a social construction, positing that an acknowledgement of aged bodies necessarily changes the way we read both age and science fiction. The volume employs contemporary clinical psychology, the biopsychosocial model, to demonstrate that age is an important and neglected topic relevant to the study of speculative fiction. While gender offers a vocabulary, the biopsychosocial approach provides a method to consider age (and gender) as an embodied synthesis of physicality, psychology, and social environment. This respected model of clinical psychology allows a unique and innovative lens through which to read age and the body in literature. Thiess offers readings of established sf classics including Octavia Butler’s Parable series; Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game; and cyberpunk authors such as Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and Neal Stephenson, also exploring more mainstream speculative works including Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity. Visiting topics such as care work, sexuality, sport, and the military in these works, the book demonstrates that acknowledging a more fully embodied age is not only necessary for the individual subject, but will also enrich our understanding of other social categories, including gender and race. Taking a constructive—rather than adversarial—stance, this book does not merely question how much one can ethically and responsibly "bend" age, but suggests there is a great deal to learn when one explores those limits.

Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene

Author : Marek Oziewicz
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350203351
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene by : Marek Oziewicz

Download or read book Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene written by Marek Oziewicz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-24 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book shows the need for stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. Fantasy and myth have long been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of fantasy, myth, and Young Adult literature with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of books for young audiences, including Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Chapters cover the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Miéville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowley, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson. They range through narratives set in the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia. Across the chapters, fantasy and myth are framed as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how mythic narratives and fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.

Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction

Author : Tereza Dědinová
Publisher : Lexington Books
ISBN 13 : 1793636648
Total Pages : 277 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction by : Tereza Dědinová

Download or read book Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction written by Tereza Dědinová and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order to demonstrate that speculative fiction provides a valuable contribution to the discussion about the challenges of the Anthropocene, Images of the Anthropocene in Speculative Fiction investigates a range of novels whose subject matter pertains to various aspects of the Anthropocene. These include the destruction and protection of the natural environment, the relationship between human and non-human inhabitants of the planet, the role of myth in the shaping of and combat against the Anthropocene, the political dimensions of the Anthropocene, the ensuing threat of the Apocalypse, and the role of post-apocalyptic narratives. To explore these topics our authors examine the works of Patricia Briggs, M.R. Carey, Dmitry Glukhovsky, Ursula K. Le Guin, N.K. Jemisin, Stephenie Meyer, China Miéville, James Patterson, Maggie Stiefvater, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Scott Westfield. Their essays demonstrate that speculative fiction, given its ability to pursue scenarios of alternative history and present familiar things in an unfamiliar way, can alter the readers’ perception of their duties and responsibilities towards their communities and the world, so that the threat of human-wrought destruction might ultimately be averted.

Childhood, Science Fiction, and Pedagogy

Author : David W. Kupferman
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 9811362106
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (113 download)

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Book Synopsis Childhood, Science Fiction, and Pedagogy by : David W. Kupferman

Download or read book Childhood, Science Fiction, and Pedagogy written by David W. Kupferman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book invites readers to both reassess and reconceptualize definitions of childhood and pedagogy by imagining the possibilities - past, present, and future - provided by the aesthetic turn to science fiction. It explores constructions of children, childhood, and pedagogy through the multiple lenses of science fiction as a method of inquiry, and discusses what counts as science fiction and why science fiction counts. The book examines the notion of relationships in a variety of genres and stories; probes affect in the convergence of childhood and science fiction; and focuses on questions of pedagogy and the ways that science fiction can reflect the status quo of schooling theory, practice, and policy as well as offer alternative educative possibilities. Additionally, the volume explores connections between children and childhood studies, pedagogy and posthumanism. The various contributors use science fiction as the frame of reference through which conceptual links between inquiry and narrative, grounded in theories of media studies, can be developed.

Tolerance Discourse and Young Adult Holocaust Literature

Author : Rachel Dean-Ruzicka
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317590635
Total Pages : 198 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis Tolerance Discourse and Young Adult Holocaust Literature by : Rachel Dean-Ruzicka

Download or read book Tolerance Discourse and Young Adult Holocaust Literature written by Rachel Dean-Ruzicka and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What, exactly, does one mean when idealizing tolerance as a solution to cultural conflict? This book examines a wide range of young adult texts, both fiction and memoir, representing the experiences of young adults during WWII and the Holocaust. Author Rachel Dean-Ruzicka argues for a progressive reading of this literature. Tolerance Discourse and Young Adult Holocaust Literature contests the modern discourse of tolerance, encouraging educators and readers to more deeply engage with difference and identity when studying Holocaust texts. Young adult Holocaust literature is an important nexus for examining issues of identity and difference because it directly confronts systems of power, privilege, and personhood. The text delves into the wealth of material available and examines over forty books written for young readers on the Holocaust and, in the last chapter, neo-Nazism. The book also looks at representations of non-Jewish victims, such as the Romani, the disabled, and homosexuals. In addition to critical analysis of the texts, each chapter reads the discourses of tolerance and cosmopolitanism against present-day cultural contexts: ongoing debates regarding multicultural education, gay and lesbian rights, and neo-Nazi activities. The book addresses essential questions of tolerance and toleration that have not been otherwise considered in Holocaust studies or cultural studies of children’s literature.

Science Fiction Literature through History [2 volumes]

Author : Gary Westfahl
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1440866171
Total Pages : 814 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (48 download)

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Book Synopsis Science Fiction Literature through History [2 volumes] by : Gary Westfahl

Download or read book Science Fiction Literature through History [2 volumes] written by Gary Westfahl and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-07-19 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides students and other interested readers with a comprehensive survey of science fiction history and numerous essays addressing major science fiction topics, authors, works, and subgenres written by a distinguished scholar. This encyclopedia deals with written science fiction in all of its forms, not only novels and short stories but also mediums often ignored in other reference books, such as plays, poems, comic books, and graphic novels. Some science fiction films, television programs, and video games are also mentioned, particularly when they are relevant to written texts. Its focus is on science fiction in the English language, though due attention is given to international authors whose works have been frequently translated into English. Since science fiction became a recognized genre and greatly expanded in the 20th century, works published in the 20th and 21st centuries are most frequently discussed, though important earlier works are not neglected. The texts are designed to be helpful to numerous readers, ranging from students first encountering science fiction to experienced scholars in the field.

Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media

Author : Nizar Zouidi
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030760553
Total Pages : 534 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (37 download)

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Book Synopsis Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media by : Nizar Zouidi

Download or read book Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media written by Nizar Zouidi and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-07-24 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and Media studies the performative nature of evil characters, acts and emotions across intersecting genres, disciplines and historical eras. This collection brings together scholars and artists with different institutional standings, cultural backgrounds and (inter)disciplinary interests with the aim of energizing the ongoing discussion of the generic and thematic issues related to the representation of villainy and evil in literature and media. The volume covers medieval literature to contemporary literature and also examines important aspects of evil in literature such as social and political identity, the gothic and systemic evil practices. In addition to literature, the book considers examples of villainy in film, TV and media, revealing that performance, performative control and maneuverability are the common characteristics of villains across the different literary and filmic genres and eras studied in the volume.

Using Literature in English Language Education

Author : Janice Bland
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350034266
Total Pages : 327 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Using Literature in English Language Education by : Janice Bland

Download or read book Using Literature in English Language Education written by Janice Bland and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering Green's The Fault in Our Stars, Collins' The Hunger Games, Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Rowling's Wizarding World, Staake's Bluebird and Winton's Lockie Leonard, contributors consider how literature can be used for teaching literary literacy, creative writing, intercultural learning, critical pedagogy and deep reading in school settings where English is the teaching medium. Leading scholars from around the world explore pedagogical principles for English Language Teaching (ELT) widening children's and teenagers' literacy competences as well as their horizons through insightful engagement with texts. From challenging picturebooks for primary and secondary students, to graphic novels, to story apps, film and drama, as well as speculative fiction on provocative topics, recent research on literature education in ELT settings combines with cognitive criticism in the field of children's, young adult and adult literature.

Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney

Author : Jack Zipes
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 113462820X
Total Pages : 565 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (346 download)

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Book Synopsis Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney by : Jack Zipes

Download or read book Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney written by Jack Zipes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 565 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fairy tale has become one of the dominant cultural forms and genres internationally, thanks in large part to its many manifestations on screen. Yet the history and relevance of the fairy-tale film have largely been neglected. In this follow-up to Jack Zipes’s award-winning book The Enchanted Screen (2011), Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney offers the first book-length multinational, multidisciplinary exploration of fairy-tale cinema. Bringing together twenty-three of the world’s top fairy-tale scholars to analyze the enormous scope of these films, Zipes and colleagues Pauline Greenhill and Kendra Magnus-Johnston present perspectives on film from every part of the globe, from Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, to Jan Švankmajer’s Alice, to the transnational adaptations of 1001 Nights and Hans Christian Andersen. Contributors explore filmic traditions in each area not only from their different cultural backgrounds, but from a range of academic fields, including criminal justice studies, education, film studies, folkloristics, gender studies, and literary studies. Fairy-Tale Films Beyond Disney offers readers an opportunity to explore the intersections, disparities, historical and national contexts of its subject, and to further appreciate what has become an undeniably global phenomenon.

Literature as a Lens for Climate Change

Author : Rebecca L. Young
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1498594123
Total Pages : 271 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (985 download)

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Book Synopsis Literature as a Lens for Climate Change by : Rebecca L. Young

Download or read book Literature as a Lens for Climate Change written by Rebecca L. Young and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers practical approaches to using literature as a lens for teaching about climate change. Contributors share their classroom experiences and reflections to urge educators at all levels to prepare students for the challenges of a climate-changed world.

Beyond the Blockbusters

Author : Rebekah Fitzsimmons
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496827155
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond the Blockbusters by : Rebekah Fitzsimmons

Download or read book Beyond the Blockbusters written by Rebekah Fitzsimmons and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-03-18 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributions by Megan Brown, Jill Coste, Sara K. Day, Rachel Dean-Ruzicka, Rebekah Fitzsimmons, Amber Gray, Roxanne Harde, Tom Jesse, Heidi Jones, Kaylee Jangula Mootz, Leah Phillips, Rachel L. Rickard Rebellino, S. R. Toliver, Jason Vanfosson, Sarah E. Whitney, and Casey Alane Wilson While critical and popular attention afforded to twenty-first-century young adult literature has exponentially increased in recent years, classroom materials and scholarship have remained static in focus and slight in scope. Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars, and The Hate U Give overwhelm conversations among scholars and critics—but these are far from the only texts in need of analysis. Beyond the Blockbusters: Themes and Trends in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction offers a necessary remedy to this limiting perspective, bringing together essays about the many subgenres, themes, and character types that have until now been overlooked. The collection tackles a diverse range of topics—modern updates to the marriage plot; fairy tale retellings in dystopian settings; stories of extrajudicial police killings and racial justice. The approaches are united, though, by a commitment to exploring the large-scale generic and theoretical structures at work in each set of texts. As a collection, Beyond the Blockbusters is an exciting entryway into a field that continues to grow and change even as its works captivate massive audiences. It will prove a crucial addition to the library of any scholar or instructor of young adult literature.

Fairy-Tale TV

Author : Jill Terry Rudy
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000092984
Total Pages : 170 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Fairy-Tale TV by : Jill Terry Rudy

Download or read book Fairy-Tale TV written by Jill Terry Rudy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-02 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise and accessible critical introduction examines the world of popular fairy-tale television, tracing how fairy tales and their social and cultural implications manifest within series, television events, anthologies, and episodes, and as freestanding motifs. Providing a model of televisual analysis, Rudy and Greenhill emphasize that fairy-tale longevity in general, and particularly on TV, results from malleability—morphing from extremely complex narratives to the simple quotation of a name (like Cinderella) or phrase (like "happily ever after")—as well as its perennial value as a form that is good to think with. The global reach and popularity of fairy tales is reflected in the book’s selection of diverse examples from genres such as political, lifestyle, reality, and science fiction TV. With a select mediagraphy, discussion questions, and detailed bibliography for further study, this book is an ideal guide for students and scholars of television studies, popular culture, and media studies, as well as dedicated fairy-tale fans.

Children's Literature and Culture of the First World War

Author : Lissa Paul
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317361679
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis Children's Literature and Culture of the First World War by : Lissa Paul

Download or read book Children's Literature and Culture of the First World War written by Lissa Paul and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because all wars in the twenty-first century are potentially global wars, the centenary of the first global war is the occasion for reflection. This volume offers an unprecedented account of the lives, stories, letters, games, schools, institutions (such as the Boy Scouts and YMCA), and toys of children in Europe, North America, and the Global South during the First World War and surrounding years. By engaging with developments in Children’s Literature, War Studies, and Education, and mining newly available archival resources (including letters written by children), the contributors to this volume demonstrate how perceptions of childhood changed in the period. Children who had been constructed as Romantic innocents playing safely in secure gardens were transformed into socially responsible children actively committing themselves to the war effort. In order to foreground cross-cultural connections across what had been perceived as ‘enemy’ lines, perspectives on German, American, British, Australian, and Canadian children’s literature and culture are situated so that they work in conversation with each other. The multidisciplinary, multinational range of contributors to this volume make it distinctive and a particularly valuable contribution to emerging studies on the impact of war on the lives of children.

The Big Smallness

Author : Michelle Ann Abate
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 131736242X
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (173 download)

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Book Synopsis The Big Smallness by : Michelle Ann Abate

Download or read book The Big Smallness written by Michelle Ann Abate and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first full-length critical study to explore the rapidly growing cadre of amateur-authored, independently-published, and niche-market picture books that have been released during the opening decades of the twenty-first century. Emerging from a powerful combination of the ease and affordability of desktop publishing software; the promotional, marketing, and distribution possibilities allowed by the Internet; and the tremendous national divisiveness over contentious socio-political issues, these texts embody a shift in how narratives for young people are being creatively conceived, materially constructed, and socially consumed in the United States. Abate explores how titles such as My Parents Open Carry (about gun laws), It’s Just a Plant (about marijuana policy), and My Beautiful Mommy (about the plastic surgery industry) occupy important battle stations in ongoing partisan conflicts, while they are simultaneously changing the landscape of American children’s literature. The book demonstrates how texts like Little Zizi and Me Tarzan, You Jane mark the advent of not simply a new commercial strategy in texts for young readers; they embody a paradigm shift in the way that narratives are being conceived, constructed, and consumed. Niche market picture books can be seen as a telling barometer about public perceptions concerning children and the social construction of childhood, as well as the function of narratives for young readers in the twenty-first century. At the same time, these texts reveal compelling new insights about the complex interaction among American print culture, children’s reading practices, and consumer capitalism. Amateur-authored, self-published, and specialty-subject titles reveal the way in which children, childhood, and children’s literature are both highly political and heavily politicized in the United States. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of American Studies, children’s literature, childhood studies, popular culture, political science, microeconomics, psychology, advertising, book history, education, and gender studies.