Welcome to Study & Scrutiny, Issue 7.1. For the 10th anniversary issue of Study and Scrutiny, we present a robust issue combined with recent scholarship and selected articles representing ten years of this journal’s contributions to the field of Research on Young Adult Literature.
Welcome to Study & Scrutiny, Issue 7.1. For the 10th anniversary issue of Study and Scrutiny, we present a robust issue combined with recent scholarship and selected articles representing ten years of this journal’s contributions to the field of Research on Young Adult Literature.
This review explores Ashley S. Boyd and Janine J. Darragh’s Reading for Action: Engaging Youth in Social Justice through Young Adult Literature and Reading for Justice: Engaging Middle Level Readers in Social Action through Young Adult Literature. These books offer educators a plethora of resources and ideas for using young adult literature to help readers find their voices and raise awareness on issues related to equity and justice.
Study and Scrutiny’s third Teacher Round Table focuses on an article from S&S Issue 6.1 by Zach Urquhart and Pearson Urquhart, “Fahrenheit 450: A Conversation through Poem Used to ‘Cool Down’ the Discussion of Banned and Controversial Books.” As book bans continue across the country, it feels important to talk with one another about what this issue looks like in different schools and districts and to consider possible approaches for navigating such a time in our collective history. Three educators, passionate about literacy, classroom practice, and the students they teach, joined Shelly Unsicker-Durham to consider the poetic exchange between a researcher/father and an activist/daughter and the lessons we might carry back to our classrooms.
In this article, an adolescent literacy and English education professor and a local high school English teacher describe the need to foster relationships together to build a better experience for secondary students and teacher candidates. Over the course of two semesters, both authors examine what their individual needs were, what steps were taken, and how programming was created for a fruitful partnership between a teacher preparation program and the title 1 high school down the street. Ultimately, both authors agreed that there was something missing in the separation of teacher preparation and what happens in actual English classrooms, and this partnership was created to build something better for all stakeholders involved.
The purpose of this critical content analysis (CCA) is to inquire into how gossip is portrayed in young adult (YA) novels, drawing from the theoretical frameworks of critical feminist pedagogy (hooks, 1994; Webb et al., 2002) and culturally sustaining literacy pedagogy (Alim & Paris, 2017). Depictions of gossip and rumor-spreading in 10 YA texts were compared and analyzed using the methods of CCA (Johnson et al., 2016). Using critical feminist theoretical coding, the overarching themes illuminated that the action of rumor-spreading is often mislabeled as gossiping, and productive, positive gossip is often unnamed as such in YA literature.
Despite some calls for more inclusive reading lists, the written standards and high school reading lists often represent a Eurocentric perspective which can reinforce inequities perpetuated by the status quo. Many teachers are motivated to engage with critical literacy tools, but they often lack the background knowledge, teaching resources, and administrative support to carry out a critical curriculum or change canonical reading lists. This qualitative case study drew upon decolonial theory to explore how one secondary teacher and two of her ninth-grade language arts sections engaged with a critical questioning tool applied to a young adult novel by an Indigenous author. I employed iterative thematic inquiry and analyzed data during and after collection. The analysis make clear here the benefits of the tool in regards to transforming the ELA classroom: providing a process for critically engaging with literary texts and facilitating decolonial understandings. Implications include the following: (1) teachers need time, support, and training to enact a decolonial or critical curriculum and (2) further research needs to be conducted regarding the use of the critical questioning tool.
Editor's note: This review was written before Michael Cart's passing in February of this year. As Dr. Hayn's review notes, he was not only a wealth of knowledge when it came to young adult literature but was also a staunch advocate of it. His energy, insight, and passion will be greatly missed.
Terri Suico explores the importance of researching diversity in youth literature with Professors Sarah Park Dahlen and Gabrielle Atwood Halko.
In this interview, Benjamin Alire Sáenz shares his love of writing for young adults and his connections to characters readers have grown to admire over the years.
In the ten years of Study and Scrutiny’s existence, young adult literature has continued its second golden age (Cart, 2016), with the publication of books ranging from the light-hearted Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy to the socially-justice focused The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. There have been so many varied and vibrant YAL books published since 2015 that we would need an entire issue (at least!) to highlight all of the ones that have had a significant cultural impact. While that is not possible, we are excited to share a few reviews for books that not only have captured the imaginations of readers but also reflect the trends and interests of the past decade. The Wild Robot speaks to the continued popularity of YA science fiction and middle grades literature, and as reviewer Katie Caprino notes, it also offers opportunities to explore thoughtful and relevant essential questions regarding family, humanity, and the other. A.S. King’s award-winning Dig demonstrates YA’s ability to address serious issues such as mental health, generational dysfunction, and white supremacy in an inventive narrative. Finally, Anna-Marie McLemore’s Self-Made Boys reflects the trend of adapting and reimagining stories to be more relevant for current times. We hope you enjoy the books we opted to highlight for this issue, and we look forward to see what the next decade brings us in young adult literature.
Welcome to Study & Scrutiny, Issue 7.1. For the 10th anniversary issue of Study and Scrutiny, we present a robust issue combined with recent scholarship and selected articles representing ten years of this journal’s contributions to the field of Research on Young Adult Literature.
This qualitative study uses semi-structured interviews with 26 adult readers of the Harry Potter series, to explore how pleasure reading in childhood and adolescences impacts reading lives, autonomy, competency, and relatedness years after first engaging with a text. Looking at Harry Potter as a shared cultural experience allows for comparisons of reading experiences and narratives across study participants. Using Ryan and Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory, I argue for the examination into how pleasure reading in adulthood is impacted by childhood and adolescent autonomous relationships with texts. In addition, I explore how rereading the Harry Potter series has influenced participants’ life choices and cultivated long-term relationships with the texts.
This interview with Jeffrey Kaplan, past president of ALAN (2012-2013), delves into his professional journey, experiences with ALAN, and his unwavering dedication to promoting Young Adult (YA) literature. Dr. Kaplan shares his path from teaching high school to working alongside influential figures like Ted Hipple, Gary Salvner, Jerry Weiss, Don Gallo, and many others, highlighting ALAN's evolution from a grassroots initiative to a nationally recognized organization. He discusses the significance of The ALAN Review as a peer-reviewed journal, its achievements, and areas for growth, particularly in fostering research and public awareness of YA literature. Throughout, Kaplan emphasizes ALAN's core belief: it is more important that kids are reading than what kids are reading, underscoring the crucial role of YA literature in inspiring young people and addressing contemporary social issues.
Drawing on Foucault’s examination of the gaze as a disciplinary mechanism, and de Certeau’s discussion of how people use tactics to resist oppressive power systems, this article advocates reading the gaze in young adult dystopian fiction. To illustrate the complex readings that doing so makes possible, the author examines three young adult dystopias—M. T. Anderson’s Feed, Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, and Corey Doctorow’s Little Brother—to demonstrate how they depict adolescents as having varying degrees of agency to resist the gaze. To conclude, the author discusses the implications for teachers and students of reading the gaze in young adult literature.
In this article, a reprint from S&S 1.1, the authors posit the avenue of young adult literature as an untapped resource for cultivating students’ knowledge of social theories and their recognition of societal inequities. Combining specific perspectives of social justice education and young adult literature can be a rich and engaging experience for students, as these contemporary texts afford for multiple layers of analysis. To learn more of the context supporting this work, read Terri Suico’s interview with Ashley Boyd in this issue.
This study examines how YA literature, featuring characters with anxiety disorders, can serve as a resource to support teachers’ and students’ understanding and discussions about mental health, while creating spaces to discuss these topics and promoting activism against stigma and misconceptions about mental illness. Two novels, “You Asked for Perfect” and “Under Rose-Tainted Skies,” were analyzed using critical discourse analysis and Vygotsky’s constructivism. The findings suggest that YA literature can enhance understanding of mental health, stimulate discussions about mental illness, foster empathy, and serve as a valuable resource for teachers and students in promoting mental health literacy and challenging stigma.
This article is a May 28, 2015, National Writing Project (NWP) interview with Newbery Award-winning author Kwame Alexander about contributions made to yearlong professional development collaboration between K-8 teachers at Hill Central in New Haven, Connecticut, and Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University. The interview, A Talk with Kwame Alexander, which aired on BlogTalkRadio ,is now available in its entirety via Apple Podcasts.
Former high school teacher and current teacher educator and young adult literature researcher Ashley Boyd provides a thoughtful examination of her scholarly interests and how they prompted her to co-author the books Reading for Action and Reading for Justice with Janine Darragh. She also discusses the possibilities that young adult literature holds when teaching students about social justice and how teachers can explore these possibilities with their students at a time when books and education are under immense scrutiny.
