Constructing the Adolescent Reader in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction (Critical Approaches to Children's Literature)

This book examines the way young adult readers are constructed in a variety of contemporary young adult fictions, arguing that contemporary young adult novels depict readers as agents. Reading, these novels suggest, is neither an unalloyed good nor a dangerous ploy, but rather an essential, occasionally fraught, by turns escapist and instrumental, deeply pleasurable, and highly contentious activity that has value far beyond the classroom skills or the specific content it conveys. After an introductory chapter that examines the state of reading and young adult fiction today, the book examines novels that depict reading in school, gendered and racialized reading, reading magical and religious books, and reading as a means to developing civic agency. These examinations reveal that books for teens depict teen readers as doers, and suggest that their ability to read deeply, critically, and communally is crucial to the development of adolescent agency. Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Introduction: Young Adults, Reading, and Young Adult Reading (Elisabeth Rose Gruner)....Pages 1-24 Reading in School (Elisabeth Rose Gruner)....Pages 25-49 Misreading the Classics: Gender, Genre, and Agency in YA Romance (Elisabeth Rose Gruner)....Pages 51-84 “Dreaming Themselves into Existence”: Reading and Race (Elisabeth Rose Gruner)....Pages 85-111 Magic, Prophetic, and Sacred Books: Making Communities of Readers (Elisabeth Rose Gruner)....Pages 113-140 Reading, Resistance, and Political Agency (Elisabeth Rose Gruner)....Pages 141-171 Epilogue: Reading Reading in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Elisabeth Rose Gruner)....Pages 173-183 Back Matter ....Pages 185-192