YA Literature
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Save the Children
Graeme Whiting, headmaster of the Acorn School (motto: “Have courage for the truth”) of Nailsworth, Great Britain, recently published a blog post condemning “sensational” fantasy novels such as the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Hunger Games series that…
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Ramona Quimby All Grown Up
Beverly Cleary guided generations of girls and boys alike through the rocky, messy, color- and dream-filled days of childhood with her long-running Ramona series, which manages to stay at the forefront of the children’s literary scene even fifty years after the…
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A Trip to Malory Towers
At Aeon, Nakul Krishna revisits Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers, a series of boarding school novels, for a glimpse at the ethics that join Blyton’s novels together.
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The Rumpus Interview with Manuel Gonzales
Manuel Gonzales talks about his new novel, The Regional Office is Under Attack!, transitioning from nonprofit work to teaching, and how to zig when a trope wants you to zag.
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YA Novels Help Parents Talk Sex
A discussion with your kid about the birds and the bees might be one of the more intimidating moments of parenthood, but YA novelists can lend a hand. When YA writers confront modern issues of sex, rape, consent, abuse, and gender, they help…
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New Ambassador for Young People’s Lit
The Library of Congress is, for the first time, naming a graphic novelist as the Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. The honor goes to Gene Luen Yang, author of the graphic novels American Born Chinese and Boxers & Saints, among…
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All Mixed Up
Is The Hunger Games feminist? Does it matter? Flavorwire’s Sarah Seltzer wonders whether we’re asking the wrong questions: It seduces us with a good-vs.-evil premise, but then muddies the entire thing in the gray fog of war.
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Anna March’s Reading Mixtape #5: Rad Girls
We should all implant these terrific girls in our brains. Reading excellent kid’s books as an adult reveals the world to us in new ways, reminds us of childhood and teaches us about our young selves from a new perspective.
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Survivor Literature
YA authors now find themselves walking the fine line between fiction and reality. They have a duty to portray illness accurately, as they must avoid harmfully romanticising dying…they must also be careful not to cross into territory which is too…
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In a World…
With so many contemporary young adult novels taking place in dystopian settings, we’re beginning to wonder whether it’s even possible to come of age in a world that isn’t on the brink of collapse. Soon enough, paragon network of teenage…
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Patriarchy’s Slow Unwinding
For the New York Times Magazine, A.O. Scott argues about the “slow unwinding” of patriarchy in American culture, drawing on modern television, history, and literature. In part responding to Ruth Graham’s essay at Slate, in which she urges against adults reading…
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(Un)death in Venice
Do you know what year the word “zombie” first stalked the English lexicon? Do you think you can provide your kids with a “psychologically safe context for contemplating a collapsed world”? Did you read the CDC’s memo on zombie preparedness…