Young Adult Literature, Libraries, and Conservative Activism.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (163 pages)
- Beta Phi Mu Scholars Series .
- Beta Phi Mu Scholars Series .
Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1 How to Read a Young Adult Novel -- What Is YA Literature? -- Golden Age or Dark Age? Histories of Young Adult Literature -- Early and Foundational YA Novels -- YA Goes to School: Young Adult Literature in the Academy -- The Politics of Reading: How to Read YA (and This Book) -- Notes -- 2 Constructing the Teenage Reader -- "These Kids Today": Myths and Stereotypes about Contemporary Teenagers -- Reading in Theory -- Reading in Decline or Reading on the Rise? -- Print and Digital Literacies -- The Politics of Research: Teens and Reading in the Cultural Crossfire -- Notes -- 3 Tending the Fair Garden -- Youth Services Librarianship and Literary Aesthetics -- Defending the Canon: Realism versus Fantasy -- The Rise of YA Librarianship: Defending Teens' Freedom to Read -- Notes -- 4 Bibliotherapy and the Problem Novel -- The Rise of the New Realism -- The Problem with Problem Novels -- "Darkness Too Visible" -- Triggering the Real -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 5 The Uses of Pleasure -- Pleasure and Reading Motivation -- Libraries and Popular Literature -- Popular Reading, Dangerous Reading -- YA as Pop Literature -- Intellectual Freedom and Reading Research -- Notes -- 6 "No Longer Safe" -- The Pro-Family Movement and Conservative Library Activism -- Sexual Conservatives, Pornography, and Information -- The Trouble with Harry -- Lessons from West Bend -- Notes -- 7 Do We Dare Disturb the Universe? -- Teen Readers Unite -- The Politics of Reading -- YA Literature and Social Change -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author.
Young Adult Literature, Libraries, and Conservative Activism analyzes young adult (YA) literature as a cultural phenomenon, explaining why this explosion of books written for and marketed to teen readers has important consequences for proponents of teen literacy. It explains how YA literature has become a lightning rod for a variety of aesthetic, pedagogical, and popular literature controversies and illustrates why teachers and librarians have a stake in promoting and defending it. Noted scholar Loretta Gaffney not only examines how YA literature is defended and critiqued within the context of rapid cultural and technological changes, but also highlights how struggles about teen reading matter to--and matter in--the future of librarianship and education.