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Literature for Today's Young Adults, 8/E
Alleen P. Nilsen
Kenneth L. Donelson, Arizona State University

ISBN-10: 0205593232
ISBN-13: 9780205593231

Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
Copyright: 2009
Format: Cloth; 512 pp
Published: 04/07/2008

Suggested retail price: $124.80
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Thoroughly updated and with new features, Literature for Today's Young Adults, Eighth Edition, the number one book in Young Adult Literature, continues to help teachers learn how to motivate teenagers to become life-long readers.

 

Writing with the belief that students will have a better chance of becoming life-long readers if they have choices and enjoy what they read, renowned authors Alleen Nilsen and Ken Donelson offer a comprehensive, reader-friendly introduction to young adult literature framed within a literary, historical, and social context. The authors provide teachers with criteria for evaluating books of all genres, from poetry and nonfiction to mysteries, science fiction, and graphic novels. Coverage of timely issues such as pop culture and mass media have been added to help teachers connect with students' lives outside the classroom.

Packed with pedagogy to enhance student learning, the book includes:

  • An Honor List highlighting the best books of each year (1980-2007).
  • Nearly 50 Focus Boxes providing annotated bibliographies on such important new topics as “Buddies and Bullies,” “Newly Translated YA Books with Starred Reviews,” and “Literal Journeys/Figurative Quests.”
  • Additional Focus Boxes organized by time periods, e.g. “A Sampling of Good Books from the Seventies” and “100 Years of Accessible Adult Mysteries".
  • Issues and concerns about ethnicity worked into practically every chapter and focused on in Chapters 3, 8, 9, 10, and 11.
  • Nonfiction books incorporated in many chapters and focused on in Chapters 8 and 9.
  • A glossary of literary terms, recommended internet resources, and charts and tables to help with evaluation.
  • Recommended readings of scholarly work allowing students–ranging from beginners in the field to doctoral students–to move beyond the text and further explore the concepts being presented.

  • A brand new Chapter 3, “New Technologies, New Attitudes, and New Literacies,” examines both the challenges and the excitement faced by today’s educators.
  • The 20 Young Adult authors honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award over the past two decades each receive a one-page write-up documenting their long-lasting contributions.
  • Eight outstanding Young Adult Authors “Speak Out” on issues close to their hearts, e.g. Pat Mora on “Linguistic Wealth,” Cynthia Leitich Smith on “Hosting One-Point-Six Million Visitors in Cyberspace,” and Laurie Halse Anderson on “Censorship.”
  • Names and naming is discussed as a literary technique that teachers can use to introduce students to literary criticism that goes beyond just liking or not liking a book.

  • The following real young adult novels can be packaged with this text for a nominal charge; see Valuepacks for more information.

    ·      Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Mildred Taylor)

    ·      Speak (Laurie Halse Anderson) 

    ·      Peeps (Scott Westerfield)     

    ·      Rules of Survival (Nancy Werlin)

    ·      The Outsiders (SE Hinton)

Special Features xiv

Preface xvii

part one

Understanding Young Adults and Books 1

c h a p t e r 1

Young Adults and Their Reading 1

What Is Young Adult Literature? 1

A Word about Spoilers 9

Stages of Literary Appreciation 10

A University of Exeter Study on the Qualities of Good YA Books 17

The Honor List: The Best of the Best, 1980—2007 21

Notes 38

c h a p t e r 2

A Brief History of Young Adult Literature 39

1800—1900: A Century of Purity with a Few Passions 41

1900—1940: From the Safety of Romance to the Beginning of Realism 50

1940—1960: From Certainty to Uncertainty 59

1960—1980: Uncertainty Becomes Turbulence 65

Notes 75

c h a p t e r 3

New Technology, New Attitudes, and New

Literacies 77

A New Kind of Democracy with an Emphasis on Youth 84

Critical Literacy 92

Visual Literacy for the Eye Generation 95

Religious and Ethnic Literacy 95

Global Literacy 97

Deciding on the Literary Canon 103

Teaching Ethnic Literature 106

Notes 109

part two

Modern Young Adult Reading 111

c h a p t e r 4

Contemporary Realistic Fiction: From Tragedies to

Romances 111

What Do We Mean by Realism? 113

The Modern Problem Novel 114

What Are the Problems? 122

More Optimistic Novels 132

Concluding Comments 145

Notes 146

c h a p t e r 5

Poetry, Drama, Humor, and New Media 147

A New Day for Poetry 147

The Teaching of Poetry 154

Making Drama a Class Act 155

Humor Matters 163

Comic Books and Graphic Novels 174

Video Games as Interactive Literature 177

Concluding Comments 182

Notes 182

c h a p t e r 6

Adventure, Sports, Mysteries, and the

Supernatural 183

Adventure Stories 183

Sports and the Game of Life 193

Mysteries 198

Stories of the Supernatural 208

Concluding Comments 214

Notes 214

c h a p t e r 7

Fantasy, Science Fiction, Utopias, and

Dystopias 215

What Is Fantasy? 216

What Is Science Fiction? 231

Utopias and Dystopias 238

Concluding Comments 241

Notes 242

c h a p t e r 8

History and History Makers: Of People and

Places 243

Historical Fiction 243

Westerns 255

Books about War 259

Literature of the Holocaust 267

Books about Vietnam 272

Concluding Comments 276

Notes 276

c h a p t e r 9

Nonfiction: Information, Literary Nonfiction, Biographies,

and Self-Help Books 277

Information Books 278

Narrative or Storytelling in Nonfiction 279

Memoirs and Personal Experiences 291

Biographies 293

Autobiographies 298

Nonfiction to Help Teenagers Learn Who They Are and

Where They Fit 299

Outstanding Authors of Nonfiction for Young Adults 304

Concluding Comments 310

Notes 310

part three

Adults and the Literature of Young Adults 311

c h a p t e r 1 0

Evaluating, Promoting, and Using Young Adult

Books 311

A Report on Our Survey of 266 Teens 312

Borrowing a Philosophy from Teachers of Physical Education 320

Ways of Teaching While Offering Students Choices 322

Evaluating and Promoting Young Adult Literature 334

Young Adult Literature in the Library 337

Young Adult Books in the Reading Classroom 346

Young Adult Books in the Social Studies Classroom 349

Parents and Young Adult Literature 351

Clarifying Human Relations and Values 352

Concluding Comments 354

Notes 354

c h a p t e r 1 1

Young Adult Literature in the English Class 355

Principles of Teaching English 355

Using Young Adult Literature in English Classes 357

Using Short Stories 361

Using Novels 366

Literature Circles 369

Using Young Adult Literature in Creative Writing 374

Thematic Units 381

Film and Television 383

Concluding Comments 385

Notes 386

c h a p t e r 1 2

Censorship: Of Worrying and Wondering 387

A Censorial Spirit 387

A Sampling of Early Attitudes toward Censorship 390

More Recent Attitudes on Censorship 393

Some Assumptions about Censorship and Censors 394

Attacks on Materials 397

Some Court Decisions Worth Knowing 402

A New Kind of Censorship 415

What to Do before and after the Censors Arrive 417

Concluding Comments 426

Notes 426

A Starter Bibliography on Censorship 427

a p p e n d i x A Glossary of Literary Terms Illustrated by YA Literature 433

a p p e n d i x B Book Selection Guides 439

a p p e n d i x C Some Outstanding Books and Articles about Young Adult

Literature 443

Acknowledgments 453

Authors, Critics, and Commentators Index 455

Subject Index 465

Title Index 467

 

Ken Donelson and Alleen Nilsen, professors of English at Arizona State University, became friends and colleagues before they met each other. They both earned their Ph.D. degrees at the University of Iowa from G. Robert Carlsen, a pioneer in the field of young adult literature. Ken was Carlsen’s first Ph.D. student, with Alleen coming along a decade later. When Alleen and her husband moved to Arizona State in 1973, one of the first people she visited was Ken because Professor Carlsen had talked about him in class and had recruited Alleen as a writer for the Arizona English Bulletin, which Ken was editing.

Nevertheless, Professor Carlsen was surprised when his two former students, who happened to find themselves in the same part of the country, started working together because he thought they were so different.  Ken writes like a historian, focusing on what’s old, while Alleen writes like a journalist, focusing on what’s new. And while Ken was a leader in fighting censorship, Alleen was a leader in fighting sexist language, which some people interpret as a form of censorship. She is the one who suggested they take turns with whose name goes first on each edition.  In spite of their differences, what they learned from Professor Carlsen brought them together in support of the academic study of young adult literature.  In 1973, they helped found ALAN (Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE); both have received ALAN’s Award for “Outstanding Contributions to the Field of Young Adult Literature,” and both served as presidents of ALAN. In 1974, they were the founding editors of The ALAN Newsletter, the forerunner of what is now The ALAN Review.  After proving that they respected each other and could work together, they applied to be coeditors of the English Journal, a job they held from 1980 to 1987 when they wrote the first edition of Literature for Today’s Young Adults.

Thanks to Ken’s knowledge of history and his interest in censorship, the book was more complete than other textbooks of the time which mostly focused on realistic problem novels–books sometimes identified as bildungsroman or

apprenticeship novels–which are still the books most obviously identified as YA. But what Ken and Alleen demonstrated was that every genre, from adventure and biography to mysteries, fantasy, poetry, and the supernatural, were being written for teenagers and deserved a place in schools and libraries. And because Alleen’s first job at Arizona State University was teaching in the Department of Library Science in the College of Education, it seemed natural for them to bring in the work of librarians and reading teachers as well as of English teachers.

What has kept Literature for Today’s Young Adults the leading textbook in the field is the authors’ continuing love and enthusiasm for their chosen field of study. For each edition they have highlighted new and interesting trends and illustrated them with lively discussions of well-written books. It has helped that they are well-rounded scholars and have remained active in education as a whole.

Ken has published over five hundred articles, mostly on censorship, YA books, and problems in teaching secondary English reflecting his thirteen years of teaching high school English in Iowa. His articles, as well as others related to college teaching, have appeared in such journals as Clearing House, English Journal, High School Journal, and School Library Journal. Ken collected YA books published from 1850 through 1950 and when he retired from ASU he donated some eight hundred historical YA books and a nearly complete run of The Dime Novel Round-Up to ASU’s Hayden Library. The collection is strong in books by Kirk Munroe, Ralph Henry Barbour, and John Tunis, and in two Stratemeyer Literary Syndicate heroes, Tom Swift and Nancy Drew.  Alleen has worked with her husband, linguistics Professor Don L. F. Nilsen, to promote a new approach to the teaching of vocabulary, as explained in Vocabulary Plus: High School and Up: A Source-Based Approach and Vocabulary Plus K—8: A Source-Based Approach (Pearson, 2004). Their Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor (Oryx/Greenwood) was chosen by the American Library Association as one of the twenty best reference books published in 2000. In 2007, they published Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature as part of the Scarecrow Series in Young Adult Literature, edited by Patty Campbell. Alleen is also the author of Joan Bauer, the first book in Greenwood Press’s series Teen Reads: Student Companions to Young Adult Literature (2007), edited by James Blasingame.

Why is Literature for Today’s Young Adults the number one book in Young Adult Literature?

 

Now in its eighth edition, Literature for Today’s Young Adults offers a comprehensive, reader-friendly introduction to young adult literature framed within a literary, historical, and social context. Renowned authors Alleen Nilsen and Kenneth Donelson provide teachers with practical criteria for evaluating books of all genres, from poetry and nonfiction to mysteries and graphic novels. The authors also include timely issues, such as pop culture and mass media, in order to help teachers connect with students’ lives beyond the classroom.

 

What is new to this edition?

  • A brand new Chapter 3, “New Technologies, New Attitudes, and New Literacies,” examines both the challenges and the excitement today’s educators face on a daily basis.
  • The 20 Young Adult authors honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award over the past two decades each receive a one-page write-up documenting their long-lasting contributions.
  • Eight outstanding Young Adult Authors “Speak Out” on issues close to their hearts; for example, Pat Mora on “Linguistic Wealth,” Cynthia Leitich Smith on “Hosting One-Point-Six Million Visitors in Cyberspace,” and Laurie Halse Anderson on “Censorship.”
  • Names and naming is discussed as a literary technique that teachers can use to introduce students to literary criticism that goes beyond just liking and disliking a book.

What do professors say about this top-selling book?

“The Donelson and Nilsen text is a virtual compendium of essential information for educators, librarians, and those who use literature in their work with young adults.”

-Beverly Hearn, University of Tennessee at Martin

 “The censorship chapter is really interesting and well-researched.”

          -Dr. Joy Wiggins, University of Texas at Arlington

 

View a Sample Chapter PDF: /samplechapter/0205593232.pdf

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