Category Archives: Young Adult

February 04

“The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author”: Or, Ron + Hermione 4-Ever

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One more reason I love my job: I spent my January sitting around a conference table talking with students about book covers, fan fiction, and the role of the “Author” and “Reader” in contemporary culture. My “Culture of the Book” class is always a favorite to teach – it’s based on my own research interests […]

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August 05

Eleanor and Park

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I originally hail from outside of Omaha, Nebraska, so when I recently read about a YA novel by one-time columnist at The Omaha World-Herald, Rainbow Rowell, my curiosity was piqued.  And when I learned that it was also set in Omaha, my intentions to read it were sealed.  Omaha does not often play the backdrop […]

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August 02

I Capture the Castle

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Despite considering myself an Anglophile, I was somehow unaware of Dodie Smith’s 1949 novel I Capture the Castle until recently, when Jen W., a member of my book group, told the rest of us in the most strenuous terms that we must read it immediately. I quickly learned why it is capable of generating such […]

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July 19

China Miéville’s Mental Calisthenics

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Miéville stretches me. Reading his fiction is like doing yoga of the imagination. With each twinge and contortion, I discover mental muscles I didn’t know I had. His fiction defies categorization: it is fantasy and horror and science fiction and biting sociopolitical critique, all in one heady jumble. Miéville has won several Arthur C. Clarke […]

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What Kids Aren’t Reading

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I recently read an article on NPR’s “monkey see” blog called “What Kids Are Reading” that discusses trends in high school students’ reading habits.  The thrust of the article is that high school students are not reading at their grade level; neither their own leisure-reading choices nor their reading assignments in school tend to be as […]

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June 11

This is Not a Cancer Book

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There have been a lot of YA cancer books–I mean a lot: Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper, Lurlene McDaniel’s If I Should Die Before I Wake, Jenny Downham’s Before I Die, and Lois Lowry’s A Summer to Die (that is just to name a few). These books depict teenagers who battle valiantly, sometimes fighting the odds but other times enduring […]

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