When it comes to being productive allies and co-conspirators with and for transgender people, the authors have been particularly drawn to "George" (Gino, 2015), perhaps the first mass-marketed, #OwnVoices novel with a young transgender protagonist, a White fourth-grade transgender girl named Melissa. This article investigates the…

The Harry Potter series focuses upon the toilet as a site for heroic action and a threshold between worlds as well as a more traditional place for boys to be bullied and girls to weep. This article offers a Kristevan reading of the toilets as abject in Harry Potter, and shows how this concept helps us make sense of wider issues within the series,…

In Toni Morrison's fiction, codes, values, and standards are the polar opposite of those set forth and accepted by the dominant (white) culture. The work must be approached from an anthropological perspective, a holistic approach. (LHW)

David Treuer's debut novel, "Little" (1995), is set on a Minnesota reservation, centering around a dilapidated housing tract that its small community of residents call "Poverty." Aptly named both for the condition and background of the housing, this name is the first pointer to the type of multifaceted reading that the novel…

Twelve adolescent novels with the theme of obesity were selected for critical analysis. The novels were assessed for readability and to determine the approach to overweight portrayed by writers. The books were also examined in light of the concept of lookism prejudice. Recommendations were offered to teachers and counselors for use of these books…

Gives a brief biography of Will Weaver, author of young adult fiction, and a detailed review of Weaver's "Striking Out" and its sequel "Farm Team." Explains that the two novels focus on a young adult's family life and his aspiration to excel as a baseball player on the middle school team. (TB)

Depending primarily on Joseph Campbell's treatment of the quest or hero myth, this paper provides analyses of recent women's fiction in terms of contemporary women's quests for personal identity and freedom. Following discussions of a proposed definition of myth, its connotations, and its use as a literary device and as a tool for critical…

Generally accepted interpretations and criticisms of Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" since the 1920s are chronicled and critiqued from the point of view of an admitted "Finnophile". (MSE)

Noting that romances are the first reading choice of noncollege educated women and the second choice among college-educated women, this study examined the rhetorical visions of male/female relationships on romances and found they have reflected social changes and the movement from patriarchy to equality of the sexes. (PD)

Examines the contemporary young adult novels of four authors. Shows that studying these novels, which have believable teenage characters, can help the young to see cruelty as selfish, stupid, or vicious, and to become aware of and control their own cruel impulses. (RL)

Selects seven journal articles that feature young adult novels and, in the commentary, covers a topic of importance in the teaching of adolescent literature: theory, social issues, history, exposition, and practice. Contains a summary of each novel, a summary of the accompanying article, as well as information about the journal and the article…

General Systems Theoy is a contemporary discipline that profitably lends itself as a new approach to literature. Pioneered by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in Germany in the 1930s, the theory has had successful applications in the United States in philosophy, business, and urban planning. Applications of certain principles of systems theory to A.…

James Baldwin's special sense of his blackness enables him to combine Walt Whitman's awareness of urban wandering and Henry James' self-conscious cosmopolitanism in his books, particularly "Go Tell It on the Mountain." (BJV)

The work of a number of American literary critics on the novels of contemporary Spanish women are reviewed. It is argued that the criticism generally suffers from ethnocentrism and lacks insight into the reality of the lives of Spanish women. The works of Matute, Martin, Gaite, and Quiroga, among others, are discussed. (EF)

The versions of academic life portrayed in two recently published novels, "Small World" and "Coming from Behind," are compared and other aspects of the works' literary merit are discussed. (MSE)