Contemporary Children's and Young Adult Literature: Writing Back to History and Oppression
This book explores contemporary children’s and young adult novels writing back to history and oppression. Divided into three distinct yet interconnected parts, this thematic study analyses selected novels from across the globe, drawing on current critical debates to investigate how these narratives raise vital questions about identity, power and language. Examinations of children’s and young adult novels from Britain, Ireland, Sweden, the USA, Australia, and New Zealand offer fresh readings of established texts, and provide important critical perspectives on lesser-known works. The book also examines the use of genre in children’s and young adult literature, including crime fiction, dystopia, coming-of-age, and historical fiction. Addressing vital social justice themes in contemporary children’s and young adult novels, such as human trafficking, postcolonialism, disaster, trauma, and gender and race inequality, the book presents a critically informed analysis of these compelling literary works and their engagement with social and cultural debates.
Dr Charlotte Beyer, SFHEA, is Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. She has published widely on crime fiction, women’s writing, and contemporary literature, and is the author of a monograph on the crime short story, Murder in a Few Words (2020). She is also the author and editor of several volumes, including Teaching Crime Fiction (2018) Mothers without Their Children (with Andrea Robertson, 2019), Travellin’ Mama: Mothers, Mothering, and Travel (with Janet MacLennan, Dorsia Smith Silva, and Marjorie Tesser, 2019), Contemporary Crime Fiction: Crossing Boundaries, Merging Genres (2021), and Mothers Who Kill (with Josephine Savarese, 2022). She is the Editor-in-Chief of the book series Teaching the New English, and serves on the Editorial Boards for the journals American, British and Canadian Studies, Feminist Encounters, and The New Americanist.
"Charlotte Beyer’s volume […] employs modern, state-of-the-art critical approaches in its analysis of social justice as a theme that is dealt with from the perspective of class, race or gender, in genres ranging from coming-of-age to dystopia, and from experimental hybrid literary forms to detective or historical fiction. […] Readers and students of children’s and young adult literature will have a field day but will also learn much from Beyer’s knowledgeable and critically acute book."
Alexandra Mitrea Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania, in American, British and Canadian Studies 188
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