Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Keywords

African American children’s literacy, critical content analysis, young adult literature

Abstract

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Literacy Research, this article reviews the trajectory of a particular line of scholarship published in this journal over the past five decades. We focus on African diaspora youth literature to contemplate and extend the ways in which literacy researchers carry out textual analysis research of diverse children’s and young adult literature. We situate this line of scholarship (and its trajectory) within the broader literacy field and then narrow to a focus on diverse books. Next, to turn our gaze as literacy researchers forward to the future, we present our own critical content analysis of a young adult text collection. Our analysis incorporates postcolonial theory and a youth lens to interrogate how underlying ideologies identified within the novels support, refute, or reconstruct dominant beliefs about Black girls. We end with a set of implications for researchers interested in theorizing about or further investigating diverse children’s or young adult literature.

Publication Title

Journal of Literacy Research

Volume

50

Issue

1

First Page

9

Last Page

30

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X18754394

Required Publisher's Statement

Brooks, W., & Cueto, D. Contemplating and Extending the Scholarship on Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Journal of Literacy Research, 50(1), 9–30. Copyright © 2018 (SAGE Publications) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X18754394.

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

Rights Statement

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language

English

Format

application/pdf

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