Gender(ed) Identities - Critical Rereadings of Gender in Children's and Young Adult Literature

This volume brings together diverse, cross-disciplinary scholarly voices to examine gender construction in children''s and young adult literature. It complements and updates the scholarship in the field by creating a rich, cohesive examination of core questions around gender and sexuality in classic and contemporary texts. By providing an expansive treatment of gender and sexuality across genres, eras, and national literature, the collection explores how readers encounter unorthodox as well as traditional notions of gender. It begins with essays exploring how children''s and YA literature construct communities formed by gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and in face-to-face and virtual spaces. Section II''s central focus is how gendered identities are formed, unpacking how texts for young readers ranging from Amish youth periodicals to the blockbuster Divergent series trace, reproduce, and shape gendered identity socialization. In section III, the essential literary function of tr