Table of Contents

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

Chapter 1: Introduction

Section 1: Gender(ing) Communities
Chapter 2: History Repeating Itself: The Portrayal of Female Characters in Young Adult Literature at the Beginning of the Millennium (Suico)
Chapter 3: Girls Online: Representations of Femininity in the Digital Age (Flanagan)
Chapter 4: Academic Agency in YA Novels by Mexican American Women Authors (Cummins)
Chapter 5: Queer Consciousness/Community in David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing: “One the Other Never Leaving” (Matos)

Section 2: Developing Gender(ed) Identities
Chapter 6: “What Defines Me?” – Performativity, Gender and Ethnicity in Korean American YA Fiction (Lee and Stephens)
Chapter 7: Gendered Stories, Advice, and Narrative Intimacy and Amish Young Adult Literature (Brown)
Chapter 8: One Choice, Many Petals: Reading the Female Voice of Tris in the Divergent series (Jennings)
Chapter 9: Who Is a Girl? The Tomboy, the Lesbian, and the Transgender Child (Friddle)

Section 3: Gendered Trauma, Loss, and Healing
Chapter 10: Pedophobia and the Orphan Girl in Pollyanna and A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning (Tribunella)
Chapter 11: "Kindred Spirits": Vulnerability as the Key to Transformative Female Relationships in L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (Pilmaier)
Chapter 12: Speaking the Bitter Truth: The Role of the Creative Imagination in the Process of Healing (Mallan)

Section 4: Complicating Sexuality and Romance
Chapter 13: Paradise Contested: Sexuality and Sacrifice in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials (Zanichkowsky)
Chapter 14: Growing Up Girl: A Rhetoric of Restrained Empowerment in American Girl's Self-Help Books about Puberty (De La Cruz)
Chapter 15: Gender and the Perfected Female in the Contemporary Resurrection Allegory of Breaking Dawn (Casper)
Chapter 16: Masculinity and Romantic Myth in Contemporary YA Romance (Clasen)

Section 5: Gender/Genre, Texts, and Contexts
Chapter 17: When the Slipper Doesn't Fit: Construction of the 'Ugly' Female in Cinderella Picture-Book Illustrations 1800-2015 (Wildermuth and Robinson)
Chapter 18: Girls Write Back: Feminism and Disordered Writing (Bherer)
Chapter 19: Freedom in Fantasy?: Gender Restrictions in Children’s Literature (Long)
Chapter 20: Hungry for Change: Lessons from The Hunger Games as Consciousness-Raising (Egan)

About the Author

Tricia Clasen is Professor of Communication and Theater Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Rock County, USA.





Holly Hassel is Professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County, USA.