San Antonio College Library

A collection of Michael Cart's favorite columns and speeches about young adult literature, how he has observed and participated in the growth of the genre, the changes it has undergone, and what he sees as its future. He talks about the importance of young adult literature in helping teens to navigate through the tough teen years, believing that books can change individual lives if they "constitute realistic literature inhabited by complex characters...

This survey helps YA librarians who want to freshen up their readers advisory skills, teachers who use novels in the classroom, and adult services librarians who increasingly find themselves addressing the queries of teen patrons.

"Trites argues that the development of the genre over the past thirty years is an out-growth of postmodernism, since YA novels are, by definition, texts that interrogate the social construction of individuals. Drawing on such nineteenth-century precursors as Little Women and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Disturbing the Universe demonstrates how important it is to employ poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing adolescent literature, both in...