This study examines illustrations of girls in Israeli children's literature of the years 1948-2019. 54 illustrated books for children in which the image of a girl is at the center were analyzed. The illustrations were examined according to two key periods: 1940s-1976, and 1977-2019. The research findings did not confirm the conventional…

Where and how do I belong? As Erin Spring (2016a) notes in her examination of space, place, and youth engagement with literature, "young adult fiction is fraught with implications for identity, of which place often takes center stage" (p. 432). Yet despite the ubiquity of adolescent characters' negotiations within and across physical and…

Situated within the changing economic and political contexts of China's modernization and globalization, children's fantasy novels prove to be apt vehicles for exploring the plights and challenges that women and girls face in the new millennium in China. This article provides a feminist critique of two contemporary Chinese children's fantasy…

Media platforms frequently report on "Black Lives Matter" in order to raise awareness about institutional racism. However, these platforms often focus on African American male teenagers (Trayvon Martin in a hoodie and "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" for Michael Brown). Noticeably absent are images of Black girls. As a response to these…

Novels from the "Dear Canada" series of historic fiction, published by Scholastic Canada, currently populate the shelves of school classrooms and libraries across Canada. This study explores two "Dear Canada" novels that chronicle significant moments in Atlantic Canadian history: Janet McNaughton's novel (Flame and ashes: The…

The importance of stories written for young readers is undisputed, and in particular the central place of the fairy story in popular culture is clearly recognized. Whilst most of these stories are centuries old, they have been adapted by the cultures of the tellers to be more compatible with the ideological views of the audience. This article will…

Advice books by female athletes are among the top selling sports books for young readers in the US. Though they have received little attention to date, sports advice books are important to examine because of how they function as a form of conduct manual instructing girls in specific understandings of female identity. Implying that girls face…

This paper explores the representation of magic and madness in Justine Larbalestier's "Magic or Madness" trilogy (2005-2007). Throughout the series, magic is constructed as an abject and disabling force that threatens to disable magic-wielders, either through madness or death. Despite being represented as a ubiquitous force, the…

Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" Saga has achieved extraordinary popularity and scholars have interrogated the nature of its appeal from a variety of perspectives. Its popularity raises questions because in many ways it mirrors romantic fictions from the 1960s and 1970s. Such fictions have been read by critics as expressions of female…

Combining feminist and narratological perspectives, this paper examines the construction of subjectivity in two young adult novels with a range of narratorial positions. The investigation is grounded in Robyn McCallum's work on intersubjectivity, in which interrelationships affecting subjectivity are only possible when the narrative permits a…

Susan Price's "Odin Trilogy" (2005-2008) is a juvenile science fiction series that depicts a future where class relations have become polarised due to late capitalist and technological developments and where ways of doing gender continue to be strongly connected with class. The society in the novels is based on slavery: people are either…

It is presumed that readers of Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" enjoy the sexual tension between Bella and Edward; a tension that remains unresolved until the couple are married. This very traditional solution to the couple's carnal desires is just one of many ways in which the novels adhere to the conventions of romance writing for young people.…

This paper offers a comparative analysis of two characters belonging to the tradition of empowered "spinster" in children's fiction, namely Mary Poppins and Ms Wiz, from the perspective of gender politics and child/adult interactions. A distinction is made between the figure portrayed in P. L. Travers' texts and the Disney film starring Julie…

Scott O'Dell's "Island of the Blue Dolphins" tells the archetypal story of the young, virgin, orphan girl who is vulnerable to either debauchery or rescue. That such a girl must succumb to either one or the other is a necessary element of the archetype. In O'Dell's work--one intended, after all, for children--the heroine is rescued by a…

This article compares the first-person narratives of two adolescent girls in the novels "The Rain Catchers" and "The House on Mango Street". I propose that adolescent girls can use literacy to read the world around them as a text and therefore help them to form their own identities enough to ultimately find authority in telling their own stories.…