Margaret Meek Spencer's writings on literacy evoke reading and storymaking as processes of inquiring; of searching into mystery. This paper considers how Meek's preoccupations with reading process; genre literacy; and text-image dialogism resonate deeply with the genre of young people's mystery and detective fiction. Drawing on Meek's seminal…

Nicolás Guillén's "El gran zoo" (1967), illustrated by Fayad Jamís, was the first Hispanic bestiary to prominently feature humans in a space traditionally inhabited by beasts. Guillén's verses transform the bestiary from a didactic tool used for centuries to instruct and uniform society into a subversive text that openly denounces the…

There is a new "genre" of literature that is aimed explicitly at adults and children, or sometimes simply at adults, which follow the formula of the picture book: the inclusion of a simple text accompanying provocative images, and sometimes images alone. On the surface they may seem best suited for the "children's section" of a…

The article deals with the analysis of literary narrative where a possible unreal fictional world and a possible real fictional world usually coexist. When the norms of life plausibility are consciously violated, the real and the unreal possible worlds are emphatically opposed. Hence, their certain aspects are depicted in a fantastically…

By reclaiming the power of self-definition and the use of the term "travesti" to designate their unique experience within the Latin American cultural, economic, and political context, "travesti" intellectuals have fought the dehumanization of their personhood. In her novel "Las malas," the Argentine author Camila Sosa…

Reading motivation is a fundamental basis for reading behavior and performance. For learners, interest is an exceedingly important component of reading motivation. Prior research has shown that students' text-based interest varies significantly between texts. However, it is still unclear why one text elicits greater interest over another.…

Gareth B. Matthews (1929-2011) inaugurated the study of philosophy in children's literature by simultaneously arguing (1) that philosophy is essentially an encounter with certain kinds of perplexities, (2) that genuine philosophical perplexities are readily found in many children's stories, and (3) that many children are capable of appreciating…

Literature in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts is used for language development and intercultural understanding. However, the role of literature, specifically short stories (SSs), in shaping cultural representations of the U.S. in EFL teacher preparation programs (TPPs) remains unclear. This study examines how U.S. SSs in an English…

The 21 century has witnessed the emergence of the very short story (or "short" short story) genre called flash fiction, which has been receiving considerable attention in the digital age. Although flash fiction is a short form of narrative that may be told in less than 700 or 100 words, it is assumed to have the essential story details,…

This article examines the cultural and philosophical significance of code switching in the formulation of diasporic identity in Edward Said's "Out of Place" (1999) and Fawaz Turki's "Exile's Return: The Making of a Palestinian-American" (1994). It argues that exilic Palestinian writers' use of code-switching pursues various…

This article explores the topic of adulthood within children's literature. Because adults author, illustrate, and produce children's literature, adults construct what childhood looks like, as well as the degree of diverse representation within children's texts. The varied, and sometimes conflicting, depictions of child characters reveal the…

This paper explores how two short stories from very different backgrounds conclude in a significant epiphany for the characters. Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral" and Alice Walker's "Everyday Use" are studied to see how the husband in Carver's work is blinder than his visually-impaired overnight guest, and the…

This paper employs narrative discourse analysis to analyze Edger Allen Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" by using two narrative analysis frameworks that focus on the macrostructure (Stein, 1982) and microstructure (Halliday & Hasan, 1976) aspects of the story. The analysis covers the story's purpose, generic structure, and…

This study is based on the results of the research which aimed (1) to identify the cohesive devices used by Leo Tolstoy in "A grain as Big as a Hen's Egg as proposed by Halliday & Hasan and (2) to find whether substitution and ellipsis from the same story could be identified by the seven English Major students doing the Discourse Analysis…

The paper intends to reread Jamaica Kincaid's short story, 'Girl' (1978) and provide new insights into its understanding. It aims to analyse the poetic qualities, word choice, and structure of the text that are left not fully discussed by recent scholarship. The structure as well as the poetic language of 'Girl' make it an unconventional piece of…