This article offers a reading of Kate Darbishire's novel Speechless Stickhouse Publishing, London, 2018), following Harriet, a girl with cerebral palsy. It examines her irritation, born of her resentful awareness of her disability, as well as how she grapples with her life as an ordinary schoolgirl. The novel presents Harriet as an everyday child,…

This article reads contemporary Chinese children's author Yin Jianling's novels "The Paper Puppy" ("Zhiren") and "Orange Fish" ("Juzi Yu") alongside her letter collection "Fifteen Letters to Girls" ("Zhi Weilai de Ni") to explore the overarching themes of femininity, difference and female…

This paper considers the Twilight novels alongside the Vampire Academy books, as young adult readers regularly invoke these series as touchstones of the contemporary adolescent Gothic genre. The abiding appeal of these vampire novels is related to the ways they reflect the experiences of young adults with the rapacity and greed displayed in our…

When put together with the other parts of The Giver Quartet, "Son" (2012), Lowry's recently published concluding book, emerges as an odd exception to the focus on young adult protagonists since it foregrounds the mother's perspective and addresses the issue of motherhood. It presents the reader with at least three conceptual models of…

Discusses how "The Earthsea Trilogy" by Ursula LeGuin embodies her peculiar vision of awareness of the processes of human maturation in terms derived from the philosophies of Carl Jung and Tao. (HOD)

Examines how the two very different novels--"Millie's Boy" and "Father Figure"--treat the commonplace theme of the quest for mature identity in a similar but very uncommon fashion. (HOD)