Discusses young adult novels and presents a bibliography to acquaint librarians with titles and authors that are suitable for emerging young adult readers in grades five through nine. Subject categories include realistic fiction, in the news, historical fiction, short stories, legendary characters, mysteries, science fiction/fantasy/horror, and…

This response to Sconiers and Rosick's article discusses the value of their use of a fictionalized case study as a way to imagine questions about teaching practice. Suggests that comparison of this possible world with actual events can lead to questioning of habits, attitudes and practices. (Contains 26 references.) (SK)

While working to finish the first chapter of her dissertation, Robin Smiles was offered the opportunity to travel oversees. As a chaperone for a group of college students to Athens, Greece, she was free to pursue research for the first chapter of her dissertation, once she had successfully accompanied the students to Athens and assisted with their…

The Pinis are creating a vast and intricate saga to stories involving different groups of elves, trolls, and humans. In the fall of 2004, the conversation between Fiction Reviews Editor Julie Scordato and the Pinis about ElfQuest and their perspective on the student artist is presented.

Changes in television technology have fostered changes in how we view fiction on television. This article explores some of these changes in the context of the teenage series, "Felicity" (WBTV, 1998-2002). It draws comparisons with the experience of reading series fiction in print, referring to the children's print series, "The Beverly Gray College…

Numerous children face abuse at home and in the workplace. These situations of domestic and societal abuse are found depicted in children's books for younger and younger ages. This manuscript examines books in several genres, both fiction and non-fiction. The books are analyzed for the quality of the writing, the depiction of an authentic story,…

The use of science fiction for teaching thermodynamics to introductory students is described. The universality and the tremendous predictive power of thermodynamics is demonstrated.

In the picture book "Shortcut" (1995), the mediated telling of the fabula (the story) by David Macaulay results in a nonlinear and nonsequential syuzhet (the plot). Several metafictive devices used in the construction of the syuzhet of "Shortcut" draw attention to its status as text and fiction. Although researchers and theorists have written…

Orson Scott Card's school stories in outer space, "Ender's Game" and "Ender's Shadow," purportedly occur at the same time and tell the "same" story, but from the perspectives of two different child protagonists. Scenes in "Ender's Shadow" even reproduce text from "Ender's Game." Nevertheless, 14 years elapsed between the publications of the two…

This paper examines six recent retellings of Robin Hood and concentrates on the representation of class, religion and gender in the texts. The question is asked: "what values do the texts implicitly or explicitly arm?" The idea that Robin Hood retellings are systematic of a socially and politically conservative ideology is interrogated by…

In this article, the author discusses several myths about vacuum cleaners and offers tips on evaluating and purchasing this essential maintenance tool. These myths are: (1) Amps mean performance; (2) Everyone needs high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA): (3) Picking up a "bowling ball" shows cleaning power; (4) All vacuum bags are the same; (5)…

This report describes four preservice secondary teachers' fictional accounts about mathematics classrooms. The narrative structures and meanings of the preservice teachers' stories, written while the preservice teachers were enrolled in a secondary methods course, were examined with the goal of gaining insight into the preservice teachers'…

With the explosion of technology, librarians are not the only ones who sometimes feel that reading has taken a backseat as a recreational activity. Readers are not reading like they used to. However, while overall readership is down in almost every demographic group, African-Americans, a faction traditionally considered reluctant readers, are…

In this article, the authors offer a series of strategies to help teachers integrate literature into their history and social studies classrooms without losing the flavor or essence of either the literature they are using or the history they are trying to teach. None of the presented approaches is mutually exclusive of the others, and several may…

Here we explore the educational implications of classroom activities related to the backgrounds and motivations of talented Hollywood comedy writers and the mathematical moments they created for the Emmy Award-winning animated sitcom "Futurama." (Contains 6 figures.)