"Battlestar Galactica," ABC-TV's prime-time science fiction series for 1978-79, illustrates how popular, mass media entertainment can communicate contradictory meanings that correlate with unresolved cultural tensions. The ambiguity of visual design is especially confusing because it is contrapuntal to the simplicity and clarity of the…

Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (1927) is a seminal film because of its concern, now generic, with the profound impact technological progress has on mankind's social and spiritual progress. As in many later science fiction films, the ascendancy of artifact over nature is depicted not as liberating human beings, but as subjecting and corrupting…

One of a series of children's books written from the point of view of an elementary grade child with a disability or other problem, the stories emphasize the similarities in childhood experience while providing information specific to the disability. In this book, fifth-grader Brian, who has epilepsy, finds that his misconceptions about a funeral…

This annotated bibliography of books published chiefly during 1989 contains a selection of picture books, fiction, and nonfiction designed to appeal to children, stimulate their imaginations, and meet their needs for information. Approximately 100 books are annotated and arranged first by age group and then alphabetically by title. Approximately…

Building on a prior investigation of users' formulations and needs in fiction, this study was conducted to determine dominant patterns in public library user-librarian search interactions. Based on analysis of 134 actual user-librarian conversations about fiction recorded under everyday library conditions in Danish public libraries in 1976, it was…

Suggests that the authors of a number of recent junior novels on the theme of race relations have been unable to break away from the narrow conventions and overt moralizing common to many other junior novels with other themes. Presents several specific examples to support the thesis. (TO)

The current undesirable preoccupation in children's books with social problems should be replaced by a return to traditional literature such as myths, folktales, and epics. (JH)

This paper suggests that college-level geography instructors use novels to help students understand how people have interacted with particular environments within particular periods of time. In addition, it offers excerpts from approximately 20 novels that deal with topics often treated in human (cultural) geography courses. The author suggests…

The purpose of this book is to provide a reasoned account of narrative structure, the elements of storytelling, and their combination and articulation. As explained in the introductory chapter, the "what" of narrative is the story, its events (actions, happenings) and existents (characters and settings); the "way" of narrative is discourse, or…