Presents the third in a series of reviews and summaries of selected books for school-age children published since 1970. (HOD)

An in-depth qualitative study with nine secondary pre-service teachers from an undergraduate "Language and Literacy" class was conducted to examine the potential of simulation using Second Life (SL) in teacher education. Games and simulations were operationally defined in the broadest sense to distinguish key characteristics between…

A true story written by a teacher is presented. (CK)

When the health of her son deteriorated, the author was forced to give up a good job and work part-time from home. She had no choice but to become more creative, grasping the opportunity to revive her passion for writing. In this article, the author describes her experience in taking care of her son and how it gives her the opportunity to realize…

This article argues that the classification of adult fiction according to "genre" in public libraries causes more confusion than clarification. Whilst the system purports to model itself on bookstore design, the reality is that the actual arrangement is quite different. In the bookstore model, genre is a marketing category and not a…

North American children's authors have not been inclusive of characters with special needs when it comes to assigning the role of protagonist. While books with depictions of characters with identified exceptionalities have appeared on bookstore shelves and awards' lists, these characters have generally been relegated to subsidiary positions,…

In his frequently anthologized short story "The Sky Is Gray," Ernest J. Gaines presents a fictionalized account of a series of events that occurred in 1940s Louisiana when he was a mere boy suffering with a bad toothache. This physical ailment serves as a narrative catalyst, both driving the action and pulling the readers into a world…

Bibliographic classification is culturally bound. This research examines the classification systems created for social libraries in the first half of the nineteenth century in the United States. Social libraries are defined as institutions that have voluntary membership and are dependent on membership fees. Seventeen classified catalogs were…

In research with young people about their experiences of rural and urban environments, the authors were struck by how participants in their rural case study used fiction to explain their experiences. The participants' use of fiction lead the authors to an additional rich vein of empirical material and analysis not foreseen at the beginning of the…

Adolescence is a period of feeling like an outsider. Teenagers are literally outsiders in their bodies because they are unable to stop or control the physical changes that are happening. Laurence Yep, whether writing historical and contemporary fiction, science fiction, or fantasy, has outsider as the dominant theme in his writing.

This article discusses Philip Reeve's young adult science fiction novels as literary collages. It explores the ways in which the author uses postmodernisms to introduce big ideas and construct a compelling futuristic world that combines fast-paced adventure with the "bildungsroman".

This essay juxtaposes concepts created by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari with worlds imagined by Ursula Le Guin in a performance of "rhizosemiotic play" that explores some possible ways of generating and sustaining what William Pinar calls "complicated conversation" within the regime of signs that constitutes an increasingly internationalized…

Start-up Colorado publisher Capital Crime Press found rousing success in 2006. According to senior editor Alex Cole, in their first year of business, they had six new authors making a splash. Robert Fate's "Baby Shark", a gritty noir crime novel set in 1950s Texas that is a finalist for "Foreword" magazine's 2006 Book of the Year, got the biggest…

The purpose of this case study was to compare the pedagogical and affective efficiency and efficacy of creative prose fiction writing workshops taught via asynchronous computer-mediated online distance education with creative prose fiction writing workshops taught face-to-face in order to better understand their operational pedagogy and…

The theme of this year's conference was "Check Your Vision for the Future" with papers highlighting emerging changes in language use and literature, as well as suggestions for improving language teaching and maintenance in the future. The plenary speech was given by Dr. Katie Drager, followed by student presentations. Following a preface…