With the first edition of Reading Their World, editors Virginia Monseau and Gary Salvner dispelled the myth that young adult literature was an unsophisticated genre, unworthy of study in the secondary English classroom. They helped prove that young adult novels feature the same skilled craftsmanship as all good literature and focus on universal themes that are important to all readers, regardless of age.
In Monseau and Salvner's second edition, readers will find revised essays alluding to exciting new works, as well as wholly new chapters that expand the discussion of the young adult novel in the classroom. Of particular interest will be essays on literary response and interpretation, censorship, gender, multicultural concerns, and the uses of young adult novels to address matters of visual literacy. Sue Ellen Bridgers, Will Hobbs, and M.E. Kerr, well-known authors of books for young adults, detail their own processes of writing and speculate on the needs and interests of their audience. The book also offers a wealth of teaching recommendations such as how to make the literature class into a community of readers and how to integrate young adult novels into the traditional literature curriculum.
Best of all, Monseau and Salvner extend and enhance teacher knowledge with a new companion CD that comes packaged with the book. Featuring almost two thousand young adult titles, this bibliographic guide offers critiques and synopses from The ALAN Review to help you better plan and implement the study of young adult literature in your own classroom. Together, the book and CD provide the most extensive examination of young adult literature available today.
About the Author: Virginia Monseau is Professor Emerita of English at Youngstown State University, where she taught graduate and undergraduate courses in young adult literature, children's literature, composition, and English methods. She has published numerous books, articles, and reviews on young adult literature and the teaching of literature. A former high school teacher, she is a past editor of English Journal and a past president of ALAN, NCTE's Assembly on Literature for Adolescents. The series editor of Heinemann's Young Adult Novels in the Classroom Series, Monseau is also the author of Teaching the Selected Works of Robert Cormier (2007).
Gary Salvner, a former elementary and secondary school teacher, is a professor of English education and chair of the English department at Youngstown State University. He teaches courses in young adult and children's literature, English methods, and composition, and codirects the YSU English Festival, a nationally recognized program for encouraging and rewarding reading and writing among young people. Salvner is also a former president of ALAN and a former Ohio College English Language Arts Educator of the Year.
