Exploding the Myths

Marc Aronson is Editorial Director and Vice-President of Non-Fiction Content Development at Carus Publishing company and has written widely on young adult literature.

...this provocative collection of speeches and previously published essays challenges those who work with teenagers and their reading to shift paradigms, shatter illusions, and examine the essence of young adult literature...Librarians, teachers, students and professors of adolescent literature, publishers, editors, and authors need to read and contemplate this worthy companion to Michael Cart's excellent From Romance to Realism: 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature (HarperCollins, 1996).

• Chapter 1 Foreword by Bruce BrooksChapter 2 AcknowledgmentsChapter 3 IntroductionChapter 4 1 "The YA Novel Is Dead" and Other Fairly Stupid TalesChapter 5 2 The Three Faces of MulticulturalismChapter 6 3 The Challenge and the Glory of YA LiteratureChapter 7 4 The Journals JudgedChapter 8 5 How Adult Is Young Adult?Chapter 9 6 We Have Nothing to Lose but Our IsolationChapter 10 7 When Coming of Age Meets the Age That's Coming: One Editor's View of How Young Adult Publishing Developed in AmericaChapter 11 8 Exploring the Basement: The Artistic Challenge of YA LiteratureChapter 12 9 What Is Real about Realism? All the Wrong Questions about YA LiteratureChapter 13 10 The Power of WordsChapter 14 11 The Myths of TeenageChapter 15 12 Calling All Ye Printz and PrintzessesChapter 16 13 Puff the Magic Dragon: How the Newest Young Adult Fiction Grapples with a World in UpheavalChapter 17 14 What is YA, and What Is Its Future: Voice, Form, and Access— A Dialogue with Jacqueline WoodsonChapter 18 IndexChapter 19 About the Author