Alt Kid Lit

Kenneth B. Kidd is professor of English at University of Florida. He is author of three books, most recently Theory for Beginners: Children’s Literature as Critical Thought, and coeditor of four essay collections. With Elizabeth Marshall, he coedits Routledge's Children's Literature and Culture series. Derritt Mason is associate professor of English at the University of Calgary. They are author of Queer Anxieties of Young Adult Literature and Culture. Kidd and Mason are coeditors of Queer as Camp: Essays on Summer, Style, and Sexuality.

Alt Kid Lit is precisely what the field of children’s and young adult literature scholarship needs: a bold, provocative, and exciting collection of essays that embrace nuanced, self-interrogating perspectives. It takes a necessary cannon to the concept of the canon". - Katharine Slater, associate professor of English at Rowan University"A vital provocation for scholars of children’s and young adult literature, in which twenty-three sharp thinkers challenge us to expand our definitions, center the underrepresented, and redraw the boundaries that haunt the field. As the essays in Alt Kid Lit demonstrate, if you want to change the paradigm, you first need to take the risks that lead to new ways of thinking. So. Accept that challenge. Start by reading this book." - Philip Nel, author of Was the Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books"Alt Kid Lit asks us to think nimbly as it explores and challenges the borders of an evolving field, the study of texts for young people. This collection entices readers to consider the ways in which we delineate our discipline, what counts as scholarship, what makes a text worthy of critical attention, and which texts and young people are relegated to the margins. In the process, it complicates existing definitions of child agency, authorship, and readership by offering up new approaches and modes of thinking that expand, nuance, and trouble current assumptions about young people’s texts and cultures." - Annette Wannamaker, coordinator of the Children’s Literature Program at Eastern Michigan University

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionKenneth B. Kidd and Derritt MasonPart I. Alt GenreKid Lit from beyond the Grave: Spiritualism, Child Mediums, and the Haunting Problem of Child AgencyVictoria Ford SmithSinging a "Sea Island Song": Alice Childress’s Responsive Black TheaterKatharine CapshawThe Seductions of Little Red Riding Hood: On the Thresholds of Children’s DrawingsJakob RosendalSnanger Danger: SS/HG Fanfiction, Kinship, and an Affinity Space Model of Children’s and Young Adult LiteratureAmanda K. AllenZine Ecoactivism and Pedagogies of Hope in World War 3 Illustrated #46Brianna AndersonEmergency Children’s Literature: Some Observations on Pandemic Picture BooksGabriel DuckelsThe Case of Jonny’s Genre: An Interview with Joshua WhiteheadDerritt MasonPart II. Alt MediumYA Literature, Plus Ultra: A Case Study of the Shōnen Anime My Hero AcademiaBrandon MurakamiFrom Melodrama to Kitschy Romance: Alt Kid Media in India and PakistanTehmina Pirzada"Bizarre Creatures" and the Fans Who Love Them: The Dark Crystal as Alternative Children’s CulturePaige GrayVideo Games and Young People’s Digital Cultures: A Panel DiscussionKristopher Alexander, Negin Dahya, TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Catherine Burwell, and Derritt MasonPart III. Alt EpistemologyThe Alt Within: Queerness, Psychoanalysis, and Children’s Literature as Enigmatic SignifierNatasha Hurley"We’re Americans Too!": Contingencies and Contradictions in Picture Books about Japanese American IncarcerationGabrielle Atwood HalkoRetomando el Día de los Muertos: Death, Life, and Latinx Epistemology in Children’s LiteratureCristina RhodesReimagining the "Alternative": Sustaining Representation of Indigenous People and People of Color through Speculative Fiction in The Marrow Thieves and MañanalandErica Law-Montes and Cristina RiveraSilkpunk and Agender Childhoods in Neon Yang’s Tensorate UniverseShuyin YuAlt Publishing for Young People: An Interview with Vivek ShrayaDerritt MasonContributorsIndex