
Alt Kid Lit
What Children's Literature Might Be
University Press of Mississippi
Published on 15. April 2024
Book
Hardback
300 pages
978-1-4968-5102-4 (ISBN)
Description
Contributions by Kris Alexander, Amanda K. Allen, Brianna Anderson, Catherine Burwell, Katharine Capshaw, Negin Dahya, Gabriel Duckels, Paige Gray, Gabrielle Atwood Halko, Natasha Hurley, Kenneth B. Kidd, Erica Law-Montes, Derritt Mason, Brandon Murakami, Tehmina Pirzada, Cristina Rhodes, Cristina Rivera, Jakob Rosendal, TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Vivek Shraya, Victoria Ford Smith, Joshua Whitehead, and Shuyin Yu
How do we think about children's and young adult literature? Children's literature is often defined through audience, so what happens when children are drawn to and claim genres not built expressly "for" them? To what extent do canonical formations tend to overwrite or obscure less visible efforts to create and promote material for the young? These are the driving questions of Alt Kid Lit: What Children's Literature Might Be.
Contributors to the volume offer theoretical meditations on the category of children's and young adult literature as well as case studies of materials that complicate our understanding of such. Chapters attend to a diverse array of subjects including the "non-places" of children's literature; child mediums; Black theater for children; children's interpretive drawings; fanfiction; Latinx, Indigenous, and silkpunk speculative fiction; environmental zines; shonen anime; Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal; South Asian television; and "emergency children's literature." The book also features interviews with two experimental writers about genre and alt-publishing and a roundtable conversation on video games and children's digital engagements. Building on diverse approaches including queer theory and postcolonial studies, Alt Kid Lit shines light on materials, methodologies, and epistemologies that are sometimes underacknowledged in the field of children's and young adult literature studies.
How do we think about children's and young adult literature? Children's literature is often defined through audience, so what happens when children are drawn to and claim genres not built expressly "for" them? To what extent do canonical formations tend to overwrite or obscure less visible efforts to create and promote material for the young? These are the driving questions of Alt Kid Lit: What Children's Literature Might Be.
Contributors to the volume offer theoretical meditations on the category of children's and young adult literature as well as case studies of materials that complicate our understanding of such. Chapters attend to a diverse array of subjects including the "non-places" of children's literature; child mediums; Black theater for children; children's interpretive drawings; fanfiction; Latinx, Indigenous, and silkpunk speculative fiction; environmental zines; shonen anime; Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal; South Asian television; and "emergency children's literature." The book also features interviews with two experimental writers about genre and alt-publishing and a roundtable conversation on video games and children's digital engagements. Building on diverse approaches including queer theory and postcolonial studies, Alt Kid Lit shines light on materials, methodologies, and epistemologies that are sometimes underacknowledged in the field of children's and young adult literature studies.
Reviews / Votes
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
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Jackson
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paper over boards
Illustrations
18 b&w illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
672 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4968-5102-4 (9781496851024)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
03/2024
NYU Press
€29.49
Available for download
Persons
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.
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.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Kenneth B. Kidd and Derritt Mason
Part I. Alt Genre
Kid Lit from beyond the Grave: Spiritualism, Child Mediums, and the Haunting Problem of Child Agency
Victoria Ford Smith
Singing a "Sea Island Song": Alice Childress's Responsive Black Theater
Katharine Capshaw
The Seductions of Little Red Riding Hood: On the Thresholds of Children's Drawings
Jakob Rosendal
Snanger Danger: SS/HG Fanfiction, Kinship, and an Affinity Space Model of Children's and Young Adult Literature
Amanda K. Allen
Zine Ecoactivism and Pedagogies of Hope in World War 3 Illustrated #46
Brianna Anderson
Emergency Children's Literature: Some Observations on Pandemic Picture Books
Gabriel Duckels
The Case of Jonny's Genre: An Interview with Joshua Whitehead
Derritt Mason
Part II. Alt Medium
YA Literature, Plus Ultra: A Case Study of the Shonen Anime My Hero Academia
Brandon Murakami
From Melodrama to Kitschy Romance: Alt Kid Media in India and Pakistan
Tehmina Pirzada
"Bizarre Creatures" and the Fans Who Love Them: The Dark Crystal as Alternative Children's Culture
Paige Gray
Video Games and Young People's Digital Cultures: A Panel Discussion
Kristopher Alexander, Negin Dahya, TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Catherine Burwell, and Derritt Mason
Part III. Alt Epistemology
The Alt Within: Queerness, Psychoanalysis, and Children's Literature as Enigmatic Signifier
Natasha Hurley
"We're Americans Too!": Contingencies and Contradictions in Picture Books about Japanese American Incarceration
Gabrielle Atwood Halko
Retomando el Dia de los Muertos: Death, Life, and Latinx Epistemology in Children's Literature
Cristina Rhodes
Reimagining the "Alternative": Sustaining Representation of Indigenous People and People of Color through Speculative Fiction in The Marrow Thieves and Mananaland
Erica Law-Montes and Cristina Rivera
Silkpunk and Agender Childhoods in Neon Yang's Tensorate Universe
Shuyin Yu
Alt Publishing for Young People: An Interview with Vivek Shraya
Derritt Mason
Contributors
Index
Introduction
Kenneth B. Kidd and Derritt Mason
Part I. Alt Genre
Kid Lit from beyond the Grave: Spiritualism, Child Mediums, and the Haunting Problem of Child Agency
Victoria Ford Smith
Singing a "Sea Island Song": Alice Childress's Responsive Black Theater
Katharine Capshaw
The Seductions of Little Red Riding Hood: On the Thresholds of Children's Drawings
Jakob Rosendal
Snanger Danger: SS/HG Fanfiction, Kinship, and an Affinity Space Model of Children's and Young Adult Literature
Amanda K. Allen
Zine Ecoactivism and Pedagogies of Hope in World War 3 Illustrated #46
Brianna Anderson
Emergency Children's Literature: Some Observations on Pandemic Picture Books
Gabriel Duckels
The Case of Jonny's Genre: An Interview with Joshua Whitehead
Derritt Mason
Part II. Alt Medium
YA Literature, Plus Ultra: A Case Study of the Shonen Anime My Hero Academia
Brandon Murakami
From Melodrama to Kitschy Romance: Alt Kid Media in India and Pakistan
Tehmina Pirzada
"Bizarre Creatures" and the Fans Who Love Them: The Dark Crystal as Alternative Children's Culture
Paige Gray
Video Games and Young People's Digital Cultures: A Panel Discussion
Kristopher Alexander, Negin Dahya, TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Catherine Burwell, and Derritt Mason
Part III. Alt Epistemology
The Alt Within: Queerness, Psychoanalysis, and Children's Literature as Enigmatic Signifier
Natasha Hurley
"We're Americans Too!": Contingencies and Contradictions in Picture Books about Japanese American Incarceration
Gabrielle Atwood Halko
Retomando el Dia de los Muertos: Death, Life, and Latinx Epistemology in Children's Literature
Cristina Rhodes
Reimagining the "Alternative": Sustaining Representation of Indigenous People and People of Color through Speculative Fiction in The Marrow Thieves and Mananaland
Erica Law-Montes and Cristina Rivera
Silkpunk and Agender Childhoods in Neon Yang's Tensorate Universe
Shuyin Yu
Alt Publishing for Young People: An Interview with Vivek Shraya
Derritt Mason
Contributors
Index