Young Adult Fiction Portal

This is the parent page for our Children's Literature modules which introduce students to the breadth and depth of texts available for study. Each month, our preceptors survey the group to see which text students are most interested in exploring next.

Children's books are full of unforgettabel characters, settings, and adventures. They take us to magic, often dangerous lands, and they also evoke beautiful imagery and deep feelings. In these modules we will explore from the gentleness of Japanese children's books to the wild Pippi Longstocking. We'll talk about their themes, setting, worldbuilding, and imagery.

Each module stands on it own, and no previous knowledge is required. Some of the texts we could explore in a given month include:
• Nordic Madness: Exploring Children's Literature in Three Nordic Authors
• Japanese Fairy Tales and Children's Literature

Note: Please refer to the Required Texts section on a month's iteration page to see which texts the group has decided upon for a given month.

This course will be offered for the first time this October 2023 (Anne’s favourite month)

Within weeks of its 1908 publication, L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables became a bestseller. Over the years, this charming orphan story put Montgomery and her imaginative Prince Edward Island on a global map.

Despite the fact that Anne of Green Gables is Canada’s bestselling novel throughout the world—or because of it—Montgomery was ignored by the literati and scholarship. Montgomery was a public intellectual, the first female Canadian fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and invested Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Still she was dismissed as “just” a children’s writer, a regionalist, or a woman. It was 25 years after Montgomery’s death before children’s literature and feminist scholars began to recover her work as worthy of study.

While there is a robust field of Montgomery scholarship, there are areas where our focus is sometimes too narrow. One of these is the category of “realistic” fiction. While there is a kind of verisimilitude about everyday life in the late Victorian era in her work, the realism is pressed to the margins of definition as Montgomery romanticizes the worlds she creates. And can we disagree that there is something magical about Anne herself? By changing our way of approach and by looking at Anne of Green Gables as a fantasy novel, what can we unveil in this classic novel?

Native Prince Edward Islander and Montgomery scholar Brenton Dickieson will lead students through a rereading of Anne of Green Gables using the lenses we use to study fantasy and speculative fiction with the goal of allowing one of the greatest living children’s books to live in new ways.

The module will follow an 8-session structure as shown below:

Outline	8-Session Structure
Week 1	Lecture 1: What Makes Anne Magical?
	Discussion 1: The Worlds of Anne: Within and Without?
Week 2	Lecture 2: Notes on Montgomery’s Iconography of the Spiritual Imagination
	Discussion 2: Farah Mendelson's 4 Types of Fantasy
Week 3	Lecture 3: Initial Notes on Fantasy Mapping: Avonlea, Time, and Space
	Discussion 3: Passports to the Geography of Fairyland
Week 4	Lecture 4: Word Portals: Paths, Doors, Rivers and Creeks, Forests and Gardens
	Discussion 4: What is the shape of Faërie?

Join Dr. Sara Brown and Sparrow Alden as they read their way through the winners and nominees of the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. How do these books speak to their special audience? What do they reflect about changing society? How do they build or break down their readers' connection to modern culture? How do they use heritage and world mythology to bring their stories to life?

Each time this module is presented, we will choose two different Norton Award novels to read, enjoy, discuss, and analyze with various critical tools. Mostly we're going to read great books and have fun working to understand them at deeper and deeper levels.