Selected for their high interest, appealing formats, appropriate reading levels, outstanding writing, and popularity, these contemporary, spellbinding titles (20 for grades 5-8 and 20 for grades 9-12) reflect a variety of genres and themes that will encourage lifelong literacy. Given for each title are genre and themes, review citations, author information, plot summary, reading and interest rankings, booktalks, literature extensions, alternative book report suggestions, and reproducible bookmarks that suggest further reading.

Intimate, humorous, and insightful, Readings is a collection of classic essays and reviews by Michael Dirda, book critic of the Washington Post and winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for criticism. From a first reading of Beckett and Faulkner at the feet of an inspirational high-school English teacher to a meeting of the P. G. Wodehouse Society, from an obsession with Nabokov's Lolita to the discovery of the Japanese epic The Tale of Genji, these essays chronicle a lifetime of literary enjoyment.

"O'Keefe examines a wide range of children's fantasy books, and draws on her own experiences as a sympathetic reader as well as on the views of psychologists and social theorists. Readers in Wonderland ranges from William Steig's small picture books to J. R. R. Tolkien's epic series; from utopias like L. Frank Baum's Oz to dystopias like Virginia Hamilton's Dustland; from less-known works like Patricia Wrightson's to the phenomenon that is J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter; from time travel to parallel worlds; and from magical transformations and wishes that come true to lonely journeys and huge battles of good against evil."--BOOK JACKET.

Boys' Life is the official youth magazine for the Boy Scouts of America. Published since 1911, it contains a proven mix of news, nature, sports, history, fiction, science, comics, and Scouting.

The Young Adult novel is ordinarily characterized as a coming-of-age story, in which the narrative revolves around the individual growth and maturation of a character, but Roberta Trites expands this notion by chronicling the dynamics of power and repression that weave their way through YA books. Characters in these novels must learn to negotiate the levels of power that exist in the myriad social institutions within which they function, including family, church, government, and school. Trites argues that the development of the genre over the past thirty years is an outgrowth of postmodernism, since YA novels are, by definition, texts that interrogate the social construction of individuals. Drawing on such nineteenth-century precursors as Little Women and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Disturbing the Universe demonstrates how important it is to employ poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing adolescent literature, both in critical studies and in the classroom. Among the twentieth-century authors discussed are Blume, Hamilton, Hinton, Le Guin, L'Engle, and Zindel. Trites' work has applications for a broad range of readers, including scholars of children's literature and theorists of post-modernity as well as librarians and secondary-school teachers. Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature by Roberta Seelinger Trites is the winner of the 2002 Children's Literature Association's Book Award. The award is given annually in order to promote and recognize outstanding contributions to children's literature, history, scholarship, and criticisim; it is one of the highest academic honors that can accrue to an author of children's literary criticism.

The Agony and the Eggplant is the first book-length study of author, illustrator, and radio personality, Daniel Pinkwater. Pinkwater began writing and illustrating children's books in 1970 and has been a prolific author for three decades. He has written over 70 books altogether: more than fifty picture books, a dozen books for middle-grade or intermediate readers, half a dozen books for adolescents, an adult novel, and several books of nonfiction. This fifth volume in the Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature series discusses nearly all of Pinkwater's books, and emphasizes his young adult fiction: Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars (1979), The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death (1982), The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror (1984), Young Adult Novel (1982), Young Adults (1985), and The Education of Robert Nifkin (1997). Pinkwater is a humorist, and many of his stories involve science fiction or fantasy themes. He is often compared with Douglas Adams and Kurt Vonnegut; his style isoften likened to Monty Python and Mad magazine. Pinkwater's fiction has often been described as "wacky" and "zany; " The Agony and the Eggplant will go beyond those cliches to place Pinkwater as a classical satirist, an American humorist, and a master of children's literature. This volume is sprinkled with quotes and observations from Pinkwater, one of the funniest men alive. A highly entertaining look at the man responsible for some of the most unique young adult fiction on the market.

Describes how a children's book can be used as a basis to create a board game.