The School Story: Young Adult Narratives in the Age of Neoliberalism examines the work of contemporary writers, filmmakers, and critics who, reflecting on the realm of school experience, help to shape dominant ideas of school. The creations discussed are mostly stories for children and young adults. David Aitchison looks at serious novels for teens including Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Faiza Guène’s Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, the light-hearted, middle-grade fiction of Andrew Clements and Tommy Greenwald, and Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography for young readers, I Am Malala. He also responds to stories that take young people as their primary subjects in such novels as Sapphire’s Push and films including Battle Royale and Cooties. Though ranging widely in their accounts of young life, such stories betray a mounting sense of crisis in education around the world, especially in terms of equity (the extent to which students from diverse backgrounds have fair chances of receiving quality education) and empowerment (the extent to which diverse students are encouraged to gain strength, confidence, and selfhood as learners). Drawing particular attention to the influence of neoliberal initiatives on school experience, this book considers what it means when learning and success are measured more and more by entrepreneurship, competitive individualism, and marketplace gains. Attentive to the ways in which power structures, institutional routines, school spaces, and social relations operate in the contemporary school story, The School Story offers provocative insights into a genre that speaks profoundly to the increasingly precarious position of education in the twenty-first century.

Media Sport Stars considers how masculinity and male identity are represented through images of sport and sport stars. From the pre-radio era to today's specialist TV channels, newspaper supplements and websites, Whannel traces the growing cultural importance of sport and sportmen, showing how the very practices of sport are still bound up with the production of masculinities. Through a series of case studies of British and American sportsmen, Whannel traces the emergence of of the sporting 'hero' and 'star' , and considers the ways in which the lives of sport stars are narrated through the media. Focusing on figures like Muhammad Ali and David Beckham, whose fame has spread well beyond the world of sport, he shows how growing media coverage has helped produced a sporting system, and examines how modern celebrity addresses the issues of race and nation, performance and identity, morality and violence. From Babe Ruth to Mike Tyson, Media Sport Stars demonstrates that, in an era in which both morality and masculinity are percieved to be 'in crisis', sport holds a central place in contemporary culture, and sport stars become the focal point for discourses of masculinity and morality.

The use of school life as a closed narrative environment is well documented, and modern examples such as Malory Towers and Harry Potter show the genre's continued appeal. While there have been several histories of the school story, especially in children's literature, almost all of them take as their starting point Tom Brown's Schooldays. Although occasionally acknowledged in passing, there has never been a complete study of earlier school stories, or of other fictional portrayals of school life before the middle of the eighteenth century. In Before Tom Brown, Robert Kirkpatrick traces the roots of the school story back to 2500BC, when school life was a feature of Sumerian, Egyptian and Graeco-Roman texts written as teaching aids for children. From Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to Shakesperean comedies, he explores for the first time the use of school dialogues in the classroom, in print and on stage, and presents new evidence that the first school novel appeared in 1607. Finally, he examines the role of the school story in the broader development of the novel as the genre became established through the eighteenth century. Readers will be rewarded with a whole new perspective on the history of children's literature.

The International Companion Encyclopedia answers these questions and provides comprehensive coverage of children's literature from a wide range of perspectives. Over 80 substantial essays by world experts include Iona Opie on the oral tradition, Gillian Avery on family stories and Michael Rosen on audio, TV and other media. The Companion covers a broad range of topics, from the fairy tale to critical theory, from the classics to comics. Structure The Companion is divided into five sections: 1) Theory and Critical Approaches 2) Types and Genres 3) The Context of Children's Literature 4) Applications of Children's Literature 5) The World of Children's Literature Each essay is followed by references and suggestions for further reading. The volume is fully indexed.

This book provides an introduction to some of the critical theories useful in the study of children's literature. The 14 chapters examine the context, application and relevance to this area of concepts such as feminism, ideology, psychoanalysis and literacy studies.

Children's literature continues to be one of the most rapidly expanding and exciting of interdisciplinary academic studies, of interest to anyone concerned with literature, education, internationalism, childhood or culture in general. This edition has been expanded and includes over 50 new articles. New topics include Postcolonialism, Comparative Studies, Ancient Texts, Contemporary Children's Rhymes and Folklore, Contemporary Comics, War, Horror, Series Fiction, Film, Creative Writing, and 'Crossover' literature. The international section has been expanded to reflect world events.