Handbook of Research on Diversity in Children's and Young Adult Literature

Patricia E. Enciso is Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University. Sarah Park Dahlen is Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas is Professor and Chair of the Joint Program in English and Education in the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan.

• Introduction PART I: The Production and Politics of Diverse Children’s and Young Adult Literature 1. Stories Matter the Most! The Long History of Diversity in Children’s and Young Adult Literature 2. Framing Resistance Around Representation and Identity in Youth Literature 3. Revitalizing the Political Economy Critique of Children’s Book Publishing 4. Why Diverse Awards for Youth Literature Matter 5. Fiesta of the Living: The Tomás Rivera Book Award Cultivating Community through Immersive Experiences with Chicanx Children’s Literature 6. Political Organizing Against Diverse Literature and the Counter Politics of Thriving 7. We Are Kid Lit: A Critical Summer Reading List 8. “Diversity” in Contemporary Chinese Children’s Literature 9. Mapping Diversity in Indian Children’s Literature: From Colonial Emergence to Contemporary Challenges 10. Antiracist Critical Studies on Brazilian Children’s and Young Adult Literature: Expanding Imaginaries 11. Diversity Beyond Representation: Entanglements in Latin American LIJ Studies PART II: Beloved Communities: Telling Our Stories 12. The Brown Bookshelf: Black Literary Legacies and Futures 13. “We have always been imagining ourselves”: The Rich Legacy of Black American Literature for Youth 14. Reimagining Belonging: On Race and the Shifting Shelf of British Children’s and Young Adult Literature 15. The Historical Construction of Diversity and Justice Through the Lens of Race, Gender and Childism in Puerto Rican Picture Books 16. Antiracist Children’s Literature Scholarship: A Transnational History 17. An Overview of Ghanaian Children’s Literature 18. Building a Mosaic: Reading and Using Jewish Children’s Literature 19. Representations of Muslims in Youth Literature 20. Religion and Spirituality in Children’s Literature 21. Diversity and ‘Diversity From’ in Arab Scholarship on Children’s Literature 22. “Flight from History”: The Conservation of Colonial Narratives in Children’s Books about National Parks 23. Toward Ecocentric Diversity: Exploring More-than-Human Windows and Mirrors with Big Tree, The Eyes and the Impossible, and A Snake Falls to Earth 24. From “Never Forget” to Global Witness: The Evolving Landscape of Genocide Literature for Youth 25. Palestinian and Israeli Children’s Literature: Fields, Power, and Asymmetry 26. When Marriage is All that Matters: Reading Settler Sexuality and Sexual Exceptionalism in Fleur Pierets’s Love Around the World and Love is Love 27. Queering Young Adult Literature Through a Queer of Color Critique 28. Wither Diversity? Marginalized Youth Literature from the Indian Subcontinent 29. Development of Research on Diversity in Children’s and Young Adult Literature in the Republic of Korea 30. (Un)telling Tropes and New Directions in Asian American Youth Literature 31. A Literature of Love: Centering Black Girls’ Love Stories in Young Adult Literature 32. Everyday People: Aesthetic Invisibility and Representations of Black Working-Class Childhoods in Children’s Literature PART III: Methods in the Study of Diverse Children’s and Young Adult Literature 33. Finding our Mentor-Selves: An Autoethnographic Exploration of our Multidisciplinary Research Collaborations 34. Critical Race Theory Methods in Youth Literature 35. Critical Discourse Studies in/of Children’s Literature and Media 36. Rethinking the Application of Narrative Theory in Children’s Literature 37. Black Girlhood Representations in Likeness and Text 38 Anti-Oppressive and Feminist Methods in Youth Literature Research: Spotlighting YA Sexual Assault Narrative Scholarship 39. Histories and Futures of Social Movements 40. A Critical Framework to Explore Diversity through Intergenerational Trauma in Disney’s Encanto 41. Research on Comics and Graphic Novels as Literate Sites of Fugitivity 42. A is for Archives: Archival Methods in American Studies and Children’s Literature 43. Asian American Youth Literature: Approaches to Scholarship 44. Latinx Youth Literature, Media, and Culture 45. Whiteness in Youth Literature: Research Perspectives 46. Disability and Mad Studies Methods in the Study of Diverse Children’s and Young Adult Literature 47. Searching for Gender: Intersectional Approaches to Representation in Young Adult Literature 48. Queer Orientations to Studying the Reading of Young Adult Literature 49. Queer Theory & Methods: Living Elsewhere and Otherwise PART IV: Teaching and Research with Diverse Children’s and Young Adult Literature 50. Children Reading Diverse Literature: Research Review 51. Identity, Engagement, and Social Imagination: Sharing Diverse Books in an International Classroom 52. Incorporating More Inclusive Representation Through #ClassroomBookADay Daily Picture Book Read Alouds 53. Inclusive, Intentional, Interactive: Our Everyday Incorporation of Diverse Children’s Books 54. A School Library Collection Centering our Diverse Haumana 55. Young Adults Reading Diverse Literature: Research Review 56. Teachers Reading Diverse Literature: A Review of Research 2000–2025 57. Suspending Damage Narratives in Children’s and Young Adult Literature: An Indigenous Person’s Perspective 58. Diverse Literature in Social Studies Education 59. More Than Just Content: Integrating Literature that Centers Black Girls’ STEM Identities Across K-12 STEM Contexts 60. Critically Reading Justice-Oriented Picturebooks with Children 61. Culturally Situated Reading with Diverse Picturebooks: An Overview 62. From Entertainment to Education: Approaches to Teaching Comics in K-12 Classrooms 63. Ideologies of Multilingualism in Classroom Literature: Selection and Practices 64. Restorying Diverse Literature: Digital Platforms and Youth Authorship 65. Research on Fan Cultures: Subversive Reimaginings of Who We Are and Can Be

“A landmark volume in children’s and young adult literature studies, the Handbook of Research on Diversity in Children’s and Young Adult Literature, brings together leading scholars for a comprehensive exploration of diversity in all its dimensions. Spanning languages, cultures, and geographies, this richly informed collection reflects the urgent intellectual and social concerns of our time while offering indispensable insights for researchers, educators, librarians, and advocates.”Andrea Mei-Ying Wu, Distinguished Professor, Department of Taiwanese Literature, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan“In a time of uncertainty and backlash, this handbook reminds us why stories matter in the lives of readers and challenges us to consider diversity through a complex multifaceted lens. Instead of reducing diversity to single dimensions, researchers embrace the complex global influences of diversity and social inequities on publishing, creating, studying, and teaching youth literature. The chapters examine the past and provide a vision of possibility in creating new pathways and opportunities.”Kathy G. Short, Regents Professor, Teaching Learning and Sociocultural Studies Director, Worlds of Words, Center of Global Literacies and Literatures, University of Arizona“The collection reaches broadly — stretching across disciplines and representing many nationalities and other politicized identities – as it delves into production, politics, stories, research, and pedagogy. With such breadth, one might think that this collection says all there is to say about diverse children’s and young adult literature, but the power in this collection is not in having said everything but in its provocation of further conversation.”Mollie V. Blackburn, Professor of Critical and Transformative Education, Department of Teaching and Learning, Ohio State University“Fifteen years ago, the first Handbook of Research on Children’s and Young Adult Literature transformed how I understood the field. This new volume extends that landmark achievement with timely, incisive scholarship on the production, politics, study, and teaching of diverse literature. It is an indispensable resource for anyone committed to building a more just and pluralistic field of children’s and young adult literature.”Stephanie Renee Toliver, Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignThe Handbook of Research on Diversity in Children’s and Young Adult Literature is a wide-ranging, incisive, and indispensable collection that beautifully balances practical and theoretical methods. These essays point us toward exciting new directions in the study of diverse youth literature; in doing so, they show us how far we’ve come, and how much work we still have to do.Katharine Slater, Associate Professor of English, Ric Edelman College of Communication, Humanities & Social Sciences, Rowan University