The YA Novel in the Digital Age by Amy Bright a Thesis

The YA Novel in the Digital Age by Amy Bright A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Department of English and Film Studies University of Alberta © Amy Bright, 2016 Abstract Recent research by Neilsen reports that adult readers purchase 80% of all young adult novels sold, even though young adult literature is a category ostensibly targeted towards teenage readers (Gilmore). More than ever before, young adult (YA) literature is at the center of some of the most interesting literary conversations, as writers, readers, and publishers discuss its wide appeal in the twenty-first century. My dissertation joins this vibrant discussion by examining the ways in which YA literature has transformed to respond to changing social and technological contexts. Today, writing, reading, and marketing YA means engaging with technological advances, multiliteracies and multimodalities, and cultural and social perspectives. A critical examination of five YA texts – Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens, Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, and Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Ghosts of Ashbury High – helps to shape understanding about the changes and the challenges facing this category of literature as it responds in a variety of ways to new contexts. In the first chapter, I explore the history of YA literature in order to trace the ways that this literary category has changed in response to new conditions to appeal to and serve a new generation of readers, readers with different experiences, concerns, and contexts over time. Chapter Two explores the presence of extensive intertextuality and intermediality in contemporary YA novels as one type of response to new contexts through an examination of The Ghosts of Ashbury High and Beauty Queens. The third chapter investigates two examples of multimodal YA novels, that is, novels that include both texts and images, yet in a way that retains a high ratio of text to image. The Book Thief and Why We Broke Up are exemplary texts through which to analyze this relationship. Chapter Four moves outside of the YA text itself in order to understand how paratextual materials function in the twenty-first century. Authors John ii Green and Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket have created a rich paratextual space in which to explore the role of the author in contemporary YA. While my dissertation explores YA literature in the twenty-first century, it also examines its readers. Chapter Five turns to the adult readers of YA to ask: If YA literature is a category aimed at teenage readers, then how do we conceive of this category today when it is read overwhelmingly by adults? A conclusion explores the implications of these concepts on the future of YA literature, and discusses the difficulty of examining a category in flux, one that continues to adapt to contemporary social and technological contexts. iii Preface A shortened version of Chapter Three of this dissertation, “Multimodal Forms: Text, Image, and Visual Literacy in Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief,” is forthcoming as a chapter in Teaching Comics Through Multiple Lenses: Critical Perspectives, ed. Crag Hill (Routledge). iv Acknowledgements I have always been the kind of reader to flip to the back of the book in order to read the acknowledgments and thank yous even before beginning to read the story. I like to see the vast network of people that a writer recognizes. It is always a map of thank yous that has shown me that writing does not happen in a vacuum, and it is never an entirely solitary endeavor. I therefore want to say thank you to the following: To Jo-Ann Wallace, for showing me that it is possible to love YA while also being critical of it, and for the many meetings and discussions in Edmonton and Canmore. Thank you for your support and for helping me to develop my writing in ways that reach so much further than this dissertation. To Margaret Mackey, for your enthusiasm, professional advice, and many YA resources. Thank you for seeing me through my first conference with the Children’s Literature Association and for being so generous with your time and feedback. To Natasha Hurley, for challenging me to think more critically and reflectively about myself as a reader, writer, and researcher. Thank you for showing me how to imagine my dissertation as a book project, and encouraging me to consider the ways in which I can continue to develop my research. To the members of my examining committees, Cecily Devereux, Jill McClay, Lynne Wiltse, and Kerry Mallan, for your insightful questions and feedback at both my candidacy and at my dissertation defense. Thank you for helping me to view my research in new ways, and from the perspectives of other disciplines. To the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research at the University of Alberta, and the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta for the financial support that allowed me time to focus on my academic work. To the Children’s Literature Association, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English for encouragement through membership and discussion. These organizations helped me see where my work belongs in academic discourse. My research and reading benefitted greatly by the work of these organizations. To Christl Verduyn, for her many supportive emails about academia, research, conferences, and books since I graduated from Mount Allison in 2010. I cannot thank you enough for your incredible mentorship and caring conversation. To Steven Bickmore and Crag Hill for providing life-changing opportunities in the area of YA literature, including the fantastic conference at Louisiana State University in 2014 that has been a foundational experience to my growth as a reader, writer, and researcher. v To Matt Schneider, Paige McGeorge, Caitlin Tighe, Kerrie Waddington, and Liam Sherriff for your friendship, and for conversations that helped me work out ideas and arguments, and assisted me in gaining new perspectives on my work. To Annette Bright, Becky Colbeck, and Kari Tanaka at the University of Lethbridge Bookstore for the numerous YA book recommendations, conversations, and Twitter activity. Thank you for always pointing me in the direction of a new YA book and sharing so many ARCs with me. To Leona King, for all of the many fantastic YA novels that you shared with me while you owned Macabee’s Books. You consistently pointed me towards exceptional YA, and also introduced me to the work of Kathy Stinson and Peter Carver of Red Deer Press, with whom I would go on to work with on my own YA novels. To the fantastic General Studies instructors at the Lethbridge College who have shown me so much support and enthusiasm since I started teaching there in 2014. It has made all the difference to me as a new instructor. To Canada Heritage Fairs for allowing me, as a nine-year-old, to participate with a presentation on Canadian authors and illustrations, beginning to pave the way for a future as a researcher. To my sister, Erin Bright, for always supplementing my YA reading with films about high school and young adulthood (and that includes High School Musical). I read many of the books that ended up in this dissertation after you recommended them to me (you found Morgan Matson first!). Thank you for being my very favorite person to talk to about books. And my very favorite person period. And to my parents, Robin and Glenn Bright, for their incredible support over the last four years and my lifetime. I would not be the reader and writer that I am if not for the many trips to bookstores all over Canada and the United States with you, especially after soccer, basketball, and volleyball tournaments, and during track and field and ski meets. Thank you for coming with me to Harry Potter midnight release parties and not minding how much time I spent reading in the car (I did not always make the best passenger!). Thank you for your constant support and for being always excited about my work. vi Table of Contents Introduction .....................................................................................................................................1 Reading, Writing, and Marketing Young Adult Literature in the Twentieth-First Century Chapter One ...................................................................................................................................31 The Creation and Ongoing Transformation of Young Adult Literature Chapter Two .................................................................................................................................102 Internalizing YA: Intertextuality and Intermediality in The Ghosts of Ashbury High by Jaclyn Moriarty and Beauty Queens by Libba Bray Chapter Three ...............................................................................................................................167 Multimodal Forms: Text, Image, and Visual Literacy in Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up and Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief Chapter Four ................................................................................................................................219 The Authorial Constellation: Paratextuality and Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket and John Green Chapter Five .................................................................................................................................274

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