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| Editors: | |
| James Blasingame | James.Blasingame@asu.edu |
| Lori A. Goodson | lagoodson@cox.net |
FROM THE EDITORS
As English language arts teachers and lovers of fiction who like nothing more than losing ourselves in a long novel, we sometimes viewplays, films, and short stories as "the competition," the genres thatseductively draw our students in and away from literature. Of course, thecurriculum is filled with the drama and short story classics, but we may betempted to use, if at all, the plays and short stories written by young adultwriters as "supplementary aids" to accompany the teaching of longer, "serious"literature. Or we may watch the film version of a novel as a reward for havingread and discussed it in class, perhaps sending to students negative messagesabout each genre: novels are the hard stuff to be endured; films are fluff notto be taken seriously.
In this issue we offer some thoughtful views and helpful suggestions for usingplays, films, and short stories written by and/or for young adults. SandyAsher, a playwright as well as a novelist, discusses her own work and offersextensive resources for teachers wishing to include more drama in theircurriculums. Among the articles on film, Alan Teasley and Ann Wilder reviewfifty films that might be used as young adult "literature" study and describetheir criteria for selecting films as well as their teaching process for filmstudy.
Secondly, we feature varied perspectives of some women writers of young adultnovels -- Sue Ellen Bridgers, Maureen Daly, Lois Duncan, Lynn Hall, KatherinePaterson, and Cynthia Voigt. The analyses draw rich portraits of charactersdeveloped by these women writers; they explore complex relationships and waysof growing; they propose some new views of some common themes; and they hold upa different mirror for re-seeing some familiar characters. Because the mediastereotypically portrays females as helpless, ineffectual victims and becausethe suspense novel is a favorite of teen readers, Deborah Overstreet's analysisof Lois Duncan's female victims should be of particular interest to teacherswho may want to include some of the information in their reading workshopletters to students.
The field of literature for young adults has been expanding beyond the novel toinclude noticeably more nonfiction, informational writing, more plays and shortstories, and more of an emphasis on film as worthy of literary study. At thispoint, however, the novel no doubt reigns supreme; and adolescent literatureand its readers owe much to the featured women writers in this issue and toothers who have contributed so much toward moving the genre forward during thelast twenty-five years.
