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The authors explored adolescents’ reasons for reading or not reading books. In individual interviews with 39 adolescents (ages 15 and 16) in the United Kingdom, they reported that reading books offered an opportunity to relax, learn, escape the real world, and become immersed; was exciting, developed their empathy skills, and provided a form of social capital. However, challenges to book reading included a lack of time; that it was too effortful; that it was not encouraged, was expensive, or was uncool, or that students had simply lost the habit or grown out of it. Implications for high school classrooms are discussed, and the researchers argue that time, space, and/or initiatives to read for pleasure are important. Collaborative work among researchers, teachers, and engaged/disengaged adolescent readers is essential to ensure that these initiatives are optimal and reach and resonate with their intended audience.

A powerful and heart-stopping young adult novel from a master storyteller. This is Steven Herrick at his best. 'There are worse things than school.' Luke sleepwalks through his days wagging school, swimming at the reservoir and eating takeaway pizza. That is until Charlotte shows up. Rumour is she got expelled from her city school and her family moved to the Blue Mountains for a fresh start. But when Luke's invited to her house, he discovers there's a lot more going on than meets the eye.

Moore focuses on her project examining the pedagogical potential of fan fiction written in response to young adult (YA) sexual assault stories. She began this project by researching fan fiction written in response to Speak across the popular publishing platforms FanFiction.net and Archive of Our Own (A03), and a pattern quickly emerged: fan fiction authors were publishing their Speak assignments from English class online. To provide context, she has now read through and analyzed 120 English-written Speak fan-fiction stories and poems on these platforms, and their publishing dates range from 2009 to 2021. Overall, many authors posted their English homework--the poems, epilogues, and rewritings of this novel, or new fan fiction about it--because it resonated. She offers this PSA as a celebration of English teachers.

PurposeThe following article examines the playful composing practices of two youth who built on their backgrounds as fan fiction writers, role-players, visual artists and gamers to co-author a multimodal novel across mediated spaces for composing throughout their high school careers.Design/methodology/approachThe study draws on “connected ethnography” and qualitative practitioner inquiry to examine the playful composing practices of two urban youth.FindingsThe study demonstrates the playful, multimodal composing practices of youth – for learning, affiliation and leisure. Participants’ creative use of digital media reveals robust and productive composing practices that rely on collaboration; extensive multimodal experimentation (e.g. transmediation, the creation of paratexts and worldbuilding); and shared and individual expertise and socialization in various media communities (e.g. gaming and fan fiction).Research limitations/implicationsThe study is limited by its small scope.Practical implicationsParticipants’ leisure writing activities offer important insights into multimodal play, composing, collaboration and co-authorship.Social implicationsSchools have been slow to take up the multimodal and collaborative approaches to writing. The article offers implications for reimagining writing and the teaching of writing through creativity, play and collaboration.Originality/valueThe author argues that collaborative, multimodal authorship offers a social outlet, peer connection, and creative possibilities for writing development both in face-to-face and fully digital learning environments, something especially important to consider amid the unexpected surge of online learning due to COVID-19.

If Young Adult (YA) literature constitutes one of the social mechanisms that indoctrinate teenagers into working within capitalistic institutions, high school teachers would do well to ask what political and economic ideologies YA fiction invites teenage readers to adopt. This article examines one genre of YA literature—YA dystopian fiction—to understand how it participates in neoliberal discourse. The article begins by defining neoliberalism and describing some of its core assumptions. Responding to arguments that regard YA dystopia as reproducing neoliberalism and its attendant ideologies, the article next examines how the critical dystopia, a type of dystopia that emerged in the 1980s and which critiques oppressive systems by depicting characters who resist them, models strategies for resisting neoliberalism. To demonstrate the different stances that YA dystopias can take in regard to neoliberalism, the article then examines the different degrees of emphasis that three popular YA novels—Divergent (Roth, 2011), The Hunger Games (Collins, 2008), and Orleans (Smith, 2013)—place on individual exceptionalism, competition, and systemic oppression rooted in gender, race, and class. To conclude, the article discusses the implications for high school teachers of asking students to critique neoliberalism in YA literature, and in their lives more broadly.