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This paper examines how homophobic bullying profoundly impacts the mental and physical health of Black queer children, with a particular focus on the rising suicide rate within this marginalized community. Analysing the representation of homophobic and transphobic bullying in Kacen Callender's young adult fiction, this study explores the devastating impact of both verbal and nonverbal forms of abuse, including rejection, intimidation, and social isolation. These negative experiences contribute to long-term emotional distress, leading to an increased vulnerability to anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Meyer's minority stress theory is used to examine how systematic ignorance and rejection of queerness render Black queer children more vulnerable, resulting in insecurity, psychological anguish, and marginalization. This analysis underscores the importance of positive interactions with peers and a safe environment to lessen the damage of bullying. Studies show that having inclusive spaces in schools, communities, or families can foster resilience and higher self-esteem in Black queer adolescents. Supportive networks offer validation, emotional safety, and a sense of belonging, helping to mitigate the impact of discrimination. Based on these findings, this paper highlights a need for comprehensive antibullying policies and implementation, increased education and awareness campaigns, and an inclusive education system that embraces diversity. By prioritizing these actions, societies can create equitable opportunities for well-being and development, ensuring that all children, regardless of their racial, gender, or sexual identity, have the right to grow up in a world free from fear and discrimination.

Seeking adventure during the school holidays, five teenagers from the Indian suburb of Lenasia accidentally witness a violent crime that has a lasting impact on their lives. Starting in June of 1993, the novel follows the Five through the next decade as they confront, both as individuals and as a group, questions of who they are, who they are allowed to be, and who they are expected to be in the New South Africa. They must query what role they will allow tradition, ancestry, sexuality, skin colour, love, money and culture to play in their lives as they attempt to forge new paths, sometimes stumbling along the way, but always willing to give one another a helping hand.

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.

The structure, literary distinctiveness, and content of Caribbean literature for young people deserve attention to support the framing and inclusion of such texts in scholarly conversations, teacher-preparatory programmes, schools, libraries, and bookstores. The vulnerability of the child to the colliding forces of history finds expression not only in books for young people but also in mystery or detective fiction written for adults. Mystery fiction typically locates the murderer (whose kill is revealed as the book opens) as someone motivated by a single reason, offering readers a view of the world in which murder remains an intelligible readerly act. Child abuse, sexual molestation, and poverty overwhelm local families, often leading to children subsequently becoming killers as adults.

This study analyses the depiction of autism in Marcelo in the Real World, a young adult fiction novel, to critically explore the identity formation of the character Marcelo who navigates the challenges and complexities of the real world. By using the grounded theory and drawing on ideas from disability studies and social identity theory, the research demonstrates that parental guidance, encouragement and normal treatment of friends, and exposure to conflicts and contradictions are the most significant factors and can help autistic adolescents understand social life, improve social competence, and obtain power and control in social relations, promoting positive identity formation. The use of grounded theory methodology enables a full examination of Marcelo's experiences and the fundamental mechanisms guiding the development of his identity. This research deepens our comprehension of identity construction under the setting of autism, advancing both theoretical understanding and useful interventions for autistic adolescents.

Winner of the Children's Literature Association Edited Book Award From the jaded, wired teenagers of M.T. Anderson's Feed to the spirited young rebels of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy, the protagonists of Young Adult dystopias are introducing a new generation of readers to the pleasures and challenges of dystopian imaginings. As the dark universes of YA dystopias continue to flood the market,Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers offers a critical evaluation of the literary and political potentials of this widespread publishing phenomenon. With its capacity to frighten and warn, dystopian writing powerfully engages with our pressing global concerns: liberty and self-determination, environmental destruction and looming catastrophe, questions of identity and justice, and the increasingly fragile boundaries between technology and the self. When directed at young readers, these dystopian warnings are distilled into exciting adventures with gripping plots and accessible messages that may have the potential to motivate a generation on the cusp of adulthood. This collection enacts a lively debate about the goals and efficacy of YA dystopias, with three major areas of contention: do these texts reinscribe an old didacticism or offer an exciting new frontier in children's literature? Do their political critiques represent conservative or radical ideologies? And finally, are these novels high-minded attempts to educate the young or simply bids to cash in on a formula for commercial success? This collection represents a prismatic and evolving understanding of the genre, illuminating its relevance to children's literature and our wider culture.

The explicit definition of the protagonist's psychiatric diagnosis, and the frank, realistic portrayals of her interactions with mental health services and pharmacological therapy, made Am I Normal Yet stand out among other contemporary young adult fiction upon publication, especially in the UK. The novel's target demographic covers both those individuals who are most at risk of developing the illness, as well as their peers, with a particular focus on the perceived stigma of mental illness in the high school environment. Am I Normal Yet provides us with invaluable insights into the belief systems, social environments and cultural expectations that influence how teenagers interact with healthcare services and manage their conditions; insights that can help improve how we manage some of our youngest and most vulnerable patients.

This project is an interdisciplinary endeavor to connect research in the teaching of English with Critical Disability Studies, an intersection that is crucial to disrupting ableism and creating more liberatory schooling and societal contexts that embrace broader notions of human differences. Invoking critical content analysis of five young adult novels that depict characters with Tourette syndrome (TS), we asked, how are various models for understanding “disability” invoked in YA fiction that depicts Tourette syndrome? How do these various models function to reinforce, complicate, or reconstruct in a more progressive way notions about human difference in YA fiction that depicts Tourette syndrome? We focused on one of the many pervasive tropes found within all five novels using the psychodynamic construct of splitting. In particular, we call attention to depictions of TS as embodying an animal—most often a dog—that splits off into the bad/dangerous side, usually subsumed within a character’s “normal self.” This trope can be seen as part of broader, historical discourses that have dehumanized disabled people, constructing them as “other” and subsequently rationalizing exclusionary practices. We advocate for and discuss ways for scholars and educators to continue integrating disability from the margins to the center in literacy research.

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.