Abstract
This article explores the interconnections between young adult fiction and young adult readers’ constructions of place within two contemporary texts. It employs a qualitative, multiple case study design, and utilizes discussion groups, semi-structured interviews, and the creation of place-journals to interpret some of the ways in which several young adult readers, from two contrasting Canadian communities (rural/urban), respond to how place and place-identity are construed within two young adult fiction texts: Tim Wynne-Jones’ Blink and Caution and Clare Vanderpool’s Moon Over Manifest. Drawing on geography theory and ecocriticism, it argues that the participants’ interpretations of place align with the theories of place put forth by cultural geographer Doreen Massey and ecocritic Lawrence Buell. In doing so, it illustrates how the participants reflected on place, inside and outside of the chosen texts, as geographers and ecocritics would have done. The methodological approach moves beyond strictly textual analysis to privilege the voices of adolescent Canadian readers, positioning them as critical interpreters of place.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arizpe, Evelyn. (2009). Sharing Visual Experiences of a New Culture: Immigrant Children’s Responses to Picturebooks and Other Visual Texts. In J. Evans (Ed.), Talking Beyond the Page: Reading and Responding to Picturebooks (pp. 134–151). London: Routledge.
Arizpe, Evelyn, and McAdam, Julie. (2011). Crossing Visual Borders and Connecting Cultures: Children’s Responses to the Photographic Theme in David Wiesner’s Flotsam. New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship, 17(2), 227–243.
Azano, Amy. (2011). The Possibility of Place: One Teacher’s Use of Place-Based Instruction for English Students in a Rural High School. Journal of Research in Rural Education, 26(10), 1–10.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. (1981). Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel. In M. Holquist (Ed.), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Translated by C. Emerson and M. Holquist (pp. 84–258). Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Bansel, Peter. (2013). Same but Different: Space, Time, and Narrative. Literacy, 47(1), 4–9.
Baum, L. Frank. (1900). The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Chicago, IL:George M. Hill Company.
Bavidge, Jenny. (2006). Stories in Space: The Geographies of Children’s Literature. Children’s Geographies, 4(3), 319–330.
Buell, Lawrence. (1999). The Ecocritical Insurgency. New Literary History, 30(3), 699–712.
Buell, Lawrence. (2001). Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the U.S and Beyond. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Buell, Lawrence. (2005). The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Boston, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Cecire, Maria, Field, Hannah, Mudan Finn, Kavita, and Roy, Malini. (2015). Space and Place in Children’s Literature, 1789 to the Present. Surrey: Ashgate.
Cele, Sofia. (2006). Communicating Place: Methods for Understanding Children’s Experience of Place. Stockholm: Stockholm University.
Charlton, Emma, Cliff Hodges, Gabrielle, Pointon, Pam, Nikolajeva, Maria, Spring, Erin, Taylor, Liz, and Wyse, Dominic. (2012). My Place: Exploring Children’s Place-Related Identities Through Reading and Writing. Education 3-13: International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education. doi:10.1080/03004279.2012.662521.
Cliff Hodges, Gabrielle. (2010). Rivers of Reading: Using Critical Incident Collages to Learn About Adolescent Readers and Their Readership. English in Education, 44(3), 181–200.
Cliff Hodges, Gabrielle. (2016). Researching and Teaching Reading. Oxon: Routledge.
Cliff Hodges, Gabrielle, Nikolajeva, Maria, and Taylor, Liz. (2010). Three Walks Through Fictional Fens: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Gaffer Samson’s Luck. Children’s Literature in Education, 41, 189–206.
Cutter-Mackenzie, Amy, Payne, Phillip G., Reid, Alan. (2011). Experiencing Environment and Place Through Children’s Literature. London: Routledge.
Galway, Elizabeth. (2008). From Nursery Rhymes to Nationhood: Children’s Literature and the Construction of Canadian Identity. London: Taylor & Francis.
Hart, Roger. (1979). Children’s Experiences of Place. New York: Irvington Publishers Inc.
Iser, Wolfgang. (1978). The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. London: John Hopkins University Press.
Mackey, Margaret. (2010). Reading from the Feet Up: The Local Work of Literacy. Children’s Literature in Education, 41, 323–339.
Mackey, Margaret. (2016). One Child Reading: My Auto-bibliography. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.
Massey, Doreen. (1991). A Global Sense of Place. Marxism Today, 35(6), 24–29.
Massey, Doreen. (2005). For Space. London: SAGE.
Massey, Doreen. (2013). Doreen Massey on Space: An Interview with Nigel Warburton. Social Science Bites Podcast. Podcast Retrieved July 13, 2013, from http://www.socialsciencespace.com/2013/02/podcastdoreen-massey-on-space/.
Matthewman, Sasha. (2007). But What About the Fish? Teaching Ted Hughes’ Pike with Environmental Bite. English in Education, 41(3), 67–77.
Matthewman, Sasha, and Morgan, John. (2006). English and Geography; Common Ground? From Planet Earth to Pigs. Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, 13(3), 259–272.
Matthews, Michael. (1992). Place and Experience: Children’s Understanding of Large Scale Environments. Hempel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Nikolajeva, Maria. (2005). Aesthetic Approaches to Children’s Literature: An Introduction. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Reimer, Mavis. (2008). Homing and Unhoming: The Ideological Work of Canadian Children’s Literature. In Mavis Reimer (Ed.), Home Words: Discourses on Children’s Literature in Canada (pp. 1–26). Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Rosenblatt, Louise. (1978/1994). The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Ross, Nicola. (2007). My Journey to School: Foregrounding the Meaning of School Journeys and Children’s Engagements and Interactions in Their Everyday Localities. Children’s Geographies, 5(4), 373–391.
Spring, Erin. (2016a). Where are You From?: Locating the Young Adult Self Within and Beyond the Text. Journal of Children’s Geographies, 14(3), 356–371.
Spring, Erin. (2016b). The Experiences of Two Migrant Readers: Freedom, Restriction, and the Navigation of Adolescent Space. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 8(1), 227–247.
Spring, Erin. (2015). Place and Identity in Children’s and Young Adult Fiction. In Nancy Worth, Claire Dwyer, and Tracy Skelton (Eds.), Geographies of Identities and Subjectivities. Geographies of Children and Young People (Vol. 4). Singapore: Springer.
Vanderpool, Clare. (2010). Moon over Manifest. New York: Random House.
Wason-Ellam, Linda. (2010). Children’s Literature as a Springboard to Place-Based Embodied Learning. Environmental Education Research, 16(3), 279–294.
West, Alan, and Harris, Lee. (2003). Secrecy and Space: Glenn Gould and Tim Wynne-Jones’s The Maestro. In Aida Hudson and Susan-Ann Cooper (Eds.), Windows and Words: A Look at Canadian Children’s Literature in English (pp. 77–87). Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press.
Wilson, Melissa, and Short, Kathy. (2012). Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Challenging the Mythology of Home in Children’s Literature. Children’s Literature in Education, 43(2), 129–144.
Wiltse, Lynne, Johnston, Ingrid, and Yang, Kylie. (2014). Pushing Comfort Zones: Promoting Social Justice Through the Teaching of Aboriginal Canadian Literature. Changing English, 21(3), 264–277.
Wynne-Jones, Tim. (2011a). Blink and Caution Boston, MA: Candlewick Press.
Wynne-Jones, Tim. (2011b). Where is Here Anymore?: A Personal Reflection on “Representing the Environment”, Chapter Three of the Environmental Imagination by Lawrence Buell. The Lion and the Unicorn, 35, 118–131.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Erin Spring is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Child and Youth Studies at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta. Alongside her research, she teaches children’s and adolescent fiction in the English department. She completed her PhD in Children’s Literature in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. Her thesis won the UKLA Student Research Prize for its contribution to Literacy research. Erin was the 2015 recipient of the Frances E Russell Grant, through IBBY Canada, for her work with Indigenous adolescent readers living on a reserve in southern Alberta. Previous publications can be found in the journals Bookbird, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, and Children’s Geographies, as well as in various edited collections.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Spring, E. “Without Manifest, None of the Book Would have Happened”: Place, Identity, and the Positioning of Canadian Adolescent Readers as Literary Critics. Child Lit Educ 49, 101–118 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-017-9313-y
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-017-9313-y