The Crossover Novel
Contemporary Children's Fiction and Its Adult Readership
By Rachel Falconer
Published August 21st 2008 by Routledge – 264 pages
Description
"Highly recommended" by Choice
While crossover books such as Rowling's Harry Potter series have enjoyed enormous sales and media attention, critical analysis of crossover fiction has not kept pace with the growing popularity of this new category of writing and reading. Falconer remedies this lack with close readings of six major British works of crossover fiction, and a wide-ranging analysis of the social and cultural implications of the global crossover phenomenon. A uniquely in-depth study of the crossover novel, Falconer engages with a ground-breaking range of sources, from primary texts, to child and adult reader responses, to cultural and critical theory.
Reviews
"Well written and documented, this accessible volume, with its extensive bibliography, will be valuable for those interested in children's literature - highly recommended" -- Choice, March 2009
"The Crossover Novel is an exhaustively researched and deeply theoretical approach to the phenomenon of crossover literature…provides an excellent groundwork for further study in this arena of children's literature."
-- Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Summer 2009, Vol. 34, No. 2
"[Falconer] seems genuinely interested in getting to the heart of profound questions of readership….What makes Falconer’s book so strong is that, although she may invoke her voracious child-reader self, she doesn’t settle for easy answers." --The Lion and the Unicorn 33 (2009)
Contents
Series Editor’s Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction A Decade of Border Crossing
Chapter 1 Kiddults at Large
Chapter 2 Harry Potter, Lightness and Death
Chapter 3 Coming of Age in a Fantasy World:
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials
Chapter 4 Seeing Things Big:
Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Chapter 5 Adolescence and Abjection:
Geraldine McCaughrean’s The White Darkness
Chapter 6 The Search for Roots:
David Almond’s Clay
Chapter 7 Re-reading Childhood Books:
C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair
Conclusion Crossing Thresholds of Time
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Author Bio
Rachel Falconer is a Reader in English Literature at the University of Sheffield. She has published criticism in the areas of classical, early modern, and contemporary literature and narrative theory. Her recent books include Hell in Contemporary Literature, and Face to Face: Mikhail Bakhtin in Russia and the West.
Related Subjects
Name: The Crossover Novel: Contemporary Children's Fiction and Its Adult Readership (Hardback) – Routledge
Description: By Rachel Falconer. "Highly recommended" by Choice
While crossover books such as Rowling's Harry Potter series have enjoyed enormous sales and media attention, critical analysis of crossover fiction has not kept pace with the growing popularity of this...
Categories: Literature, Children's Literature
