Reading the Adolescent Romance: Sweet Valley High and the Popular Young Adult Romance Novel

ISBN-13: 9780415875943 / Angielski / Twarda / 2010 / 202 str.

Amy Pattee

Opis

Reading the Adolescent Romance provides an exhaustive study of the developments in young adult literature since the 1980s with a focus on Francine Pascal's Sweet Valley High series, which has become a cultural and literary touchstone for both fans and critics of the novels.

Francine Pascal’s 'Sweet Valley High' series of romance novels for older girls and young adults was one of the most protracted and successful of the twentieth century. In spite of its cool reception by teachers and librarians, the series developed a large fan base of young readers whose purchasing power pushed one volume of the series to a position on the New York Times list of best selling paperback fiction--a first for a young adult novel. 'Sweet Valley High'’s association with a contested form of youth literature—series fiction—and its relationship to the romance genre and popular reading practices has kept the series from critical consideration; however, the success and subsequent ubiquity of 'Sweet Valley High' and Pascal’s literary domain deserves attention. An examination of the series’ content, structure, and readers allows us to investigate an influential marketing and literary phenomenon and to interrogate the intersecting influences of history, audience positioning and readability that allowed 'Sweet Valley' to flourish and that contribute to the successes of subsequent series for girls.

Spis treści

Selected Contents: Introduction  1: Now Entering Sweet Valley, California: The Evolution of Young Adult Literature and the "Sweet Valley High" Series  2: A Political Map of Sweet Valley, California: The Ideological Content of Francine Pascal’s Series  3: A Physical Map of Sweet Valley, California: The Literary Landscape of "Sweet Valley High"  4: The Readers’ Text(s): Reading and Re-Reading "Sweet Valley High"  5: The "New" Sweet Valley High  6: The Legacy of "Sweet Valley High"  Notes  Bibliography  Index

O autorze

Amy S. Pattee is an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. There, she teaches children’s and young adult literature in both the library school and in a dual degree program affiliated with Simmons College’s Center for the Study of Children’s Literature.