'Without Manifest, None of the Book Would Have Happened': Place, Identity, and the Positioning of Canadian Adolescent Readers as Literary Critics
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| Title: | 'Without Manifest, None of the Book Would Have Happened': Place, Identity, and the Positioning of Canadian Adolescent Readers as Literary Critics |
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| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Spring, Erin |
| Source: | Children's Literature in Education. Jun 2018 49(2):101-118. |
| Availability: | Springer. 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-348-4505; e-mail: service-ny@springer.com; Web site: http://www.springerlink.com |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 18 |
| Publication Date: | 2018 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | Foreign Countries, Adolescent Literature, Qualitative Research, Case Studies, Semi Structured Interviews, Rural Urban Differences, Geography, Criticism, Correlation, Diaries, Self Concept, Theories |
| Geographic Terms: | Canada |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10583-017-9313-y |
| ISSN: | 0045-6713 |
| 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. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Number of References: | 42 |
| Entry Date: | 2018 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1177971 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwG_KQuRMgZUnbxnfn48OfCuAAAA4jCB3wYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHRMIHOAgEAMIHIBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDJ-hKB4nyjbdioEUwAIBEICBmkRzgYkFQztcvcJELnYMrJhJTpImnGvPJD_UOnWZFORhj1Y_CnpZ5kaxreF30FoXYcvyMnHITNi6iV-RgFyHvwNqczACl4vl_jWpejtu8Np0nOALbUEvc_26bt6FeUbokfKucwS5_4F-4RxgRtsB5mGQ3_h27N_rOTDIp2m9P9C_2e6JETfMX_8UmBdO6H5bc77OmyG7iIHq1QA= Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0129426182;cle01jun.18;2018May05.09:10;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0129426182-1">“Without Manifest, None of the Book Would have Happened”: Place, Identity, and the Positioning of Canadian Adolescent Readers as Literary Critics </title> <p>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.</p> <p>Young adult literature; Ecocriticism; Canadian literature; Cultural geography; Reader response</p> <p>In One Child Reading: My Auto-Bibliography, children’s literature scholar Margaret Mackey ([<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref1">22</reflink>] ) recalls how exploring the city of St. John’s Newfoundland shaped her childhood reading identity: “my location influenced my early literacy—and eventually my literacy became strong enough to influence my awareness of my location in return” (p. 13). My empirical work with Canadian readers similarly argues that reading is spatial and intrinsically place-based. This article draws on a study I conducted in two diverse Canadian communities (rural and urban). I worked with ten sixteen and seventeen year-old adolescents (five in each case) who read and discussed two young adult (YA) texts: Moon Over Manifest ([<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref2">21</reflink>] ) by Clare Vanderpool and Blink and Caution ([<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref3">41</reflink>] ) by Tim Wynne-Jones. Firstly, I sought to understand the ways in which my participants construed place and identity within their own lives (see Spring, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref4">35</reflink>] , [<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref5">33</reflink>] , [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref6">34</reflink>] ). Secondly, I wanted to uncover how these readers responded to textual constructions of place and identity. Did thinking about place while reading impel them to think critically about place beyond the text?</p> <p>Due to its “porous subject boundaries,” (Matthewman, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref7">26</reflink>] , p. 71) place is “not the property of a single discipline” (Buell, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref8">10</reflink>] , p. vi). A multidisciplinary theoretical framework grounded this project, including cultural geography, ecocriticism, identity theory, and reader response criticism. Within this article, I argue that, without any knowledge of place theory, my participants came to similar conclusions about the complexity and multiplicity of place. Their responses not only illustrate that place was salient within their readings, but that they were capable of making complex connections that linked with my underlying theory, unbeknownst to them. Here, I draw parallels between my participants’ responses and the theories of place that underpinned my own analysis, particularly those offered within ecocriticism (Lawrence Buell) and cultural geography theory (Doreen Massey).</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-2">Participants and Case Sites</hd> <p>I worked in a neighbourhood of Toronto (“Kirkville”) and in a rural community in Ontario (“Lakeside”). Due to the geographical distance between the two case sites, the urban and rural participants never met. In both locations, I had a connection with an English teacher at the school. I visited their classrooms, outlined my project, and asked for volunteers. In Kirkville, five females volunteered—Chloe, Irina, Victoria, Calla, and Alice. According to 2011 census data, immigrants compose 48% of Kirkville’s population. The median household income is $54,874. The school’s demographic reflects the community’s cultural and ethnic diversity. In close proximity to the school is one of Toronto’s most affluent streets, where, according to census data, 50% of household incomes are above $150,000. But a few blocks away is an area of high-density apartment complexes. Irina migrated from Moscow, Russia, at age ten, and Chloe had been living in Toronto for three years, having previously lived in Seoul, Korea (see Spring [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref9">34</reflink>] ). Victoria and Alice were born in Kirkville, but had been raised in very different neighbourhoods. Calla was a first-generation Canadian with British heritage.</p> <p>In Lakeside, I worked with four females and one male—Liam, Paige, Sophie, Thea, and Norah. Lakeside is approximately 350 km from the nearest urban center. It has a population of 16,000 in summer months when tourists frequent the area. According to census data, 93% of Lakeside’s population speaks only English, and only 8.4% of Lakeside’s population are immigrants. The median household income, $52,332, is below the provincial average. The local public secondary school, Lakeside High, has approximately 700 students and 83 members of staff. The school is located in the town center, and so most students travel to school via bus from neighbouring communities. My rural participants were all white and Canadian-born. While Liam had spent a few years of his childhood living in Toronto, the others had never lived elsewhere.</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-3">Methodological Approach</hd> <p>While participants read the texts in their spare time, individually, they engaged in participant-led group discussions revolving around the chosen texts. In each location, I conducted approximately six, hour-long reading discussion groups. The sessions occurred during lunchtime in the school library. While I was present, my role was minimal; I sometimes prompted a participant to say more, or would ask open-ended questions. The discussion groups were a particular strength to my project design, as the students were keen to share their thoughts without the demands of a curricular-driven classroom setting. It was clear to me that the participants had read the texts carefully, critically, and completely.</p> <p>Additionally, participants created a place-journal, containing visual and written responses. Their maps, sketches, written narratives, and comic-style drawings spoke of the ways in which place was influential within their own lives. The journal entries were completed outside of discussion group time, likely at home. While the journals were not referenced necessarily during the discussion sessions, the activities occurred simultaneously. Lastly, I conducted semi-structured interviews with each participant. By this time, my extensive field notes and transcriptions had provided me with a strong sense of each participant. They brought their place-journals along to the interview, where I was able to corroborate that my understanding was as complete as possible, and that these insights were grounded in their voices rather than mine.</p> <p>I anticipated that the reading discussion groups would offer an opportunity for the participants to discuss the research texts, while the place-journals and interviews would focus on their “real-world” or “beyond-the-text” encounters with place. I found, however, that there was no distinction between these methods in terms of the type of reflections that surfaced. During all three methods, the participants regularly shifted between their text and real-world reflections. This illustrates how place and place-identity are part of what reader-response scholar Louise Rosenblatt ([<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref10">31</reflink>] ) would call the transactional process: the participants’ place-trajectories were not separate from their reading trajectories. I observed that, drawing on past experiences and memories of place, the participants underwent a “personally experienced evocation of the literary work,” (p. 179) recreating or infiltrating the text with their version(s) of the world.</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-4">My Chosen Texts</hd> <p>Moon Over Manifest (Vanderpool, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref11">36</reflink>] ) is set during the depression of the 1930s. The narrator, Abilene, is a twelve-year old girl who has been left in rural Manifest, Kansas, by her father, Gideon, who is on the road searching for work. Here, Abilene becomes acquainted with local residents, particularly Miss Sadie, who tells stories of Manifest in the past, including those about her father. Miss Sadie’s stories focus on Ned and Jinx, friends who have adventures in Manifest prior to Ned’s departure to serve in the First World War. Abilene wonders if the character of Jinx within Miss Sadie’s stories is actually her father. By becoming part of the community where Gideon grew up, Abilene begins to understand her father.</p> <p>Blink and Caution (Wynne-Jones, [<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref12">41</reflink>] ) follows the lives of Blink, a homeless fifteen-year old boy, living on the streets of Toronto, and Caution, a fifteen-year old girl, who has run away from her family in northern Ontario, following the death of her brother, Spencer. For the first part of the novel, the narrative perspective shifts between Blink and Caution, giving the reader an understanding of their identities, as well as an awareness of these characters’ perceptions of Toronto. Eventually, Blink and Caution’s lives cross, and they find themselves involved in a mystery—one involving Indigenous land claims—that takes them away from Toronto to several unknown places, including a remote cabin in the woods. Through this process, they learn about themselves and about the different place(s) they are a part of.</p> <p>While designing my project, I sought two texts through which I could continue to challenge and or confirm the theoretical foundation for place that I had established. The role of home within Moon Over Manifest, for example, has been critiqued from a postmodern perspective (Wilson and Short, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref13">39</reflink>] ). Similarly, Wynne-Jones ([<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref14">42</reflink>] ) has written critically about the role of setting on characterization, and scholars have used his texts to write about young adult identity and homelessness (Reimer, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref15">30</reflink>] ) and identity and space (West and Harris, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref16">38</reflink>] ). The implied readers of both these texts are asked to engage with questions of identity and place.</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-5">Situating My Project</hd> <p>Scholars from multiple disciplines have studied young peoples’ (including young readers’) encounters with place. Children’s geographers frequently question how children engage with place, particularly through the use of visual methods (Hart, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref17">19</reflink>] ; Matthews, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref18">28</reflink>] ; Cele, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref19">12</reflink>] ; Ross, [<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref20">32</reflink>] ). Within educational research, there are studies that focus on students’ responses to local fiction in classroom settings (Wason-Ellam, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref21">37</reflink>] ; Azano, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref22">3</reflink>] ). In particular, my work was informed by the Journeys project (Arizpe, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref23">1</reflink>] ; Arizpe and McAdam, [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref24">2</reflink>] ) and the Writing, Reading, and Place Project (Charlton et al., [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref25">13</reflink>] ), both of which used picturebooks to explicitly elicit children’s complex negotiations of place, including migration. These studies are useful in that they reiterate how the act of reading can be a catalyst for thinking about place both within and beyond the text. My project differs in that my methodological design emphasized my participants’ textual reflections. The novels that I used were not only catalysts for understanding my participants’ lived experiences with place (beyond the text), but also they had a specific purpose within my project design—to allow me to understand the ways in which my participants’ construed place textually.</p> <p>Children’s literature and reader response scholars have written about reading as a spatial event (for example Cliff Hodges et al., [<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref26">16</reflink>] ). From an autobiographical perspective, Mackey ([<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref27">21</reflink>] , [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref28">22</reflink>] ) has written extensively on the physicality of her own early literacy. Gabrielle Cliff Hodges ([<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref29">14</reflink>] , [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref30">15</reflink>] ) defines reading as a social, cultural, and spatial practice. Drawing on Massey’s concept of time-space, Cliff Hodges ([<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref31">15</reflink>] ) articulates the importance of focusing on the “plurality and distinctiveness” (p. 167) of readers and classroom settings, because no two will “ever be the same” (p. 170). Also referring to Massey, Peter Bansel ([<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref32">5</reflink>] ) has written about teacher’s narratives as being subject to time-space; their reflections are always shifting.</p> <p>In her work with pre-service teachers, Sasha Matthewman ([<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref33">26</reflink>] ) asks English and geography trainees to draw connections between their disciplines, for example by considering what “a sense of space and place bring to the interpretation of a literary text” (Matthewman and Morgan, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref34">27</reflink>] , p. 259). Ingrid Johnston, who similarly works with teacher educators, uses picturebooks to challenge students’ negotiations of Canadian national identity, otherness, and multiculturalism. These texts “inspire[e] teachers and their students to engage with complex questions of equity and justice, challenge stereotypes of difference, and enlarge their worldviews” (Wiltse et al., [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref35">40</reflink>] , pp. 275-276).</p> <p>Concepts such as home, national identity and the environment permeate children’s literature criticism (Bavidge, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref36">7</reflink>] ; Galway, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref37">18</reflink>] ; Reimer, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref38">30</reflink>] ). However, as children’s literature criticism is primarily text-focused, the “real” child or adolescent’s voice is sometimes absent from these debates. There are two recent edited collections that focus specifically on place in children’s literature (Cutter-Mackenzie et al., [<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref39">17</reflink>] ; Cecire et al., [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref40">11</reflink>] ), neither of which feature reader-response work with adolescents. My project findings offer a new perspective in that my participants were asked to be literary critics. I am therefore able to share how these adolescent readers analyzed these texts in diverse, complex, critical ways.</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-6">Conceptualizing Place</hd> <p>While writing from different disciplines (geography and ecocriticism), parallels can be drawn between Massey and Buell’s conceptualizations of place. In particular, my participants’ responses coincided with the ideas put forth by these two scholars. Before sharing my participants’ interpretations, a brief outline of these theories of place will be helpful for reference.</p> <p>In A global sense of place ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref41">23</reflink>] ) Massey argues that movement between places does not threaten our relationships with place. Rather than thinking about place as a geographical space with clear borders, as earlier human geographers might have suggested, Massey encourages her reader to consider the “time-space compression” ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref42">23</reflink>] , p. 27). Geographical spaces are not flat, mappable surfaces; rather, they are comprised of a “bundle of trajectories” (Massey, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref43">24</reflink>] , p. 47) where each living and non-living thing converges. Everyone has their own unique trajectory, their own memories, cultures, and histories that influence how they experience that place. Place is therefore like a “pincushion of a million stories” (Massey, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref44">25</reflink>] , n.p.) that is comprised of movement and connections, rather than rootedness or borders.</p> <p>Massey’s ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref45">23</reflink>] ) conceptualization of place consists of several stages. She argues that places are processes. Because of the flows of movement that are constantly at play, places cannot be defined as static, but should rather be seen as being “constructed out of a particular constellation of social relations” (1994, p. 154). Similarly, she argues that it is impossible to draw boundaries around places. Our senses of place are inevitably informed by the outside world, blurring the local and global. For example, Irina’s understanding of Kirkville was informed by her knowledge of Moscow, and Chloe’s Toronto featured shades of Seoul (Spring, [<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref46">34</reflink>] ). Because the local is continually influenced by the global, Massey ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref47">23</reflink>] ) articulates that places cannot ever have a “seamless, coherent identity” (p. 25) shared by a population. Everyone experiences place differently, depending on the communities, or networks, that they are involved with, aligning with Rosenblatt’s claim that all readers interpret texts differently, depending on the experiences they bring to the text. While places are all different, Massey ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref48">23</reflink>] ) reaffirms the important uniqueness of places. Places retain their uniqueness through their fluidity; they are unique because they are seen, felt, and experienced in a plethora of ways.</p> <p>In Writing for an Endangered World, Buell ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref49">9</reflink>] ) outlines a number of “dimensions of place-connectedness” (p. 64) in literature. Each dimension of Buell’s model outlines a potential place-relationship that a character or reader can form. One phase suggests that we have a singular home base with which we identify most strongly. As we step away from this centre, all other places pale in comparison. Another way of envisaging place-connectedness is to assume that we take on a patchwork of “specific entanglements” (Buell, [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref50">9</reflink>] , p. 66) with place, whereby multiple places affect identity, closely echoing Massey’s argument that mobility is an integral part of place, and that places themselves are constructed as a “simultaneity-of- stories-so-far” (2005, p. 9). Massey and Buell similarly agree that, like our identifications, places are continually being reshaped and redefined. Buell ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref51">9</reflink>] ) writes, “place is not just a noun but also a verb, a verb of action” (p. 67). Buell continues from this perspective, acknowledging that people themselves move between places, resulting in a multilayered sense of place, aligning with Massey’s assertion that places are unique because of the trajectories that converge in that space.</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-7">Identity as Multi-layered and Shifting</hd> <p>Massey ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref52">23</reflink>] ) and Buell ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref53">9</reflink>] ) both articulate place-identity as fluid and multiple: rather than being tied to one place, such as a town or neighbourhood, we come to identify with numerous places or “constellations” that change over time. My participants reflected on the protagonists’ identities as shifting throughout the texts. In her place-journal, Sophie from Lakeside commented on Caution’s identity transformation. Alongside her response she sketched a butterfly:</p> <p>Sophie: Caution is best represented as a butterfly because throughout the novel she experiences many changes and goes through many things […] and because of these happenings she evolves and shapes into the girl that she is with experiences and knowledge that will lead her through life. Butterflies in the same sense experience their own changes and evolve from caterpillars to winged beauties.</p> <p>Sophie’s reference to Caution’s “changes” suggests that she perceives identity construction to be an active process, the result of living through various experiences, and changing significantly as a result. Caution “experiences” these changes—in other words, she has an awareness of her identity changing. Sophie’s lexis conveys different kinds of development: “evolve” connotes a natural, organic form of change, while “shaped” renders something less natural, such as a specific life event or experience that has been influential, triggering sudden change. “Shapes into” suggests that Sophie construes Caution as having a sense of agency or control in the moulding of her self-concept. Her use of the word shape, as well as her reference to the metamorphosis of the caterpillar, both convey change as a physical process.</p> <p>Sophie engaged in a similar conversation with Paige during a discussion group:</p> <p>Paige: It says in the book, “One way, because no matter what happens, you won’t be coming back to the same place you left behind.” That is true. Like the place has changed when [Blink] comes back, well, when both of them come back. But they have also changed […].</p> <p>Sophie: But then the only reason the place changed was because they changed. They have different views of the world now, so they did not see the same things when they returned. The place kept moving while they were gone.</p> <p>Again, the word “change” arises, signalling Paige and Sophie’s construction of identity as being subject to change. A directional discourse is employed, such as “comes back” and “return,” conveying a back and forth motion. Change is associated with the characters’ time away. Focus is given to how the characters see the world upon return, which has dual implications. “View of the world” implies that Blink and Caution have, in visiting another place, shifted their interpretation of the physical world they live in—Toronto is viewed differently, as a result of this newly acquired knowledge of another physical place. But “view of the world” also has implications for identity, as it suggests that their time away changed them in some way, which results in Blink and Caution seeing or understanding themselves as part of this world differently. Regardless of whether Sophie’s use of this phrase is intentional or not, she interprets Blink and Caution’s identities as being in flux. Sophie’s acknowledgement that “the place kept moving” strikingly resembles Massey’s ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref54">23</reflink>] ) description of place as a process.</p> <p>In Kirkville, the participants had a similar conversation. In the following discussion group passage, Calla and Irina discuss Abilene, who they perceive as having explicit questions about her identity. In particular, Irina’s lexis aligns with Buell’s ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref55">9</reflink>] ) assertion that characters can come to have a “specific entanglement” of identifications with place:</p> <p>Erin: [Picks up quote]: “I was all middle. I had always been between one place and the next.”</p> <p>Calla: I think that she is reflecting her outlook on her own life. She is living in the moment. She has no real origin story. And she doesn’t have a real, concrete plan for the future. She can’t see ahead.</p> <p>Erin: And do you think that is a reflection of Gideon, too?</p> <p>Calla: Yes, cause he is a traveller. Just like she is.</p> <p>Irina: I want to disagree. She knows where she is going. She doesn’t know where she is going to end up. She doesn’t know where she has come from. But she is on her way. She sees her going through life but she doesn’t know exactly where she is going to end up.</p> <p>Abilene finds it difficult to articulate her life story because she understands stories as being linear, as having a beginning, middle, and ending, which does not mirror her reality of growing up without roots in place. Calla’s comment resembles Sophie’s presentation of Caution’s identity development as being like a butterfly, wherein you have a beginning (caterpillar) and end (butterfly). While there are significant changes along this trajectory, the patterns of change are quite straightforward; Calla articulates there to be a possibility of one developing a “concrete plan” for the future. “Concrete” connotes stability, or sureness; having a concrete future plan does not accommodate for unpredictability. Calla sets concrete and travelling in opposition; it is impossible to find stability while in motion. As such, Calla renders Abilene as desiring control over her identity, of seeking the ability to look to the past, and to the future, and to have a clear sense of direction. “Reflecting her outlook” suggests that Calla construes Abilene as having the ability to think about her identity, connoting that Abilene has agency.</p> <p>On the contrary, Irina envisages Abilene as being unsure of many aspects of her identity: not ‘knowing exactly’ contradicts Calla’s use of “concrete.” Irina perceives Abilene as being aware that identity is a shifting construct —Abilene “knows” she is moving forward but she does “not know” (or necessarily have control over) these uncertain features of her future, such as where she will “end up.” According to Irina, Abilene is only certain that she is moving forward. Irina’s presentation of identity is less straightforward than the ones put forth by Calla and Sophie.</p> <p>Here, tangible connections can be drawn between Calla and Irina’s “real world” and text-drawn reflections of place. While she had travelled frequently to England, Calla had never lived outside of Kirkville. Her reflections mirror Buell’s ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref56">9</reflink>] ) concept of the “home base.” Calla had a singular, specific place-identity that was bound up in her physical house, in her family’s company:</p> <p>Calla: “I would find it hard to leave home […] I’ve applied to all local campuses for school in the fall […] Home is where you spend most of your time, and where you would rather be by preference. So it’s my house. My house that is in sort of a somewhat suburban area, it is in front of a park […] I have a front garden and a back garden […] It has a basement, a small attic, very small, so most of the stuff we either need or don’t really need we put down there. Um, the living room is where I spend most of my time […] with my family.</p> <p>It is possible that Calla’s analysis of Abilene resembles her own desire to have a “real, concrete” plan for the future, and her own fear of uncertainty. Calla’s use of pronouns conveys ownership. This security in place informs her sense of self, as is emphasized through Calla’s detailed articulation of its layout. While Calla was anxious about Abilene’s uncertain future, wanting her to have more answers than she was able to find, Irina was more at ease with Abilene’s unsettled trajectory. Irina migrated to Toronto with her parents, and frequently reflected on the experience:</p> <p>Irina: We are still waiting for my grandparents’ sponsorship visas to arrive. Once they are here, maybe it will feel more like home, but for now we write letters and talk on the phone. I miss Russia, sure, but this is where we need to be right now.</p> <p>Irina’s repeated comment about Abilene - “she doesn’t know exactly where she is going to end up”— may mirror her own feelings of uncertainty and instability in Toronto. Describing Abilene as “being on her way” toward finding a home in Manifest closely resembles her own recognition that she “is where [she] needs to be right now.”</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-8">A Time-Space Compression</hd> <p>Maria Nikolajeva ([<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref57">29</reflink>] ) defines setting as the “time and place of the events being described” (p. 127), mirroring Massey’s ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref58">23</reflink>] ) configuration of place as time-space compression and literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin’s ([<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref59">4</reflink>] ) concept of chronotope, also meaning time-space. Within this subsection, I share Liam from Lakeside’s complex understanding of setting:</p> <p>Liam: Without Manifest none of the book would have happened. I mean, the book would just not have been the same if it had been set anywhere aside from Manifest. Manifest just had that rich history behind it that made the whole thing credible. And I guess that that rich history was sorta because of the characters there, but I don’t think they would have acted the same if it had been set in say, a city, or in 2012. Or [pause] even in another small town.</p> <p>Liam draws explicit connections among setting, character, and time. He construes Manifest as being comprised of what Massey ([<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref60">24</reflink>] ) would call a “simultaneity-of-stories-so-far,” (p. 9) in that the characters’ journeys (their “rich histories”) have brought them to this place, in this moment in time, resulting in a time-space-compression that is unique to this location. Liam understands the story as chronotopic (Bakhtin, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref61">4</reflink>] ); he perceives time and space—within the text—to be inseparable. The characters would be perceived differently if removed from the specific chronotope that exists within the text. Liam’s vocabulary highlights his gradual awareness of the connections between time and space—he begins by noting that “without Manifest” the book would not have happened; he then says that he “guesses” Manifest was a prevalent setting “sorta because” of the characters. His interpretation changed as we spoke, calling to mind Wolfgang Iser’s ([<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref62">20</reflink>] ) description of active reading: “as the reader passes through the various perspectives offered by the text and relates the different views and patterns to one another he sets the work in motion, and so sets himself in motion, too” (p. 21).</p> <p>Later within our interview, Liam returned to the concept of time. Before sharing Liam’s reflection, it is helpful to consider Massey’s description of the ways in which individuals and places are positioned within the time-space compression:</p> <p>Different social groups have distinct relationships to this anyway differentiated mobility: some people are more in charge of it than others; some initiate flows and movement, others don’t; some are more on the receiving-end of it than others; some are effectively imprisoned by it […] The ways in which people are placed within ‘time-space compression’ are highly complicated and extremely varied ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref63">23</reflink>] , p. 26).</p> <p>Connections can be drawn between Massey’s reflection, and those shared by Liam:</p> <p>Liam: Manifest was just in that perfect place [pause] between all of the plot, how things work perfectly. I just like Kansas. Kansas is a cool name, and the Wizard of Oz happened in Kansas, so I like that. And at the same time, it has that sort of, well, I guess the story was set in 1918, and in 1936, but at the same time, even in the 1918 or 1936 setting, Manifest, Kansas, had that sort of backwards feeling, I guess I can’t really connect with what would be forwards in 1918 or 1936, but there was just something about it that felt a bit behind the times. And I don’t think that any two towns, villages, cities, are ever behind the times in the exact same way. I mean, some are behind the times in values, some are behind the times economically; there is a certain combination of that in Manifest. And I don’t think it had to do exclusively with the characters, it had something to do with the setting, too. I am trying to describe it here. [Pause] Hmm.</p> <p>Liam’s reflection points to his transactional reading of this text, wherein he looks, as Rosenblatt would suggest, inwardly (onto his own life experiences) and externally (onto the text) to scaffold an interpretation of Manifest. He “likes” that L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz ([<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref64">6</reflink>] ) was also set in Kansas, presumably because he can borrow knowledge of Kansas that he obtained from this text to inform his reading of how Kansas is construed in Moon Over Manifest. He is also aware that Vanderpool’s Kansas has multiple trajectories, which converge within this text; for example, he mentions the 1918 setting and the 1936 setting. Liam is aware of the time-space compressions that are occurring, as the narrative shifts between these historical periods. Although his reflection is left unfinished (“hmm”), parallels can be drawn between his understanding of the time-space compression that is occurring in Manifest, and Massey’s description, offered above. Liam recognises that Manifest, as a fictional place, has its own unique trajectory, that it is a process.</p> <p>During our interview, Liam reflected on his own positioning in place and time as a reader, and how this informed his encounter with the text:</p> <p>Liam: Manifest was a small town, but not just by population, but by size, too. So everybody would live close to everybody else. In Lakeside, where I live, we have to take a five-minute walk to say hi to our neighbours. There was definitely a much, much bigger sense of community in Manifest than where I live in Lakeside […] although, I’ll bet if I lived in one of the suburban areas in Lakeside, I’d have a very different view of Manifest. Like if I lived in a neighbourhood, like the one just next to the school, say, the book would be different.</p> <p>Reading about Manifest incites Liam to reflect on his own sense of place, where he experiences a different sense of community. Again, Liam’s awareness of his transactional reading of this text is brought to the forefront: he understands that he has his own place-trajectory, which informs his reading of the text’s trajectory. If he lived in a different neighbourhood, then a different reading event would occur. These connections correspond with Mackey’s ([<reflink idref="bib21" id="ref65">21</reflink>] , [<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref66">22</reflink>] ) reflection of the physicality of reading. In the passage below, also drawn from our interview, Liam’s experience of Toronto comes into contact with Blink’s representation of the city:</p> <p>Liam: I found Blink’s Toronto very different from what I always thought of as Toronto, I mean. I guess Blink and Caution would be seeing totally different parts of Toronto from what I saw. I’ve never actually thought of a [pause] a hotel in the same way that Blink thought of it. [pause] I mean, I’ve always thought of hotels as places where you sleep, then you wake up, then you leave. For Blink, the hotel almost meant a sort of life for him, maybe. No, yeah. Maybe, a little bit.</p> <p>Liam’s experience of Toronto differs significantly from Blink’s. Through the act of reading, Liam reconsiders or changes his interpretation of this place. Liam does not read over or ignore the place descriptions provided by Blink, searching for moments of recognition of the city. As a reader, he is open to the possibility of a different vision of a shared space. Liam understands that Blink’s experience of Toronto is a result of his positioning with a time-space that differs from his own. Not only, then, does Liam construe fictional settings to be unique time-space compressions, or chronotopes, but he understands that his primary world experience of place has its own trajectory, its own process.</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-9">The Social Features of Place-Identity</hd> <p>In his writings on place, Buell ([<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref67">8</reflink>] ) articulates that ecocriticism has historically focused primarily on “nonmetropolitan projects,” (p. 706) ignoring the important ways in which culture (including communities of people) informs our environmental perceptions. At both case sites, how Abilene created a home in Manifest was discussed at length. Below, the Kirkville participants reflect on the importance of community and social networks during a discussion group:</p> <p>Alice: Throughout the text, [Manifest] is becoming her home. She knows it now. She knows this place and she knows the people. Everything that she did not know when she arrived.</p> <p>Erin: And how did it become that?</p> <p>Irina: She found out that Jinx is Gideon […] and she starts connecting to what her father’s life was […] what kind of person he was when he was younger […] it starts making sense, and you start to absorb it.</p> <p>Erin: So what does that tell us about the link between the people of Manifest and the place itself?</p> <p>Calla: To get to know the place, Abilene has to get to know the people. She has to build bonds with them, and through them she is able to learn more about the place.</p> <p>Chloe: I agree. The people help her make it a home. And once it is a home she can connect with it. It starts to mean something as a place.</p> <p>By becoming connected with the people of Manifest, Abilene is able to integrate herself into the community. My participants prioritised her first step as creating these social, rather than physical, connections. The vocabulary employed within this passage reiterates that construing home is an active pursuit—Manifest “becomes” a home only when Abilene learns things about the people that she did not “know” before. In order for place to become meaningful, then, it has to be known. The people help “make it” a home, which means it can “start to” mean something. The place is a process; it is not static, but changeable.</p> <p>Knowing the people of Manifest also enabled Abilene to better understand her father. During a later discussion group conversation, Chloe reiterated that:</p> <p>It was interesting how Abilene was able to get to know Gideon as a teenager, or as a child […] When she thought about Gideon she realised that […] they have this relationship, but she doesn’t know what he did when he was young. She knows him by listening to the stories while in the town. So the place teaches her about him, even though he’s not there […] I mean not physically there. But he’s there, there.</p> <p>During a discussion group at Lakeside, Sophie and Paige came to a similar conclusion:</p> <p>Erin: So when does [Abilene] learn the meaning of home?</p> <p>Sophie: When she goes to Manifest, and meets the people, and learns about the history of the place.</p> <p>Sophie: When she goes to Manifest, and meets the people, and learns about the history of the place.</p> <p>Paige: And knows their stories, and stuff, and how they have made it their home, too. And how her father had made it his home. And he makes it a home by knowing people. So she will do the same.</p> <p>The people of Manifest are a home for Abilene because they are able to fill in some of the gaps of her past. Many of the community members knew her father, and are thus able to tell her stories about him. As a result, Abilene is able to understand her father by forging relationships with the people of this community. In order to know her father, Abilene has to return to the place where he was a child—illustrating that the place is an important part of Gideon’s identity. As Chloe remarks, Gideon is not physically there, but he (and his stories) remain part of the town’s narrative, the town’s “constellation of social relations” (Buell, 1994, p. 154).</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-10">Parents as a “Home Base”</hd> <p>The participants in Lakeside commented on the importance of characters operating from a “home base” (Buell, [<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref68">9</reflink>] ). Parents were the ones construed to provide this sense of stability in place. On Abilene’s first day of school, she is asked by her teacher to write a story to share with her classmates. She finds the task difficult, as she does not have a clear sense of her beginning:</p> <p>Norah: She doesn’t know how to write a story. She doesn’t feel like she has one. She doesn’t have like a complete one. Like when she starts to maybe have a story, she has to move, and it starts all over.</p> <p>Paige: Maybe, well, ‘I don’t know, maybe she just doesn’t feel like she’s got a beginning,’ cause like she doesn’t have a mom, sort of thing. Like, her mom’s not there.</p> <p>Erin: Or because she maybe has so many different beginnings.</p> <p>Norah: Yeah, and like no solid foundation.</p> <p>Thea: She doesn’t have a place where she can just go, ‘Ok, it starts here.’</p> <p>Thea aligns not having a beginning with place, noting that Abilene “doesn’t have a place,” a specific location where her story begins. Paige goes a step farther, arguing that Abilene’s inability to locate her beginning relates to the absence of her mother. Not only does Abilene not know her mother, but also her mother is not there, indicating that, for Paige, a physically present mother is essential for Abilene’s self-understanding. Norah’s reference to a “solid foundation” could mean a foundation in place (one that is concrete, one that does not move) but also the foundation that a family provides, paralleling Paige’s reflection. Within this context, my participants are construing parents as necessarily providing grounding for their children, if their children are subsequently to understand the beginnings of their identifications with place. The lexis that is employed presents movement as a threat to self-awareness. Abilene does not have a “solid” grasp on her identity because she has to start over each time she moves, which works against Massey’s idea of place as a process, and Buell’s suggestion that we take on a constellation of place-connectedness. On the contrary, the students from Lakeside perceived Abilene as desiring a single, stable grounding in place.</p> <p>Later in the conversation, the discussion turned to Gideon and his decision to send Abilene to Manifest while he continues to search for work on the train:</p> <p>Thea: Yeah. I thought he [Gideon] could have been more of a father. She liked him, but I thought he could have been nicer.</p> <p></p> <p>Erin: In what way?</p> <p></p> <p>Thea: Well, I wouldn’t like to be sent away.</p> <p></p> <p>Paige: He didn’t provide her with that sort of, grounded, those roots.</p> <p>Thea’s reflection suggests that she construes it to be Gideon’s duty to provide Abilene with a home, but also with his physical presence. “More of a father” suggests that there is a minimum amount of paternity that one can reasonably expect. Even though Abilene is “sent away” to have a home, Gideon is not a “nice” father, because he sends her away on her own. Thea adopts a casual tone while reflecting on Abilene’s perception of her father; “she liked him” suggests that Thea interprets Abilene as being connected to her father, but not as strongly as would normally be expected between father and daughter. Thea’s response is subjective—she would not want to be separated physically from her own father. Her positioning, “I wouldn’t like,” however, points to her recognition that she is not Abilene. She wonders, instead, what if she were? Paige’s comment parallels Thea’s sentiments about Gideon’s fatherly duties: she conveys that it is a father’s duty to offer his child a sense of anchorage through his own presence and through a home. The vocabulary employed draws a parallel between parents and place: it is an adult (parental) responsibility to situate children in place. The language used by my participants (“grounded,” ‘rooted,” “foundation”) is arguably physical, reinforcing this connection.</p> <p>Although the participants construed parents as ideally fulfilling these roles, they understood and thus accepted Gideon’s decision to send Abilene away. His action was envisaged as necessary, which reflects the importance of rootedness that these participants valued; it was more important for Gideon to provide Abilene with a sense of rootedness in place than to be physically present within her life. In the following passage, participants at Lakeside discuss Gideon’s motive for sending Abilene away:</p> <p>Thea: I just, I think they could have been closer. I just wouldn’t like to be shipped off somewhere else.</p> <p>Paige: But like […] those were his only roots.</p> <p>Norah: He knew that people would be nice.</p> <p>Paige: He had been a stranger there once, too, cause he was running away. And like he found safety there, so he figured that it was a perfect place for his daughter to go.</p> <p>Gideon cannot protect Abilene on the train, and so he sends her to the only home he has ever known. Paige’s use of the words “stranger” and “safety” introduces a binary that resembles Massey ([<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref69">23</reflink>] ) and Buell’s ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref70">9</reflink>] ) conceptualization of place being multi-layered. When Gideon arrived, Manifest was strange, but as he assimilated himself within the community, he found safety there. Paige therein constructs Gideon as wanting for his daughter safety, not strangeness, echoing the importance of parental figures protecting their children, by providing rootedness in place. It also reiterates my participants’ desire for a home base for the characters. Thea’s use of the word “closer” suggests that she interprets Abilene and Gideon as being close, but not as close as they could be, corresponding with Calla’s use of the term “loose leash.” Thea would prefer the connection between them to be stronger. In line with this, “shipped off” evokes a sense of carelessness, on Gideon’s part. Again, Thea’s discourse (particularly, “I wouldn’t like”) demonstrates her ability to position herself at a distance from Abilene.</p> <p>Thea’s anxieties about Abilene “being shipped off somewhere” and “being sent away” reflected Thea’s own experience of never leaving home. During our interview, we had the following conversation:</p> <p>Erin: Where would you like to travel?</p> <p>Thea: Everywhere. I’d like to go to places like Paris, and New York City, ‘cause I’ve read a lot of books that are there.</p> <p>Erin: And so you’d like to visit cities?</p> <p>Thea: I just […] most of the books that I’ve read about France take place in Paris. I feel connected to Paris. And I’d like to travel all over Italy […] I’m a small town person, like for real living […] Like I couldn’t live in Toronto. I couldn’t live there. But […] I like visiting the city [pause] through reading.</p> <p>Thea is able to connect to distant places through reading. She distinguishes between “real” living and “reading.” In real life, she would not want to live in Toronto; through reading, however, she interprets it as possible to become connected with settings that additionally exist within her primary world. It is safe for Thea to experience these cities, which are far away from home, through reading, because a degree of distance is maintained. Reading does not actually take her away, but also she does not distinguish between real and fictional places; if she does visit Paris, in “real life,” she will feel like an insider, having visited before, albeit through the lens of fiction.</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-11">Conclusion</hd> <p>Within this article, I have illustrated the critical reading capacities of my adolescent participants. Reading two explicitly place-based texts, and then discussing the texts through unstructured reading groups and journaling, afforded opportunities for my participants to engage with concepts of place and place-identity in two primary ways. Firstly, reading incited the adolescents to reflect on and share their own multiple, often-complicated encounters with place, beyond the text. In turn, their transactional encounters with these novels shaped how they envision themselves as being situated in various time-space compressions. Their text-based and personal reflections did not surface separately; stories of their families, personal histories, cultures, and communities were intercepted with moments of text-based reflections, indicating how these critical processes are intricately intertwined in the reading process. As scholars such as Mackey suggest, it was not possible for them to ignore their lives beyond the text—their own situatedness—as readers. While I recognized the depth of their readings as the project was unfolding, I also became aware of their level of familiarity: it was as if they had read these texts numerous times. The participants adopted the vocabulary of the characters, and of each other.</p> <p>As this article has shown, without any knowledge of cultural geography theory or ecocriticism, my participants’ configured place in similar ways to Massey and Buell. The participants displayed an ecological way of thinking about place—commenting on the ways in which people and places, in physical and social contexts, are comprised of significant rather than casual connections. They reflected on the importance of “home bases” for these characters. They construed the characters as desiring, and thus seeking to find these places of stability. At other times, however, they configured a character’s place experience as a series of “specific entanglements,” recognizing the intersections between time and place. Correspondingly, the settings of my chosen texts were not read straightforwardly: the places in which these characters live in, and travel between and from, were construed as multiple. Within their text and real-world reflections, they discussed the intersections between time and place; the importance of spending time in place for that place to become meaningful; and how movement between places is detrimental to place-attachment.</p> <p>Likewise, I would have interpreted my participants’ reflections differently, had I not been familiar with the constructions of place offered within ecocriticism and geography theory. Massey and Buell’s theories of place provided me with frameworks through which to interpret my participants’ own place reflections, both within and beyond the text.</p> <p>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.</p> <hd id="AN0129426182-12">References</hd> <hd id="AN0129426182-13">Citations</hd> <p>1 Arizpe Evelyn, Evans J, Sharing Visual Experiences of a New Culture: Immigrant Children’s Responses to Picturebooks and Other Visual Texts, Talking Beyond the Page: Reading and Responding to Picturebooks, 2009, London, Routledge, 134, 151</p> <ulist> <item>2 Arizpe Evelyn, McAdam Julie, 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, 2011, 17, 2, 227, 243, 10.1080/13614541.2011.624969</item> <item>3 Azano Amy, 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, 2011, 26, 10, 1, 10</item> <item>4 Bakhtin, Mikhail. 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From Planet Earth to Pigs, Changing English: Studies in Culture and Education, 2006, 13, 3, 259, 272, 10.1080/13586840600971760</item> <item>28 Matthews Michael, Place and Experience: Children’s Understanding of Large Scale Environments, 1992, Hempel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf</item> <item>29 Nikolajeva Maria, Aesthetic Approaches to Children’s Literature: An Introduction, 2005, Lanham, MD, Scarecrow Press</item> <item>30 Reimer Mavis, Reimer Mavis, Homing and Unhoming: The Ideological Work of Canadian Children’s Literature, Home Words: Discourses on Children’s Literature in Canada, 2008, Waterloo, ON, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1, 26</item> <item>31 Rosenblatt, Louise. (1978/1994)., The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.</item> <item>32 Ross Nicola, My Journey to School: Foregrounding the Meaning of School Journeys and Children’s Engagements and Interactions in Their Everyday Localities, Children’s Geographies, 2007, 5, 4, 373, 391, 10.1080/14733280701631833</item> <item>33 Spring Erin, Where are You From?: Locating the Young Adult Self Within and Beyond the Text, Journal of Children’s Geographies, 2016, 14, 3, 356, 371, 10.1080/14733285.2015.1055456</item> <item>34 Spring Erin, The Experiences of Two Migrant Readers: Freedom, Restriction, and the Navigation of Adolescent Space, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 2016, 8, 1, 227, 247, 10.1353/jeu.2016.0010</item> <item>35 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.</item> <item>36 Vanderpool Clare, Moon over Manifest, 2010, New York, Random House</item> <item>37 Wason-Ellam Linda, Children’s Literature as a Springboard to Place-Based Embodied Learning, Environmental Education Research, 2010, 16, 3, 279, 294, 10.1080/13504620903549771</item> <item>38 West Alan, Harris Lee, Hudson Aida, Cooper Susan-Ann, Secrecy and Space: Glenn Gould and Tim Wynne-Jones’s, The Maestro, Windows and Words: A Look at Canadian Children’s Literature in English, 2003, Ottawa, ON, University of Ottawa Press, 77, 87</item> <item>39 Wilson Melissa, Short Kathy, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: Challenging the Mythology of Home in Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature in Education, 2012, 43, 2, 129, 144, 10.1007/s10583-011-9138-z</item> <item>40 Wiltse Lynne, Johnston Ingrid, Yang Kylie, Pushing Comfort Zones: Promoting Social Justice Through the Teaching of Aboriginal Canadian Literature, Changing English, 2014, 21, 3, 264, 277, 10.1080/1358684X.2014.929287</item> <item>41 Wynne-Jones Tim, Blink and Caution, 2011, Boston, MA, Candlewick Press</item> <item>42 Wynne-Jones Tim, 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, 2011, 35, 118, 131, 10.1353/uni.2011.0012</item> </ulist> <aug> <p>By Erin Spring</p> </aug> <nolink nlid="nl1" bibid="bib22" firstref="ref1"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl2" bibid="bib21" firstref="ref2"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl3" bibid="bib41" firstref="ref3"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl4" bibid="bib35" firstref="ref4"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl5" bibid="bib33" firstref="ref5"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl6" bibid="bib34" firstref="ref6"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl7" bibid="bib26" firstref="ref7"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl8" bibid="bib10" firstref="ref8"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl9" bibid="bib31" firstref="ref10"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl10" bibid="bib36" firstref="ref11"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl11" bibid="bib39" firstref="ref13"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl12" bibid="bib42" firstref="ref14"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl13" bibid="bib30" firstref="ref15"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl14" bibid="bib38" firstref="ref16"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl15" bibid="bib19" firstref="ref17"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl16" bibid="bib28" firstref="ref18"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl17" bibid="bib12" firstref="ref19"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl18" bibid="bib32" firstref="ref20"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl19" bibid="bib37" firstref="ref21"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl20" bibid="bib3" firstref="ref22"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl21" bibid="bib1" firstref="ref23"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl22" bibid="bib2" firstref="ref24"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl23" bibid="bib13" firstref="ref25"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl24" bibid="bib16" firstref="ref26"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl25" bibid="bib14" firstref="ref29"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl26" bibid="bib15" firstref="ref30"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl27" bibid="bib5" firstref="ref32"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl28" bibid="bib27" firstref="ref34"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl29" bibid="bib40" firstref="ref35"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl30" bibid="bib7" firstref="ref36"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl31" bibid="bib18" firstref="ref37"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl32" bibid="bib17" firstref="ref39"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl33" bibid="bib11" firstref="ref40"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl34" bibid="bib23" firstref="ref41"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl35" bibid="bib24" firstref="ref43"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl36" bibid="bib25" firstref="ref44"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl37" bibid="bib9" firstref="ref49"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl38" bibid="bib29" firstref="ref57"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl39" bibid="bib4" firstref="ref59"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl40" bibid="bib20" firstref="ref62"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl41" bibid="bib6" firstref="ref64"></nolink> <nolink nlid="nl42" bibid="bib8" firstref="ref67"></nolink> |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: 'Without Manifest, None of the Book Would Have Happened': Place, Identity, and the Positioning of Canadian Adolescent Readers as Literary Critics – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Spring%2C+Erin%22">Spring, Erin</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Children's+Literature+in+Education%22"><i>Children's Literature in Education</i></searchLink>. Jun 2018 49(2):101-118. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Springer. 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-348-4505; e-mail: service-ny@springer.com; Web site: http://www.springerlink.com – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 18 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2018 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Foreign+Countries%22">Foreign Countries</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Adolescent+Literature%22">Adolescent Literature</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Qualitative+Research%22">Qualitative Research</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Case+Studies%22">Case Studies</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Semi+Structured+Interviews%22">Semi Structured Interviews</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Rural+Urban+Differences%22">Rural Urban Differences</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Geography%22">Geography</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Criticism%22">Criticism</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Correlation%22">Correlation</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Diaries%22">Diaries</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Self+Concept%22">Self Concept</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Theories%22">Theories</searchLink> – Name: Subject Label: Geographic Terms Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Canada%22">Canada</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1007/s10583-017-9313-y – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0045-6713 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: 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. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: Ref Label: Number of References Group: RefInfo Data: 42 – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2018 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1177971 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1007/s10583-017-9313-y Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 18 StartPage: 101 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Foreign Countries Type: general – SubjectFull: Adolescent Literature Type: general – SubjectFull: Qualitative Research Type: general – SubjectFull: Case Studies Type: general – SubjectFull: Semi Structured Interviews Type: general – SubjectFull: Rural Urban Differences Type: general – SubjectFull: Geography Type: general – SubjectFull: Criticism Type: general – SubjectFull: Correlation Type: general – SubjectFull: Diaries Type: general – SubjectFull: Self Concept Type: general – SubjectFull: Theories Type: general – SubjectFull: Canada Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: 'Without Manifest, None of the Book Would Have Happened': Place, Identity, and the Positioning of Canadian Adolescent Readers as Literary Critics Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Spring, Erin IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 06 Type: published Y: 2018 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0045-6713 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 49 – Type: issue Value: 2 Titles: – TitleFull: Children's Literature in Education Type: main |
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