Doctors, Drugs, and Danger
Disentangling Discourses of Adolescence/ts in Dreamland (original version) and Dreamland (young adult adaptation) with Critical Comparative Content Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15763/issn.2376-5275.2021.5.1.1-40Keywords:
young adult literature, youth adaptation, critical comparative content analysis, critical discourse analysis, implied reader, adolescenceAbstract
Scholarship on young adult (YA) literature has long attended to the interrelationship of power, ideology, and narrative. Drawing on this scholarship, we examined a nonfiction text about the opiate epidemic. Using critical comparative content analysis (CCCA), our study examined differences in Dreamland (the original version) and Dreamland (the young adult adaptation) to better understand the changing nature of textual representation when youth become the imagined audience. We found that in the youth adaptation of Dreamland, the implied youth reader is (a) provided less information about the opiate epidemic, which is also delivered in a simpler structure; (b) kept at a greater rhetorical distance from people who might be deemed unsavory, and (c) given a more optimistic view of the opiate epidemic in terms of progress achieved rather than action needed. The youth adaptation of Dreamland, therefore, positions youth as needing simplicity, protection, and a sense of optimism. Our analysis demonstrates how the implied youth reader is a textual byproduct of discourses of adolescence/ts. As youth adaptations continue their prominence in the YA marketplace, scholars and teachers should critically engage how youth are positioned as readers and thinkers by the YA publishing industry. Next steps involve additional studies that focus on the implied (youth) reader through CCCA and studies that involve middle and secondary education students, the real readers of these texts. This study is supplemented by an interview with Sam Quinones, the author of the original version of Dreamland.
References
LITERATURE REFERENCES
Quinones, S. (2015). Dreamland: The true tale of America's opiate epidemic. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Quinones, S. (2019). Dreamland: The true tale of America's opiate epidemic (a young adult adaptation). New York, NY: Bloomsbury YA.
ACADEMIC REFERENCES
An, S. (2021). Teaching difficult knowledge of the Korean War through international children's literature. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 33(3), 24-32.
Barton, K. C. (1996). Narrative simplifications in elementary children's historical un- derstanding. In J. Brophy (Ed.), Advances in research on teaching, Vol. 6 (pp. 51-83). JAIPress.
Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (1996). "Back when God was around and everything": The development of children's understanding of historical time. American Educational Research Journal, 33(2), 419-454. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312033002419
Barton, K. C. (2001). A sociocultural perspective on children's understandings of historical change: Comparative findings from Northern Ireland and the United States. American Educational Research Journal, 38(4), 881-913. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312038004881
Barton, K. C. & McCully, A. W. (2012): Trying to "see things differently": Northern Ireland students' struggle to understand alternative historical perspectives. Theory & Research in Social Education, 40(4), 371-408. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2012.710928
Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2004). Teaching history for the common good. Lawrence Erlbaum. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410610508
Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives, 6(3), ix-xi.
Borsheim-Black, C. (2015). Reading pop culture and young adult literature through the youth lens. English Journal, 104(3), 29-34.
Brooks, W. M., & McNair, J. C. (Eds.). (2008). Embracing, evaluating, and examining African American children's and young adult literature. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Cadden, M. (2021). At Arm's Length: A Rhetoric of Character in Children's and Young Adult Literature. University Press of Mississippi. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1s5nx9k
Chandler, P., & Branscombe, A. (2015). White social studies: Protecting the white racial code. In P. Chandler (Ed.), Doing race in social studies: Critical perspectives (pp. 61-87). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Colley, L. M. (2015). "Taking the stairs" to break the ceiling: Understanding students' conceptions of the intersections of historical agency, gender equality, and action [Doctoral dissertation, University of Kentucky]. UKnowledge.
Colley, L. M. (2017). Judging on their looks: Understanding pre-service social studies teachers' conceptions of historical agency and gender. Journal of Social Studies Research, 41(2), 155-166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssr.2016.08.002
Colman, P. (2007). A new way to look at literature: A visual model for analyzing fiction and nonfiction texts. Language Arts, 84(3), 257-268.
CPJ. (2020, April 16). The Trump Administration and the Media. Committee to Protect Journalists. https://cpj.org/reports/2020/04/trump-media-attacks-credibility-leaks/
den Heyer, K. (2003). Between every "now" and "then": A role for the study of historical agency in history and citizenship education. Theory and Research in Social Education, 31(4), 411-434. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2003.10473232
Endacott, J. L., & Brooks, S. B. (2013). An updated theoretical and practical model for promoting historical empathy. Social Studies Research and Practice, 8(1), 41-58.
Epstein, T. (1997). Sociocultural approaches to young people's historical understanding. Social Education, 61(1), 28-31.
Garcia, A. (2013). Critical foundations in young adult literature: Challenging genres (Vol. 4). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-398-0
Glenn, W. J., & Caasi, E. (2021). Gendered assumptions in the framing of fitness in sports nonfiction for young adult readers. Children's Literature in Education. Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-020-09432-7
Groenke, S. L., Haddix, M., Glenn, W. J., Kirkland, D. E., Price-Dennis, D., & Coleman-King, C. (2015). Disrupting and dismantling the dominant vision of youth of color. English Journal, 104(3), 35-40.
Hill, C. (Ed.). (2014). The critical merits of young adult literature: Coming of age. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203527283
Johnson, H., Mathis, J., & Short, K. G. (Eds.). (2017). Critical content analysis of children's and young adult literature: Reframing perspective. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315651927
Kett, J. F. (1977). Rites of passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the present. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Kiefer, B., & Wilson, M. I. (2011). Nonfiction literature for children: Old assumptions and new directions. In S. A. Wolf, K. Coats, P. Enciso, & C. A. Jenkins (Eds.), Handbook of research on children's and young adult literature (pp. 302-313). New York, NY: Routledge.
King, L. (2020). Black history is not American history: Toward a framework of Black consciousness. Social Education, 84(6), 335-341.
Krippendorff, K. (2013). Content analysis: An introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
Lesko, N. (2012). Act your age!: A cultural construction of adolescence. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203121580
Lesko, N., Simmons, J., & Uva, J. (2020). Alternative conceptions of adolescence as a basis for curriculum. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1129
Loewen, J. W. (2007). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. The New Press.
Loewen, J.W. (2018). Teaching what really happened: How to avoid the tyranny of textbooks and get students excited about doing history. Teachers College Press.
Lynch, T. L. (2019). Electrical evocations: Computer science, the teaching of literature, and the future of English education. English Education, 52(1), 15-37.
McCallum, R. (1999). Ideologies of identity in adolescent fiction: The dialogic construction of subjectivity. New York, NY: Routledge.
McCallum, R., & Stephens, J. (2011). Ideology and children's books. In S. A. Wolf, K. Coats, P. Enciso, & C. A. Jenkins (Eds.), Handbook of research on children's and young adult literature (pp. 359-371). New York, NY: Routledge.
Nikolajeva, M. (2002). The rhetoric of character in children's literature. Scarecrow Press.
Nodelman, P. (2008). The hidden adult: Defining children's literature. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Palladino, G. (1996). Teenagers: an American history. Westview Press.
Petrone, R., Sarigianides, S. T., & Lewis, M. A. (2015). The youth lens: Analyzing adolescence/ts in literary texts. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(4), 506-533. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X15568926
Rogers, R. (2011). An introduction to critical discourse analysis in education (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203836149
Sanders, J. (2016). Adaptation and appropriation. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315737942
Sarigianides, S. T. (2012). Tensions in teaching adolescence/ts: Analyzing resistances in a young adult literature course. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(3), 222-230. https://doi.org/10.1002/JAAL.00131
Sarigianides, S. T. (2019). Performative youth: The literacy possibilities of de-essentializing adolescence. English Education, 51(4), 376-403.
Sarigianides, S. T., Petrone, R., & Lewis, M. A. (2017). Rethinking the "adolescent" in adolescent literacy. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Seixas, P. (1993). Historical understanding among adolescents in a multicultural setting. Curriculum Inquiry, 23(3), 301-327. https://doi.org/10.1080/03626784.1993.11076127
Seixas, P. (1996). Conceptualizing the growth of historical understanding. In D.R. Olsen & N. Torrance (Eds.), The handbook of education and human development: New models of learning, teaching and schooling (pp. 765-783). Blackwell Publishing.
Sims (Bishop), R. (1982). Shadow and substance: Afro-American experience in contemporary children's fiction. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Sukarieh, M., & Tannock, S. (2015). Youth rising?: The politics of youth in the global economy. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315884660
Sulzer, M. A. (2021). Two versions of Notorious RBG, two representations of Ruth Bader Ginsburg: How are they different and why does that matter? Annals of Social Studies Education Research for Teachers, 2(2), 26-33. https://doi.org/10.29173/assert22
Sulzer, M. A. (2020). Border crossing from literature to young adult literature: A critical comparative content analysis of Enrique's Journey (original version) and Enrique's Journey (adapted for youth). The ALAN Review, 47(2), 12-24.
Sulzer, M. A., Thein, A. H., & Schmidt, R. R. (2018). What is adapted in youth adaptations?: A critical comparative content analysis of military memoirs repackaged as young adult literature. Journal of Language & Literacy Education, 14(1), 1-27.
Sulzer, M. A., & Thein, A. H. (2016). Reconsidering the hypothetical adolescent in evaluating and teaching young adult literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 60(2), 163-171. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.556
Taxel, J. (2011). The economics of children's book publishing in the 21st century. In S. A. Wolf, K. Coats, P. Enciso, & C. A. Jenkins (Eds.), Handbook of research on children's and young adult literature (pp. 479-494). New York, NY: Routledge.
Thein, A. H., & Sulzer, M. A. (2015). Illuminating discourses of youth through the study of first-person narration in young adult literature. English Journal, 104(3), 47-53.
Thein, A. H., Sulzer, M. A., & Schmidt, R. R. (2013). Evaluating the democratic merit of young adult literature: Lessons from two versions of Wes Moore's memoir. English Journal, 103(2), 57-64.
Thein, A. H., Sulzer, M. A., & Schmidt, R. R. (2019). Critical comparative content analysis: Examining race, politics, and violence in two versions of I am Malala. In Ginsberg, R., & Glenn, W. (Eds.), Engaging critically with multicultural literature in the secondary classroom (pp. 153-161). New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429053191-16
Toliver, S. R. (2020). "I desperately need visions of Black people thriving": Emancipating the fantastic with Black women's worlds. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(3), 323-332. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1112
Trites, R. S. (2000). Disturbing the universe: Power and repression in adolescent literature. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press.
TrueTalesVideo. (2019, August 14). Teaching Dreamland - Kimber Lybbert [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soG9FetX-Mo
Waller, A. (2009). Constructing adolescence in fantastic realism. New York, NY: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203894132
Downloads
Published
Versions
- 2022-04-06 (2)
- 2022-04-06 (1)
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 MARK A. SULZER, LAUREN M. COLLEY, MICHAEL C. HELLMAN, TOM LIAM LYNCH
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.