Vanderbilt University Press

Child-sized history; fictions of the past in U.S. classrooms.

Schwebel (English, U. of South Carolina) looks closely at historical fiction for middle-grade students that has entered school curricula, such as Sounder and the Little House series, and examines recent award-wining children's historical novels that are not yet widely taught. The author begins by examining how three developments brought historical novels into the classroom during the 1980s: the war on poverty, multiculturalism, and the rise of the authentic literature movement. Subsequent chapters look at common themes of children's historical fiction: whites as tamers of the American wilderness; war as the catalyst that solidified Anglo-American identity; and the eradication of slavery as the turning point which enabled the nation to embrace diversity. In addition to close readings of books, Schwebel offers author biographies, drawing on the personal papers of authors of children's historical fiction and stories by their family members. A final chapter traces the impact of research, teacher training, and standardized testing on the use of historical fiction in the classroom. The book includes a list of websites, plus sample contents for a teacher-created Island of Blue Dolphins archive. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Embodied resistance; challenging the norms, breaking the rules.

Sixteen chapters, presented by Bobel (women's studies, U. of Massachusetts) and Kwan (sociology, U. of Houston), explore the relevance of the concept of resistance within the study of how social relations of power are produced through embodiment and the various associated concepts foundational to that interdisciplinary subject, including agency, identity, conflict, privilege, reclamation, negotiation, performativity, and intentionality. The contributions have been organized into four separate thematic sections focusing on resistance to social and cultural constructions of hegemonic femininities and masculinities; embodied challenges to ageism, ableism, appearance ideals, and other forms of marginalization; the body as the site of alternative epistemologies of "healthy" or "normal" that challenge the authoritative and the conventional; and embodied resistance and the social negotiation of boundaries and meaning. Each section also includes first person narratives on "living resistance." (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

So far away; a daughter's memoir of life, loss, and love.

Hartmann's (public health, Boston U.) mother decided she would commit suicide at the age of 70 to avoid growing old, while her father did not prepare for old age and was disabled by a series of strokes that confined him to a nursing home and caused severe dementia. In this memoir, she relates how she coped as her parents neared the ends of their lives between 2003 and 2008, when her mother put her suicide plan into motion and Hartmann was burdened by her father's deterioration. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)