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Out of this World:
Why Literature Matters to Girls
Holly V. Blackford
Language and Literacy Series
Pub Date: May 2004, 192 pages
Paperback: $24.95, ISBN: 0807744662
Cloth: $50, ISBN: 0807744670
 
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"Few scholars have tried to investigate in a rigorous way the nature of our relationship to fictional characters while we are in the process of reading. Professor Blackford has constructed an empirically based argument for the enabling power and pleasure of literary form."
—From the Foreword by Carol ChristThis truly breakthrough book takes the very process of reading and shakes it to its core. Opening new territory, Holly Blackford deftly challenges contemporary literary theory and identity politics regarding adolescent girls and their reading experiences. Having discovered how girls aged 8 to 16 actually construct meaning from texts, the author considers how these new findings impact English education. This provocative book: - Presents surprising and fascinating findings regarding how girls appreciate literature and what they enjoy about reading.
- Intertwines the vivid voices of girls with the author’s own story of moving beyond her feminist and multicultural assumptions of how children are shaped by the stories we tell in literature.
- Challenges assumptions about how gender, race, and class in stories shape young readers.
- Demonstrates the power of the imagination in girls seeking ways to engage with stories that do not represent female experiences.
- Discusses the influence of a visual and digital world on the processes of reading.
- Encourages a new understanding of the importance of literature to the creative imagination.
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