Writing Youth

The publication of Young Adult (YA) fiction is amongst the most lucrative arms of the contemporary publishing industry, with billions of dollars spent each year in producing, marketing, and creating transmedia franchises for books and products aimed at late adolescents and young adults. YA publishers cannot deny that their readers are actively engaged with multiple platforms of communication and production; such comprise a significant portion of contemporary young adult lifestyles, even at a time of economic downturn. As such, a number of major YA publishing corporations have invested a lot of energy not only in creating multimedia ecologies for their products but also in publishing works that take up such multiliteracies as important themes in their products. Writing Youth: Young Adult Fiction as Literacy Sponsorship studies young adult fiction that analyzes corporate sponsorship of media literacy practices in and through young adult fiction by showing how YA novels model for young people ways to manage the various media tools that surround them. Jonathan Alexander examines not only YA texts and their media ecologies but also young people’s multiliterate media making in response to their favorite texts and stories. As such, this book should be of interest to anyone concerned about young people’s literacies and the relationship between literacy development and the culture industries.