Expanding the Foundation: African American Authors of Young Adult Literature, 1980–2000(African American Authors of Young Adult Literature: A Three Volume Series)

This volume focuses on a group of authors who began writing in the late 1980s. This group consists of eight authors who expanded the foundation and built a critical reputation that garnered a variety of nominations and awards. These authors are: Rita Williams-Garcia, Jacqueline Woodson, Angela Johnson, Nikki Grimes, Sharon Draper, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Sharon G. Flake, and Jewel Parker Rhodes. This volume has a chapter for each of these eight authors that focuses on their critical reception as authors, then discusses in some detail a single representative work, and, finally offers classroom activities for individual, small group, and whole class activities that will engage students in the work discussed.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Nancy Tolson Acknowledgements Introduction-Steven T. Bickmore and Shanetia P. Clark THE FEATURED AFRICAN AMERICAN AUTHORS “We’re All Just People Here”: Freedom, Hope, and Migration in Brown Girl Dreaming KaaVonia Hinton 2. Coming of Age and Confronting Sexual Identity in Jacqueline Woodson’s From The Notebooks of Melanin Sun Tammy Szafranski and Steven T. Bickmore 3. A Life Revealed: Angela Johnson’s The First Part Last and the Transformation of the Personal Narrative Matt Skillen 4. Nikki Grimes: Poet, Writer, Advocate, and Creative Spirit Mary Napoli and Barbara Ward 5.Nikki Grimes: Poetry as Memior Mary Napoli and Barbara Ward 6. Constructing Understanding Through Advocacy: A critical Disability Studies Perspective on Sharon draper’s Out of My Mind Katie Caprino and Tara Anderson Gold 7. History, Memory, and Family Stories in Sharon Draper’s Stella by Starlight Morgan Jackson and Steven T. Bickmore 8. An Examinatin of Who We are through Historical Fiction: Using Christopher Paul Curtis’ The Journey of Little Charlie as a Magnifying Glass Shanetia P. Clark 9.Finding and Accepting Oneself through Sharon G. Flake’s The Skin I’m In Steven T. Bickmore and Tammy Szafranski 10. Narrating the Extraordinary Everydayness of Black Adolescents through the Works of Rita Williams-Garcia Roberta Price Gardner 11. Jewel Parker Rhodes: Towers Falling, Hope Rising Regina S. Carter, Bethany B. Mickel, and Felicia Moore

About the Author :
Steven T. Bickmore is an Associate professor of English Education at UNLV and maintains a weekly academic blog on YA literature (http://www.yawednesday.com/). He is a past editor of The ALAN Review (2009-2014) and a founding editor of Study and Scrutiny: Research in Young Adult Literature. Shanetia P. Clark, PhD is an associate professor of literacy in the Department of Early and Elementary Education at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. Her interests include young adult and children's literature, the exploration of aesthetic experiences within reading and writing classrooms, and writing pedagogy.

Review :
Expanding the Foundation; African American Authors of Young Adult Literature, 1980-2000 edited by Bickmore and Clark is a perfectly timed and carefully edited follow-up to On the Shoulders of Giants: Celebrating African American Authors of Young Adult Literature. The selections give readers an inside look into the fascinating lives of some of the most talented literary geniuses of our time, while including instructional strategies for educators and students to think critically and deeply. The book combines a perfect blend of history, research, theory, and practice about African American literature and provides us all--publishers, teachers, librarians, parents and students-- direction for examining African American literature.