Meet our Contributor
| Terri Suico is a professor of education and the associate dean of faculty development at Saint Mary’s College. She earned her EdD from Boston University School of Education and her MAT from Vanderbilt University. Her scholarly work has been included in several books and journals, including English Education and The ALAN Review. She currently serves as the book review and interview editor for Study and Scrutiny: Research on Young Adult Literature and is on the editorial team for The ALAN Review. |  |
“At the Table with British Literature, American Literature, Post-Colonial Literature:” A Conversation with Victor Malo-Juvera and Crag Hill on The Oxford Handbook of Young Adult Literature
In spring 2026, young adult literature hit a new milestone with the publication of The Oxford Handbook of Young Adult Literature. Besides exemplifying the relevance of young adult literature and its scholarship, the handbook also represents the dedication and work of dozens of scholars, including the editors Victor (Vic) Malo-Juvera and Crag Hill. To know YAL research is to know Vic and Crag, who have published numerous articles and books and have mentored many scholars during their careers. In this interview, they reflect on their work on the handbook and the field of YAL.
Terri: Thank you both for talking to me about your work on The Oxford Handbook of Young Adult Literature. Congratulations on it being published! I have not been able to get my hands on it yet. I’m hoping to get our library to buy a copy of it.
Vic: You should! You absolutely should!
Crag: I haven’t got a paper copy of it yet. I have had dreams about receiving it in the mail, so clearly I desire the hard copy. Vic shared the copy that is in [his institution’s] library on social media. It is showing up in libraries around the world. Right now, the book is in Armenia, Australia, Bulgaria, Greece, the Netherlands, Span, the United Arab Emirates. It’s in 40 libraries right now.
Vic: I’m looking at it right now [on WorldCat]. It is in 38 libraries digitally, and there are two hardcovers. I guess that it is becoming more common to order the digital access for your library.
Terri: Thank you both for talking to me about your work on The Oxford Handbook of Young Adult Literature. Congratulations on it being published! I have not been able to get my hands on it yet. I’m hoping to get our library to buy a copy of it.
Vic: You should! You absolutely should!
Crag: I haven’t got a paper copy of it yet. I have had dreams about receiving it in the mail, so clearly I desire the hard copy. Vic shared the copy that is in [his institution’s] library on social media. It is showing up in libraries around the world. Right now, the book is in Armenia, Australia, Bulgaria, Greece, the Netherlands, Span, the United Arab Emirates. It’s in 40 libraries right now.
Vic: I’m looking at it right now [on WorldCat]. It is in 38 libraries digitally, and there are two hardcovers. I guess that it is becoming more common to order the digital access for your library.
A book like this one is expensive, but esstential. A serious scholar will want to own a copy. In addition, anyone interested in studying YA Literature should encourage their school or University Library to purchase a copy.
This is the link to The Oxford Academy where your institution can obtain a copy.
Other important information about the book is below.
https://doi.org/10.1093/9780191945540.001.0001
Online ISBN:
9780191945540
Print ISBN:
9780192855435
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Crag: It’s gotten great metrics. People can find out if it’s been cited. Let’s look at Chris Crowe’s “A History of Young Adult Literature.” It’s not been cited yet, but it’s had some pdf downloads. The references link to your Google Scholar. It’s Study and Scrutiny [the open-access journal Crag co-edits] on steroids. It’s a wonderful thing to see in itself.
Terri: You’ve been partners in your research for young adult literature. How did you start working together? What was your first project?
Crag: It’s an ALAN story. I had done two books at the time [The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literature and Teaching Comics through Multiple Lenses], and I was seeing my work as a trilogy. The next book was going to be on the high school canon. I think it took Vic maybe 20 seconds to say he’d want to be part of that.
Vic: I was originally going to write a chapter, and then we just started talking. I teach a class called Classics Reconsidered, which focuses on canonical high school books. When I heard about Crag’s idea, my eyes lit up, since that is right in my wheelhouse.
Crag: Then we expanded from what I saw as a trilogy into a quadrology [Critical Explorations of Canonical Young Adult Literature: Identifying and Critiquing the Canon] to be ballsy enough to say that there is a YA canon. The Oxford Handbook was a natural extension out of that. We’ve probably been working together eight or nine years. We’ve worked together long enough where our first meetings were on Skype. And we would often talk by phone. For The Oxford, which we’ve been working on for six years, we probably met on Zoom an average of twice a week during that time. Some weeks, we’d meet three times. I’m debating whether to say that at the college event because I don’t want to scare anyone. It was an immense amount of work. However, we didn’t plan to complete it overnight. We knew it was going to be a long process from talking with Vic’s colleague. We knew it’s a multi-year process. It [became about celebrating] the small joys along the way. When Wendy Glenn turned in the first chapter, it was like the book was out. It was small joys, and it all added up to six years of hundreds and hundreds of hours of Zoom meetings.
Vic: We had an Excel file where we would track all the chapters, and it was color coded. When something was done, it was like Ghostbusters, it turns green. Our joy was when we got to turn things green.
Terri: You’ve been partners in your research for young adult literature. How did you start working together? What was your first project?
Crag: It’s an ALAN story. I had done two books at the time [The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literature and Teaching Comics through Multiple Lenses], and I was seeing my work as a trilogy. The next book was going to be on the high school canon. I think it took Vic maybe 20 seconds to say he’d want to be part of that.
Vic: I was originally going to write a chapter, and then we just started talking. I teach a class called Classics Reconsidered, which focuses on canonical high school books. When I heard about Crag’s idea, my eyes lit up, since that is right in my wheelhouse.
Crag: Then we expanded from what I saw as a trilogy into a quadrology [Critical Explorations of Canonical Young Adult Literature: Identifying and Critiquing the Canon] to be ballsy enough to say that there is a YA canon. The Oxford Handbook was a natural extension out of that. We’ve probably been working together eight or nine years. We’ve worked together long enough where our first meetings were on Skype. And we would often talk by phone. For The Oxford, which we’ve been working on for six years, we probably met on Zoom an average of twice a week during that time. Some weeks, we’d meet three times. I’m debating whether to say that at the college event because I don’t want to scare anyone. It was an immense amount of work. However, we didn’t plan to complete it overnight. We knew it was going to be a long process from talking with Vic’s colleague. We knew it’s a multi-year process. It [became about celebrating] the small joys along the way. When Wendy Glenn turned in the first chapter, it was like the book was out. It was small joys, and it all added up to six years of hundreds and hundreds of hours of Zoom meetings.
Vic: We had an Excel file where we would track all the chapters, and it was color coded. When something was done, it was like Ghostbusters, it turns green. Our joy was when we got to turn things green.
 Victor Malo-Juvera |  Crag Hill |
The Origin Story
Terri: Could you tell me more about the origin story of The Oxford Handbook? How did you decide to embark on this? I know that you had been working on projects together and that you said this seemed like a natural next step. But how did start this very ambitious project?
Vic: I was training for IRONMAN Florida, and I was out on a 100-mile bike ride. My colleague, Keith Newland, had just come out with his second Oxford Handbook a few weeks before. When I’m out for six hours riding, my mind churns through all sorts of research ideas, and it just popped into my head. I was literally thinking, “Nobody’s ever done an Oxford Handbook of young adult literature.” I asked Keith what he thought about doing it, and he said, “That’s a great idea. I’ll put you in touch with my editors.” I called Crag and said, “What do you think of this idea? You want to do it?” He said, “Yup,” and that was it.
We contacted Keith’s editor, who put us in touch with another editor, who gave us their requirements. Then it was off to the races, starting to work on the proposal and going through their process.
Crag: The first work we did on it was in Baltimore [at the 2019 NCTE Convention]. We spread out in a couple of restaurants. Our first task was to brainstorm authors and topics. We pulled people in from our network, but we also thought about people outside our network that we knew were doing good work in the children’s literature field, which in many ways conflates with young adult literature.
Vic: We were working on that list, and we weren’t allowed to reach out to people. Oxford basically says, “We want you to give us a first and second choice for your chapter authors.” We’re not allowed to ask them beforehand because Oxford has a rigorous acceptance process where their editorial board reviews not only your whole proposal but all of your author choices.
For the first proposal, we submitted names. We also wrote two or three sentences on what each chapter would be about.
Crag: We had mini abstracts, and the majority of those chapters stayed. There were some revisionings of some of those topics. The four categories we initially identified were also revisioned, so there was some movement in that. But the fact that the initial vision pretty much was intact through the whole process says something about the process. That’s probably in part because of the rigor that Oxford put in place. We had to consider our ideas very seriously.
Vic: I’d say the only major change was that we had originally envisioned having some chapters on teaching YA literature. Because it is Oxford literature, they did not want anything directly like that, so that’s why there is no teaching. This is not to say that researchers don’t do pedagogical work, but that was something Oxford didn’t want in it.
Crag: The way I remember it, it wasn’t that we had separate chapters, but we were going to have the authors write about scholarship and then close with pedagogical suggestions. That’s my memory of it. Was it going to be two-thirds literary criticism and then a third on teaching?
Vic: We originally had a section called Issues in Teaching. We swung the whole idea by the first editor before we put in the proposal and said, “This is what we’re thinking. What do you think?” That’s when we got the feedback that there would be no section on teaching. They want it focused on literature. But let me double check our notes file, it is taking a while to load.
Terri: That is an ominous sign in and of itself.
Vic: I was training for IRONMAN Florida, and I was out on a 100-mile bike ride. My colleague, Keith Newland, had just come out with his second Oxford Handbook a few weeks before. When I’m out for six hours riding, my mind churns through all sorts of research ideas, and it just popped into my head. I was literally thinking, “Nobody’s ever done an Oxford Handbook of young adult literature.” I asked Keith what he thought about doing it, and he said, “That’s a great idea. I’ll put you in touch with my editors.” I called Crag and said, “What do you think of this idea? You want to do it?” He said, “Yup,” and that was it.
We contacted Keith’s editor, who put us in touch with another editor, who gave us their requirements. Then it was off to the races, starting to work on the proposal and going through their process.
Crag: The first work we did on it was in Baltimore [at the 2019 NCTE Convention]. We spread out in a couple of restaurants. Our first task was to brainstorm authors and topics. We pulled people in from our network, but we also thought about people outside our network that we knew were doing good work in the children’s literature field, which in many ways conflates with young adult literature.
Vic: We were working on that list, and we weren’t allowed to reach out to people. Oxford basically says, “We want you to give us a first and second choice for your chapter authors.” We’re not allowed to ask them beforehand because Oxford has a rigorous acceptance process where their editorial board reviews not only your whole proposal but all of your author choices.
For the first proposal, we submitted names. We also wrote two or three sentences on what each chapter would be about.
Crag: We had mini abstracts, and the majority of those chapters stayed. There were some revisionings of some of those topics. The four categories we initially identified were also revisioned, so there was some movement in that. But the fact that the initial vision pretty much was intact through the whole process says something about the process. That’s probably in part because of the rigor that Oxford put in place. We had to consider our ideas very seriously.
Vic: I’d say the only major change was that we had originally envisioned having some chapters on teaching YA literature. Because it is Oxford literature, they did not want anything directly like that, so that’s why there is no teaching. This is not to say that researchers don’t do pedagogical work, but that was something Oxford didn’t want in it.
Crag: The way I remember it, it wasn’t that we had separate chapters, but we were going to have the authors write about scholarship and then close with pedagogical suggestions. That’s my memory of it. Was it going to be two-thirds literary criticism and then a third on teaching?
Vic: We originally had a section called Issues in Teaching. We swung the whole idea by the first editor before we put in the proposal and said, “This is what we’re thinking. What do you think?” That’s when we got the feedback that there would be no section on teaching. They want it focused on literature. But let me double check our notes file, it is taking a while to load.
Terri: That is an ominous sign in and of itself.
The Proposal Process
Vic: It is 175 pages. When we were reading chapters, we would each make notes separately so we didn’t influence each other’s reading by sharing it ahead of time. When we would meet to discuss the chapter, what we liked, what we thought should be changed, and what could be improved, we would put our notes in the file together. Afterwards we would meet with authors. The pandemic was in full swing, and we found it easier to work with authors through Zoom meetings than just sending an email with the information. We would meet with the authors to go over feedback, and it allowed us to brainstorm out ideas and challenges. Sometimes we’d say, “That doesn’t really work, but we don’t know how to fix it,” and those conversations allowed us to figure out a way past the problem. Then we would send a follow-up letter with our formal feedback based on the conversation. We would put every email into the file so, when we were looking at a chapter, we could just go through the file and see exactly what we talked about.
Terri: What is great about this is that you have this wonderful archive not just of the work that you had been doing and what needed to be done but also of the process so that, if you were to ever embark on this again or if you were to advise anyone doing this sort of work, you could point them to this model. It sounds like Oxford was very interested in this topic. Did you have to do any sort of hard sell?
Crag: No. We just had to produce 39 great chapters for the proposal.
Vic: We did have to put in a whole proposal, and then we got feedback. Most of the feedback was positive. There was also some feedback they were just wrong about, and we clearly, loudly pushed back on it and told them they were wrong. It was fine. Like any reviewers, they ask for changes, and sometimes they are just wrong. Those emails are in the file.
For our second draft of the proposal, we did a few minor changes, and then we had to have a response to the reviewers’ comments, which went to their team. When that was approved, it went to the whole editorial board of Oxford. The biggest challenge was how long it took because it was the middle of the pandemic.
Crag: Even without the pandemic, they have a long train of handbooks going through. When we sent the first proposal, I don’t think we heard from them for months. It might have been as long as six months to get a response. With the second proposal, it wasn’t as long of a wait, but it was still probably three months.
Terri: What is great about this is that you have this wonderful archive not just of the work that you had been doing and what needed to be done but also of the process so that, if you were to ever embark on this again or if you were to advise anyone doing this sort of work, you could point them to this model. It sounds like Oxford was very interested in this topic. Did you have to do any sort of hard sell?
Crag: No. We just had to produce 39 great chapters for the proposal.
Vic: We did have to put in a whole proposal, and then we got feedback. Most of the feedback was positive. There was also some feedback they were just wrong about, and we clearly, loudly pushed back on it and told them they were wrong. It was fine. Like any reviewers, they ask for changes, and sometimes they are just wrong. Those emails are in the file.
For our second draft of the proposal, we did a few minor changes, and then we had to have a response to the reviewers’ comments, which went to their team. When that was approved, it went to the whole editorial board of Oxford. The biggest challenge was how long it took because it was the middle of the pandemic.
Crag: Even without the pandemic, they have a long train of handbooks going through. When we sent the first proposal, I don’t think we heard from them for months. It might have been as long as six months to get a response. With the second proposal, it wasn’t as long of a wait, but it was still probably three months.
Recuriting and Working with Chapter Authors
Crag: Vic, do you have a record of when we were able to contact the authors? We were in this process for over a year before we could email authors.
Vic: Let me check my files.
Crag: While he’s looking for that, [I want to say that contacting the authors] was a wonderful process, too. Our authors were grateful for being considered and were really excited. You do a lot of projects, and you get people to commit, but the way that they committed – or the tone they used when committing to this project – was gratifying. Those were fun emails to send, inviting people to a part of the Oxford Handbook project.
Vic: To give you an idea of the timeline, the idea first happens in September 2019. The first emails to potential chapter authors were sent on February 24, 2021.
Crag: The first chapter we got was from Wendy Glenn in December of 2021. Two-plus years into the process, we have our first chapter in the box, with – at that time – 40 more to go. We ended up with 39 chapters, and I think we originally had 42. Some we weren’t able to do because of illness and other things that came up.
Vic: Things happened. We had potential authors die, get ill, leave the profession, have to leave to take care of elderly relatives. We had one chapter that I still refer to as Spinal Tap’s drummer. We had originally envisioned having a chapter on library science and YA. The first person who was going to do it was Teri Lesene, but she passed away from cancer. We tried to get other people to do it, and something happened to them all until we finally decided, “We’re going with no drummer.”
Terri: It is incredible that you had this idea gestating for a year and a half before you could talk about it or make authors a formal offer. Did you speak to some authors in a more informal way?
Crag: I don’t recall that we gave anybody a hint.
Vic: No, we didn’t give anybody a hint at all.
Crag: We were keeping the secret close.
Vic: This is because they had to approve our authors before the authors knew. We didn’t want to talk to somebody and then have Oxford say, “We don’t want that person. They’re not established enough.” Now the handbook doesn’t really have a mix of newer professors because it’s been six years, but when we started, we had a very nice mix of new scholars, who were probably assistant professors at the time, mid-career scholars, and very well-known established scholars. We had a really good mix, and I think that’s good. The newer scholars often have fresh perspectives.
Crag: It was important to try and have that range.
At the same time that we were working on the Oxford, Routledge was doing a handbook of young adult literature. I reviewed the proposal, and I twisted and turned whether I should have because I was going to do the Oxford. In the end, after talking to people, I felt that there is room for 80 chapters on young adult literature on that level. However, I haven’t seen the Routledge Handbook. It would have had the same timeline, but perhaps that project did not get completed. It is pretty amazing, Vic, that you and I stayed healthy during COVID and that we still talk to each other after getting through the handbook.
Vic: Let me check my files.
Crag: While he’s looking for that, [I want to say that contacting the authors] was a wonderful process, too. Our authors were grateful for being considered and were really excited. You do a lot of projects, and you get people to commit, but the way that they committed – or the tone they used when committing to this project – was gratifying. Those were fun emails to send, inviting people to a part of the Oxford Handbook project.
Vic: To give you an idea of the timeline, the idea first happens in September 2019. The first emails to potential chapter authors were sent on February 24, 2021.
Crag: The first chapter we got was from Wendy Glenn in December of 2021. Two-plus years into the process, we have our first chapter in the box, with – at that time – 40 more to go. We ended up with 39 chapters, and I think we originally had 42. Some we weren’t able to do because of illness and other things that came up.
Vic: Things happened. We had potential authors die, get ill, leave the profession, have to leave to take care of elderly relatives. We had one chapter that I still refer to as Spinal Tap’s drummer. We had originally envisioned having a chapter on library science and YA. The first person who was going to do it was Teri Lesene, but she passed away from cancer. We tried to get other people to do it, and something happened to them all until we finally decided, “We’re going with no drummer.”
Terri: It is incredible that you had this idea gestating for a year and a half before you could talk about it or make authors a formal offer. Did you speak to some authors in a more informal way?
Crag: I don’t recall that we gave anybody a hint.
Vic: No, we didn’t give anybody a hint at all.
Crag: We were keeping the secret close.
Vic: This is because they had to approve our authors before the authors knew. We didn’t want to talk to somebody and then have Oxford say, “We don’t want that person. They’re not established enough.” Now the handbook doesn’t really have a mix of newer professors because it’s been six years, but when we started, we had a very nice mix of new scholars, who were probably assistant professors at the time, mid-career scholars, and very well-known established scholars. We had a really good mix, and I think that’s good. The newer scholars often have fresh perspectives.
Crag: It was important to try and have that range.
At the same time that we were working on the Oxford, Routledge was doing a handbook of young adult literature. I reviewed the proposal, and I twisted and turned whether I should have because I was going to do the Oxford. In the end, after talking to people, I felt that there is room for 80 chapters on young adult literature on that level. However, I haven’t seen the Routledge Handbook. It would have had the same timeline, but perhaps that project did not get completed. It is pretty amazing, Vic, that you and I stayed healthy during COVID and that we still talk to each other after getting through the handbook.
Working Together
Terri: The fact that you’ve worked together for six years on this single project and are still friends and still talk to each other is a testament to your collegiality, your friendship, and your interest in the field.
Crag: My advice to anybody who wants to take on a project like this is to do another project with someone before you even propose it so you can go through the process [on a smaller scale] and to consider the collegiality as best you can.
Vic: Just like what Crag said, we had worked on two books before starting the Oxford. Also, Crag and I had an agreement that applies to everything we work on, and that is we both have to agree something is good. If he doesn’t like something and I do, it has to get fixed. I might try to convince him, but in the end, we have to respect each other’s ability to say “no.” Having that clear in an editorial relationship makes the process easier. Let’s say the three of us were editing something that there weren’t any rules. If you don’t like something, and the rest of us like it, you might think, “How can I change their minds? I’m going to be bitter walking away, but it isn’t ready.” Whereas, if we have a rule where we say, “Anyone can say no, and either we’ll try and fix it or it doesn’t go through,” it avoids possible conflict in editorial work.
Crag: We did have one particular chapter that I fought for – I didn’t think we could have an Oxford handbook without this topic. We had this one chapter that went through six, seven, eight drafts, and we are really, really proud of it now.
While we are on the topic, I want to credit all of the authors who worked very hard. There were multiple drafts. On average across the 39 chapters, there might have been an average of four drafts per chapter. I really want to recognize the authors for their patience and their resilience.
We are very different editors. Vic gets in the weeds like no one else I know and can really see how to improve a piece of work. The chapter that went through all of those drafts got there because of Vic’s microvision. I’m the macrovision reader. I teach graduate students, so I think of them as readers. Vic, if he wasn’t a teacher, he’d be an incredible editor. When we’d come to a meeting, we would both know what wasn’t working. He’d propose a solution that would help us get through. And I’ll say on the record that he was willing to keep me pushing a couple of chapters.
Crag: My advice to anybody who wants to take on a project like this is to do another project with someone before you even propose it so you can go through the process [on a smaller scale] and to consider the collegiality as best you can.
Vic: Just like what Crag said, we had worked on two books before starting the Oxford. Also, Crag and I had an agreement that applies to everything we work on, and that is we both have to agree something is good. If he doesn’t like something and I do, it has to get fixed. I might try to convince him, but in the end, we have to respect each other’s ability to say “no.” Having that clear in an editorial relationship makes the process easier. Let’s say the three of us were editing something that there weren’t any rules. If you don’t like something, and the rest of us like it, you might think, “How can I change their minds? I’m going to be bitter walking away, but it isn’t ready.” Whereas, if we have a rule where we say, “Anyone can say no, and either we’ll try and fix it or it doesn’t go through,” it avoids possible conflict in editorial work.
Crag: We did have one particular chapter that I fought for – I didn’t think we could have an Oxford handbook without this topic. We had this one chapter that went through six, seven, eight drafts, and we are really, really proud of it now.
While we are on the topic, I want to credit all of the authors who worked very hard. There were multiple drafts. On average across the 39 chapters, there might have been an average of four drafts per chapter. I really want to recognize the authors for their patience and their resilience.
We are very different editors. Vic gets in the weeds like no one else I know and can really see how to improve a piece of work. The chapter that went through all of those drafts got there because of Vic’s microvision. I’m the macrovision reader. I teach graduate students, so I think of them as readers. Vic, if he wasn’t a teacher, he’d be an incredible editor. When we’d come to a meeting, we would both know what wasn’t working. He’d propose a solution that would help us get through. And I’ll say on the record that he was willing to keep me pushing a couple of chapters.
Organizing a Format for the Book
Terri: How did you go about identifying the chapter topics and then finding the contributors for the chapters? You mentioned Wendy Glenn and Chris Crowe, who you know through ALAN, NCTE, and Study and Scrutiny, but I would also imagine that you had to go further afield and find authors from outside of your network.
Vic: We started with the chapter ideas, and we brainstormed a list of chapters we wanted. Then we had some categories that they would go in.
Crag: We had four categories. Text and Genres was the first one.
Vic: Forms and Focus.
Crag: That was the second one, then Multicultural, Indigenous, and Global Impacts. And the last one is Beyond Texts.
Vic: We started with the chapter ideas, and we brainstormed a list of chapters we wanted. Then we had some categories that they would go in.
Crag: We had four categories. Text and Genres was the first one.
Vic: Forms and Focus.
Crag: That was the second one, then Multicultural, Indigenous, and Global Impacts. And the last one is Beyond Texts.
More about Working with and Recuriting Authors
Crag: With our first proposal, the majority of contributors we identified were people we had already worked with. It was important to us that we knew they could turn in a chapter when we gave them a deadline. However, we did have scholars we did not know. We looked at Google Scholar and other sources to see any people writing about subjects we wanted to include. Probably a quarter of the people we chose were ones who had published in the field but were not ones we had known previously.
Vic: We would read their work. We wanted an international section, and we didn’t know Nadia El Kholy, who is a scholar of Egyptian children’s literature. Children’s literature in Egypt means young adult as well, so that’s how we found her. We wanted anybody writing about the literature in a particular place to be from there. Sometimes somebody would suggest scholars to us. Chris Crowe suggested Caryn Kunz Lesuma, who wrote an amazing chapter on Pacific Islander young adult literature. We have a scholar from South Africa, two from Australia, one from Egypt, two from the Netherlands. We had to do legwork on getting those authors, but we came up with the topics beforehand. We came up with the list, and then we would brainstorm authors. I’d say Crag was right. About 75% of the authors we knew already, and for that last quarter, we had to dig a little more.
Crag: That was fun, and it expanded our knowledge of young adult literature scholarship. The project we’re working on now, a content analysis of scholarship on international young adult literature, is another way of expanding our knowledge of the field and who the scholars are. Dare I say, if I weren’t at this point in my career, I’d love to do an Oxford handbook on international young adult literature.
Terri: In an earlier conversation, you said that what you learned about international young adult literature led you do guest editing an issue on the topic for The ALAN Review. What surprised you about either the young adult literature that is one the international scene or the scholarship that is happening with young adult literature on the international scene?
Crag: An adult in Norway who approaches a story about a teenager is different than an American author approaching a story about a teen because in Norway, they have a different literary history and a different children’s literature history. They have the folktales. One book, Nothing [by Janne Teller], intrigued me because it couldn’t have been written by an American. The author now lives in Los Angeles, but it is somebody who has Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm brothers in their DNA as writers.
We don’t live in a monocultural world, and the authors in different cultures approach stories in different ways than we do in the United States, and that’s just intriguing. There are some Chinese scholars who are doing great work around Chinese YAL, which I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I feel like I’m traveling to these countries without having to deal with a 10-hour flight. It just opened up the world.
Vic: For me, what was really most eye-opening was how differently adolescence is constructed in different cultures, and of course, that impacts how the authors write about it. Along the way, we learned that most European kids, according to the people who talked to, like to read English YAL. They often read it as part of learning English, but they prefer to read in English than in German or Dutch. In talking to Nadia about Egypt, we learned that they really don’t have the same concept of adolescence. Once people reach a certain age, they’re considered adults, and most of their reading is religious or internet-based. They’re not getting the same adolescence period that we have here. That really struck and stuck with me because that’s going to change the books and the experiences you have. If you’re living in a country – not knocking any specific country – that is a religious theocracy, you’re not going to have a book like The Fault in Our Stars that challenges a religious paradigm or even have an age group where you question things. I found that really, really interesting. When I look to international young adult literature, I like to see what’s revealed in what’s written and what isn’t written.
Vic: We would read their work. We wanted an international section, and we didn’t know Nadia El Kholy, who is a scholar of Egyptian children’s literature. Children’s literature in Egypt means young adult as well, so that’s how we found her. We wanted anybody writing about the literature in a particular place to be from there. Sometimes somebody would suggest scholars to us. Chris Crowe suggested Caryn Kunz Lesuma, who wrote an amazing chapter on Pacific Islander young adult literature. We have a scholar from South Africa, two from Australia, one from Egypt, two from the Netherlands. We had to do legwork on getting those authors, but we came up with the topics beforehand. We came up with the list, and then we would brainstorm authors. I’d say Crag was right. About 75% of the authors we knew already, and for that last quarter, we had to dig a little more.
Crag: That was fun, and it expanded our knowledge of young adult literature scholarship. The project we’re working on now, a content analysis of scholarship on international young adult literature, is another way of expanding our knowledge of the field and who the scholars are. Dare I say, if I weren’t at this point in my career, I’d love to do an Oxford handbook on international young adult literature.
Terri: In an earlier conversation, you said that what you learned about international young adult literature led you do guest editing an issue on the topic for The ALAN Review. What surprised you about either the young adult literature that is one the international scene or the scholarship that is happening with young adult literature on the international scene?
Crag: An adult in Norway who approaches a story about a teenager is different than an American author approaching a story about a teen because in Norway, they have a different literary history and a different children’s literature history. They have the folktales. One book, Nothing [by Janne Teller], intrigued me because it couldn’t have been written by an American. The author now lives in Los Angeles, but it is somebody who has Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm brothers in their DNA as writers.
We don’t live in a monocultural world, and the authors in different cultures approach stories in different ways than we do in the United States, and that’s just intriguing. There are some Chinese scholars who are doing great work around Chinese YAL, which I didn’t even know there was such a thing. I feel like I’m traveling to these countries without having to deal with a 10-hour flight. It just opened up the world.
Vic: For me, what was really most eye-opening was how differently adolescence is constructed in different cultures, and of course, that impacts how the authors write about it. Along the way, we learned that most European kids, according to the people who talked to, like to read English YAL. They often read it as part of learning English, but they prefer to read in English than in German or Dutch. In talking to Nadia about Egypt, we learned that they really don’t have the same concept of adolescence. Once people reach a certain age, they’re considered adults, and most of their reading is religious or internet-based. They’re not getting the same adolescence period that we have here. That really struck and stuck with me because that’s going to change the books and the experiences you have. If you’re living in a country – not knocking any specific country – that is a religious theocracy, you’re not going to have a book like The Fault in Our Stars that challenges a religious paradigm or even have an age group where you question things. I found that really, really interesting. When I look to international young adult literature, I like to see what’s revealed in what’s written and what isn’t written.
Challenges and Surprizes
Terri: What has been the most challenge or surprising part of editing and putting together the handbook, and what has been the most rewarding part of the work?
Crag: The most rewarding part was getting the chapters I talked about earlier over the finish line and being really, really proud of them. I think the chapter author feels that way, too. It took eight drafts, and to be really proud of that chapter was a wonderful experience.
Vic: I’d say the same thing. Some chapters came in where there was very little to say [in terms of feedback], and we didn’t say anything. We didn’t try to justify our existence and ask for changes. There were a couple that were literally minor edits, like maybe the author didn’t have enough coffee and slipped on the keyboard for that one sentence. Then there were others at the other end of the spectrum that required more work. I’m not saying they were bad at all, but for whatever reason, they required more work to land where they needed to.
Crag: One challenge was maintaining the reading load. We planned [the schedule] out, but it got log jammed very quickly. Sometimes we might have three or four chapters that needed feedback. We have full-time jobs, too, so the paper load and the reading load were probably the biggest challenges.
Vic: I created some logjams, too, because I do the study abroad program in the summer and then I travel. I cannot work at the level I need to edit something on a laptop in a hotel in Berlin. When I travel, I don’t work unless it’s something that’s timely and has to be done. That created some logjams, because I would be gone.
Terri: Was there anything else you found challenging or surprising as you worked on the handbook?
Vic: Our manuscript was late. With any big project, you have a certain number of pieces that come in early, a bunch in the middle that come in on time, and then some that need more work. These were important chapters, and they are great chapters. The last 18 months, maybe even the last two years, were just getting the last 10 chapters finished and ready. That doesn’t reflect on the quality of the chapters. Some people had personal situations, and some people changed jobs.
Terri: And it was such a tumultuous time when you were writing it. If you think about what has happened since 2019, the fact that it only took six years is amazing.
Crag: I’d say the breadth of this project was a comfort during COVID. I felt that we were doing something valuable and worthwhile. The Oxford Handbook has a longer shelf life than our Routledge handbooks.
Crag: The most rewarding part was getting the chapters I talked about earlier over the finish line and being really, really proud of them. I think the chapter author feels that way, too. It took eight drafts, and to be really proud of that chapter was a wonderful experience.
Vic: I’d say the same thing. Some chapters came in where there was very little to say [in terms of feedback], and we didn’t say anything. We didn’t try to justify our existence and ask for changes. There were a couple that were literally minor edits, like maybe the author didn’t have enough coffee and slipped on the keyboard for that one sentence. Then there were others at the other end of the spectrum that required more work. I’m not saying they were bad at all, but for whatever reason, they required more work to land where they needed to.
Crag: One challenge was maintaining the reading load. We planned [the schedule] out, but it got log jammed very quickly. Sometimes we might have three or four chapters that needed feedback. We have full-time jobs, too, so the paper load and the reading load were probably the biggest challenges.
Vic: I created some logjams, too, because I do the study abroad program in the summer and then I travel. I cannot work at the level I need to edit something on a laptop in a hotel in Berlin. When I travel, I don’t work unless it’s something that’s timely and has to be done. That created some logjams, because I would be gone.
Terri: Was there anything else you found challenging or surprising as you worked on the handbook?
Vic: Our manuscript was late. With any big project, you have a certain number of pieces that come in early, a bunch in the middle that come in on time, and then some that need more work. These were important chapters, and they are great chapters. The last 18 months, maybe even the last two years, were just getting the last 10 chapters finished and ready. That doesn’t reflect on the quality of the chapters. Some people had personal situations, and some people changed jobs.
Terri: And it was such a tumultuous time when you were writing it. If you think about what has happened since 2019, the fact that it only took six years is amazing.
Crag: I’d say the breadth of this project was a comfort during COVID. I felt that we were doing something valuable and worthwhile. The Oxford Handbook has a longer shelf life than our Routledge handbooks.
What does the Handbook Mean for the Status of the Field
Terri: You have already alluded to this, but what does having an Oxford handbook focused on young adult literature mean in terms of the field’s status? It wasn’t that long ago that an editor of YAL books told Michael Cart on a panel, “I think young adult literature is dying.” Fast forward 30 years, and we have this handbook.
Crag: My sweetheart worked at Barnes & Nobel until she resigned a couple of weeks ago. The YAL books they’re purchasing are down considerably, so publishing is suffering. However, YAL scholarship is not. We have people whose primary research agenda is in children’s and young adult literature. Having an Oxford Handbook is part of their argument for why they are researching this area. If you’re pretenure and people ask, “Why are you doing this?”, you can point to the Oxford Handbook. This book is the argument that says YAL has the same scholarly status as children’s literature has had for 50 years.
Vic: To build on that, it also separates YAL from children’s literature. After having it checked out for six years, I just returned The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Literature, which had YAL in it. I think it was published in 2011 or 2012. Separating young adult literature from children’s literature as a field was a major part of our argument. We’re not only at the table with children’s lit, but we’re at the table with British literature, American literature, post-colonial literature. That is what having an Oxford Handbook does for the field. Just as Crag said, there’s nothing more legitimizing to a field of special studies than to have an Oxford Handbook on it.
Terri: How do you hope the handbook is used.
Vic: Ubiquitously.
Crag: I want new scholars taking off from one of chapters and established scholars citing and expanding on somebody else’s chapter. That’s why I like the metrics. We can see the citations in real time for some of these. We’re doing work that’s generative and expanding. We’ve created something, and there’s going to be another ring 10 years from now. The universe of young adult literature is expanding.
Vic: I hope that it’s also used in teaching. There are lots of chapters that you can build instruction from at the university level. Our chapter on censorship looks at censorship and how modern censorship is part of a wave of fascism, and it ties it into theory. That is a fresh chapter. So many people have written about censorship, and this is a new angle on the topic.
Crag: I have used it in my YA class, and for this fall in a master’s class, I’ve used it to select books. Next year, I’ll be teaching in the Honors College as a presidential teaching fellow, and the class I’m doing needs to be interdisciplinary. I have been reading on how adolescence is perceived around the world, and I’m going to have students read chapters from the Oxford Handbook. I haven’t decided which ones yet.
Terri: Where do you hope that YA scholarship goes next, and what role might the Oxford play in that?
Vic: It’s interesting because young adult literature and its scholarship haven’t moved backwards, but in many ways, culture has. There is research that I’ve done that would be hard to do now when there are state universities that say students can’t do research on specific gender or queer studies. You have states like Florida where it’s a race to the censorship bottom. I look at the strides I thought we made through the 2000s and the 2010s, and now I’m aghast.
Crag: I think there’s a critical mass of early career and mid-career scholars of young adult literature that can help hold our heads above water so that we don’t drown in this, because this is going to pass. We have Stephanie Toliver, who’s got a long career ahead of her if she chooses. There’s Wendy Glenn, who’s producing quite a bit. There’s Troy Potter in Australia. I could name a lot of our authors who have 20-year careers, and they’re going to hold up not only the scholarship but the authors as well. Publishing will swing around, too. It’s cyclical. Publishers go where the money is, and right now the money isn’t going to middle grade literature. However, publishers should keep age bands like middle grade alive. They should be publishing great stories, even if some great stories only break even financially.
I do think we should be mailing the Oxford Handbook to the big five [publishers] and tell that that, “This is important. Don’t ignore it.”
Vic: Also, like anything that proves profitable, that YA is like many other genres where not everything is good. I think that is important for us to acknowledge that not all YA is good. Just like not all romance literature is good and not all horror literature is good. It’s okay to call that out.
I would assume from a critical angle that our next phase should follow the way other fields grow. Up until now, a lot of scholarly work is what we call activist work that says, “We should have more of this. We should have more of that.” Well, we have it, and there is a lot of YA out there. Now we will get into the critical angle even more. But again, look at what’s going on. We still need the arguments on why we should be talking about topics like racism, rape, and homophobia that is being silenced. However, there has been a big change in YA from 20 years ago. There is tons of YA out there, and it’s okay for not all of it to be good and for it to be called out.
Terri: Is there anything we haven’t talked about related to the Oxford that you wanted to touch on?
Vic: I think we’ve said it all. I think if it hadn’t been for Covid, Crag, we would have cut two years off of the process. The proposal process would have been faster. If it weren’t done during COVID, it would have taken three to four years.
Crag: We didn’t make one deadline. We were probably six months behind.
Vic: We were later than that, and we missed several deadlines because we were waiting to bring chapters home. Oxford was fantastic about understanding that we weren’t done. They were always magnanimous with us.
Crag: My sweetheart worked at Barnes & Nobel until she resigned a couple of weeks ago. The YAL books they’re purchasing are down considerably, so publishing is suffering. However, YAL scholarship is not. We have people whose primary research agenda is in children’s and young adult literature. Having an Oxford Handbook is part of their argument for why they are researching this area. If you’re pretenure and people ask, “Why are you doing this?”, you can point to the Oxford Handbook. This book is the argument that says YAL has the same scholarly status as children’s literature has had for 50 years.
Vic: To build on that, it also separates YAL from children’s literature. After having it checked out for six years, I just returned The Oxford Handbook of Children’s Literature, which had YAL in it. I think it was published in 2011 or 2012. Separating young adult literature from children’s literature as a field was a major part of our argument. We’re not only at the table with children’s lit, but we’re at the table with British literature, American literature, post-colonial literature. That is what having an Oxford Handbook does for the field. Just as Crag said, there’s nothing more legitimizing to a field of special studies than to have an Oxford Handbook on it.
Terri: How do you hope the handbook is used.
Vic: Ubiquitously.
Crag: I want new scholars taking off from one of chapters and established scholars citing and expanding on somebody else’s chapter. That’s why I like the metrics. We can see the citations in real time for some of these. We’re doing work that’s generative and expanding. We’ve created something, and there’s going to be another ring 10 years from now. The universe of young adult literature is expanding.
Vic: I hope that it’s also used in teaching. There are lots of chapters that you can build instruction from at the university level. Our chapter on censorship looks at censorship and how modern censorship is part of a wave of fascism, and it ties it into theory. That is a fresh chapter. So many people have written about censorship, and this is a new angle on the topic.
Crag: I have used it in my YA class, and for this fall in a master’s class, I’ve used it to select books. Next year, I’ll be teaching in the Honors College as a presidential teaching fellow, and the class I’m doing needs to be interdisciplinary. I have been reading on how adolescence is perceived around the world, and I’m going to have students read chapters from the Oxford Handbook. I haven’t decided which ones yet.
Terri: Where do you hope that YA scholarship goes next, and what role might the Oxford play in that?
Vic: It’s interesting because young adult literature and its scholarship haven’t moved backwards, but in many ways, culture has. There is research that I’ve done that would be hard to do now when there are state universities that say students can’t do research on specific gender or queer studies. You have states like Florida where it’s a race to the censorship bottom. I look at the strides I thought we made through the 2000s and the 2010s, and now I’m aghast.
Crag: I think there’s a critical mass of early career and mid-career scholars of young adult literature that can help hold our heads above water so that we don’t drown in this, because this is going to pass. We have Stephanie Toliver, who’s got a long career ahead of her if she chooses. There’s Wendy Glenn, who’s producing quite a bit. There’s Troy Potter in Australia. I could name a lot of our authors who have 20-year careers, and they’re going to hold up not only the scholarship but the authors as well. Publishing will swing around, too. It’s cyclical. Publishers go where the money is, and right now the money isn’t going to middle grade literature. However, publishers should keep age bands like middle grade alive. They should be publishing great stories, even if some great stories only break even financially.
I do think we should be mailing the Oxford Handbook to the big five [publishers] and tell that that, “This is important. Don’t ignore it.”
Vic: Also, like anything that proves profitable, that YA is like many other genres where not everything is good. I think that is important for us to acknowledge that not all YA is good. Just like not all romance literature is good and not all horror literature is good. It’s okay to call that out.
I would assume from a critical angle that our next phase should follow the way other fields grow. Up until now, a lot of scholarly work is what we call activist work that says, “We should have more of this. We should have more of that.” Well, we have it, and there is a lot of YA out there. Now we will get into the critical angle even more. But again, look at what’s going on. We still need the arguments on why we should be talking about topics like racism, rape, and homophobia that is being silenced. However, there has been a big change in YA from 20 years ago. There is tons of YA out there, and it’s okay for not all of it to be good and for it to be called out.
Terri: Is there anything we haven’t talked about related to the Oxford that you wanted to touch on?
Vic: I think we’ve said it all. I think if it hadn’t been for Covid, Crag, we would have cut two years off of the process. The proposal process would have been faster. If it weren’t done during COVID, it would have taken three to four years.
Crag: We didn’t make one deadline. We were probably six months behind.
Vic: We were later than that, and we missed several deadlines because we were waiting to bring chapters home. Oxford was fantastic about understanding that we weren’t done. They were always magnanimous with us.
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