Citizenship and Children’s Identity in <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Wonderful Adventures of Nils</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Scouting for Boys</Emphasis>

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1906–1907) by Selma Lagerlöf and Scouting for Boys (1908) by Robert Baden-Powell are characteristic of their time and their respective national and cultural contexts—the Swedish nation state of the early twentieth century and the British Empire. Taking its cue from recent theories on citizenship and education, the article discusses ways in which these two classic children’s books relate to citizenship, nation and education. Ultimately, both books point to ways in which education—in and out of school—can be used to promote individual growth and a peaceful and durable society for world citizens.     

Surviving the “School of Slavery”: Acculturation in Sharon Draper’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Copper Sun</Emphasis> and Joyce Hansen’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Captive</Emphasis>

Although children’s literature has long alluded to cultural connections between Africans and African Americans, very few texts establish clear lines of influence between particular African ethnic groups and African American characters and communities. Joyce Hansen’s The Captive (1994) and Sharon Draper’s Copper Sun (2006) stand out in portraying protagonists Kofi’s and Amari’s reliance on their past upbringing as Ashanti and Ewe, respectively. As Kofi and Amari endure the traumas of the Middle Passage and slavery in eighteenth-century America, they adapt by relying on their past socialization in traditional West African societies. The two novels challenge the idea of cultural erasure promoted in Elizabeth Yates’ Amos Fortune, Free Man (1950), which is still a fixture on multicultural reading lists for middle school students. The Captive and Copper Sun do provide sharply contrasting visions of their protagonist’s relationships to American society. Copper Sun indicates that a black girl’s concerns, including her need for subsistence and protection, and her desire for creative expression and personal autonomy, can complement the economic and military interests of the state. By contrast, The Captive insists on the necessity for its emancipated protagonist to maintain an adversarial role within a stratified, white-dominated U.S. culture. The novels thus highlight the very different messages about social identity and participation that recent multicultural children’s literature can convey.     

(Re)location of Home in Louise Erdrich’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Game of Silence</Emphasis>

Louise Erdrich is one of the most influential writers of the Native American Renaissance. Her contributions to the representation of Native American history have been great, and her masterpieces of children’s literature have won her a prominent reputation. This article explores the (re)location of the concept of home in Erdrich’s The Game of Silence and analyzes the novel’s historical context with reference to various discourses on space/place, including those by Native Americans. Erdrich’s narration reconstructs a space for Native American culture, religion and tradition, and for the continued survival of Native American people. She represents the silent history of her ancestors’ displacement to the West, as white settlers encroached upon their beloved homeland. As Erdrich’s work so poignantly illustrates, for Native American people, home is nowhere and anywhere.     

Post-secondary Science Students’ Explanations of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Randomness</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Variation</Emphasis> and Implications for Science Learning

The concepts of randomness and variation are pervasive in science. The purpose of this study was to document how post-secondary life science students explain randomness and variation, infer relationships between their explanations, and ability to describe and identify appropriate and inappropriate variation, and determine if students can identify sources of variation. An instrument designed to test statistical concepts was administered to 282 college students from three universities, ranging from introductory non-science majors to science graduate students. Students readily distinguished between causes of variation. A naïve no-pattern concept of randomness persisted from first-year non-science majors to senior-level science majors, contributing to incorrect responses on the variation instrument. Students’ expressions of randomness were better predictors of performance on the variation instrument than their expressions of variation. It is argued that inclusion of everyday language uses of randomness in instruction can bridge the gap between vernacular and scientific uses of this term.     

Dystopian Visions of Global Capitalism: Philip Reeve’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Mortal Engines</Emphasis> and M.T Anderson’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Feed</Emphasis>

This article examines Philip Reeve’s novel for children, Mortal Engines, and M.T. Anderson’s young adult novel, Feed, by assessing these dystopias as prototypical texts of what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Through their visions of a fictional future, the two narratives explore the hazards created by contemporary techno-economic progress, predatory global politics and capitalist excesses of consumption. They implicitly pose the question: “In the absence of a happy ending for western civilisation, what kind of children can survive in dystopia?”     

History Writing That’s “Good to Think With”: <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Great Fire,Blizzard!</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">An American Plague</Emphasis>

In this article I argue that history books that are “good to think with” narrate history and, at the same time, provide insight into how it is constructed. These books are much more than collections of facts. Specifically, they provide information about historical context, multiple perspectives, sources of information, and original interpretation. This is crucial information for anyone attempting to understand history. As examples, I show how three books by Jim Murphy—The Great Fire, Blizzard! and An American Plague—address each of these essential topics. Myra Zarnowski is a professor in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of History Makers (Heinemann, 2006) and Making Sense of History (Scholastic, 2006).     

The <Emphasis Type="Italic">Synergies</Emphasis> research–practice partnership project: a <Emphasis Type="Italic">2020 Vision</Emphasis> case study

This paper, describes Synergies, an on-going longitudinal study and design effort, being conducted in a diverse, under-resourced community in Portland, Oregon, with the goal of measurably improving STEM learning, interest and participation by early adolescents, both in school and out of school. Authors examine how the work of this particular research–practice partnership is attempting to accommodate the six principles outlined in this issue: (1) to more accurately reflect learning as a lifelong process occurring across settings, situations and time frames; (2) to consider what STEM content is worth learning; (3) to examine learning as a cultural process, involving varied repertoires of practice across learners’ everyday lives; (4) to directly involve practitioners (and learners) in the research process; (5) to document how existing and emerging technologies and new media are, and will continue, to shape and redefine the content and practice of STEM learning research; and, (6) to take into account the broader socio-cultural–political contexts of the needs and concerns of the larger global society.     

What has <Emphasis Type="Italic">Harry Potter</Emphasis> Done for Me? Children’s Reflections on their ‘<Emphasis Type="Italic">Potter</Emphasis> Experience’

This article reports findings from a small-scale focus-group study funded by the British Academy. Drawing on Herbert Marsh and Richard Shavelson’s notion of “Academic Self-Concept” and David Barton and Mary Hamilton’s view of literacy as context-specific social practices, the authors examine what young British Harry Potter enthusiasts perceive as the influence of the novels on their subsequent reading behaviour and academic development. Specifically, they consider whether these children feel that Harry Potter has helped improve their literacy skills and whether they think the books have changed their attitudes to reading. Moreover, the article sheds light on the role of the films and the possible effect of gender. The authors conclude that the Potter enthusiasts they have interviewed see the series as formative in terms of their literacy. However, regarding gender, intra-group variation (differences among individual readers in a group of either boys or girls) is far more significant than inter-group variation (differences between single-sex groups of boys and girls).     

Enhancing Prospective Teachers’ Knowledge of Learners’ Intuitive Conceptions: The Case of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Same A</Emphasis>–<Emphasis Type="Italic">Same B</Emphasis>

This paper addresses the accumulating knowledge of prospective teachers of secondary school mathematics and their acquired proficiency during the course “Psychological aspects of mathematics education,” in which we discussed theoretical models including the intuitive rules theory. Participants’ performances are examined by means of an extensive report of two episodes, one during the course and one afterwards. These episodes marked different stages in the prospective teachers’ analysis of their own and of students’ solutions, which led me to conclude that exposing prospective teachers to the intuitive rules theory is important, since their familiarity with the theory provided them with a tool to reflect on their own mathematical solutions (subject matter knowledge; SMK), on others’ solutions, and on the tasks (pedagogical content knowledge; PCK).     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Clockwork</Emphasis>: Philip Pullman’s Posthuman Fairy Tale

This article examines the connections between posthumanism and narrative form in Philip Pullman’s Clockwork. Beginning with an account of Pullman’s materialism, it argues that the novel represents consciousness and agency as emergent properties of matter, a position that manifests itself first in the tale’s figurative language and later in the cybernetic inventions of Dr. Kalmenius. As Pullman effaces the boundaries between animate and inanimate, human and non-human, he generates uncanny effects that are best understood in terms of the posthuman condition and narrative modes that reject liberal humanist models of subjectivity. Clockwork’s uncanny elements, metafictive qualities, and distribution of narrative voice across multiple perspectives thus represent narrative accommodations demanded by the tale’s rejection of the Cartesian mind/body dualism that grounds the liberal humanist subject. Clockwork’s acceptance of the posthuman condition is, however, incomplete and anxiety-laden, and the fairy-tale transformation of Prince Florian at the end of the novel represents a partial recuperation of liberal humanist morality.     

Complicating Culture and Difference: Situating Asian American Youth Identities in Lisa Yee’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Millicent Min,Girl Genius</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time</Emphasis>

This review situates how culture, difference, and identity are discursively constructed in Millicent Min, Girl Genius and Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time, two award-winning books written by critically acclaimed Asian American author Lisa Yee. Using contextual literacy approaches, the characters, cultural motifs, and physical settings in these texts are deconstructed to explore the nuances of Asian American youth identities that intersect along the lines of class, gender, and race. This review ends by offering teaching strategies for explicating Asian American young adult literature to critically investigate the representations of Asian American counter-narratives, experiences, and youth cultures. Rachel Endo is a Ph.D. Candidate in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her current research interests are comparative multicultural education, immigrant/refugee experiences in post-1965 contexts, teacher education, and transnational studies of Asian America.     

Crossover Literature and Abjection: Geraldine McCaughrean’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The White Darkness</Emphasis>

This article provides a close reading of Geraldine McCaughrean’s award-winning novel, The White Darkness. It argues that this is a key text in the increasing debate about ‘crossover’ literature. Whereas, traditionally, adolescent books were seen to offer compensatory fantasies to the adolescent reader, McCaughrean’s text goes beyond this, exploring adolescence in deeper terms: not simply as an age-defined period but as a time when the traditional coordinates of the self are thrown into crisis, or become destabilized (as an ‘open psychic structure’, as Kristeva puts it). Adopting such a psychoanalytical approach, it is argued, we can begin to understand this book’s appeal (and others like it) to adolescent and adult alike; that is, it stages a shift from an imaginary identification with a stable self to a more realistic, albeit less secure recognition of the flimsiness of identity. The white wastes of Antarctica provide the perfect backdrop for this confrontation with the ungraspable Real.

Three Walks Through Fictional Fens: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on <Emphasis Type="Italic">Gaffer Samson’s Luck</Emphasis>

The paper discusses the children’s novel Gaffer Samson’s Luck (1984), by Jill Paton Walsh, from three different perspectives; those of a cultural geographer, a literary scholar and an English teacher. It is part of a larger research project on children’s perception of their place-related identities through reading and writing. The novel is used as a case study to develop a multidisciplinary approach, drawing upon theories of literature and reading, and a conceptualisation of space in cultural geography. Employing ideas from different disciplines, the paper offers an original interpretation of the text as well as innovative analytical tools for future research and for classroom application.     

“The World Loves an Underdog,” or the Continuing Appeal of the Adolescent Rebel Narrative: A Comparative Reading of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Vernon God Little</Emphasis>, <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Catcher in the Rye</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Huckleberry Finn</Emphasis>

The early reception of D.B.C. Pierre’s Vernon God Little (2003) has been characterized by comparisons with two canonical literary antecedents: J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1991/1951) and, at a greater remove, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The three novels capitalize on the subversive potential of disaffected teenage narrators, whose compelling vernacular voices, and distinctive position as outsiders in the adult world, are powerful tools for social critique. This article offers an analysis of the continuities and discontinuities in the narrative tradition that links Vernon Little to Huckleberry Finn via the pivotal figure of Holden Caulfield, who is widely considered as the original, unsurpassed model of adolescent rebelliousness in modern literature. Grounded in an extensive exploration of the history of reception of the three texts, this study proceeds to highlight and explore the wider implications of Pierre’s provocative twist on his predecessors’ narrative template. Significantly, this deliberate departure is overlooked in most reviews of Vernon God Little—an omission which testifies to our deep investment in the idea of teenagers as liminal figures between childhood and adulthood, and thus still relatively untainted by worldly corruption. Paradoxically, the persistence of this romanticized view of adolescence coexists with much less idealized representations of young people, especially in the media. This particular contradiction is tentatively teased out in a brief coda to the main argument, with reference to another idiosyncratic adolescent narrator who has managed to capture the popular imagination in recent years: Christopher Boone in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003). Although his connection with Salinger’s text is less immediately obvious than Vernon’s, in some ways Christopher is a more legitimate heir to Holden Caulfield than Pierre’s protagonist.     

Syntheses and characterizations of alloyed Co<Subscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript>Ni<Subscript>1−<Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis></Subscript>O nanocrystals

Alloying is an effective way to manipulate the composition and physico-chemical properties of functional materials. We demonstrated the syntheses of alloyed Co _x Ni_1?x O nanocrystals using a nonaqueous approach, with x continuously tuned from 0 to 1 by varying the molar ratios of the cobalt precursor in the reagents. The morphological, structural, and compositional properties of the alloyed Co _x Ni_1?x O nanocrystals were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES), and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The results showed that the cobalt and nickel atoms were homogeneously distributed in the alloyed nanocrystals. The as-prepared Co _x Ni_1?x O nanocrystals can be applied as the hole-transporting layers in polymer light emitting diodes (PLEDs). Our study provides a good example for the syntheses of alloyed oxide nanocrystals with continuously tunable composition.     

Missed Opportunities: The Subordination of Children in Philip Pullman’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">His Dark Materials</Emphasis>

In the His Dark Materials trilogy, Pullman reworks the fall of humanity into an ascent and suggests that ascent into adulthood through sexual experience is the desired goal for children. Although this ascent is accompanied by a radical reconceptualization of life and death, Pullman fails to offer any genuinely new ideas of the world with respect to adult–child relationships and the roles that children play in our society. Situated as it is at the crossroads of childrens literature and fantasy, His Dark Materials fails to take advantage of the freedom these two genres provide and reinforces current conceptions of children and their role in society.     

Apigenin-7-<Emphasis Type="Italic">O</Emphasis>-β-<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">d</Emphasis>-glycoside isolation from the highly copper-tolerant plant <Emphasis Type="Italic">Elsholtzia splendens</Emphasis>

Elsholtzia splendens (Lamiaceae) is a copper-tolerant plant species growing on copper deposits in the south of China. Chromatographic separation of n-BuOH extracts from the flowering aerial biomass afforded apigenin-7-O-β-d-glycoside, using macroporous resin, Sephadex? LH-20 gel, polyamide resin as well as preparative high-performance liquid chromatography (P-HPLC) columns. Chemical structure was elucidated using HPLC/ESI-MS (electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR), and ¹D- and ²D-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Apigenin-7-O-β-d-glycoside could be the post-harvesting product from E. splendens biomass.