Scarecrow Press
Pages: 246
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-0-8108-7443-5 • Hardback • October 2010 • $87.00 • (£67.00)
978-0-8108-7444-2 • eBook • October 2010 • $77.50 • (£60.00)
Melissa Gross is professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Florida State University. She is the author of Studying Children's Questions: Imposed and Self-Generated Information Seeking at School (Scarecrow, 2006) and coauthor of Dynamic Youth Services through Outcome Based Planning and Evaluation (2006).
Annette Y. Goldsmith is the founding editor of The Looking Glass, an international children's literature e-journal.
Debi Carruth is a doctoral candidate at the Florida State University College of Communication and Information.
Gross, Goldsmith, and Carruth decided to research how young adult novels deal with HIV/AIDS. Using the following criteria: a main character in the young adult range (eleven to nineteen), at least one character who is either HIV positive or has AIDS, written in English, and published between 1981 and 2008, they found ninety-three young adult novels for their study. Each of the ninety-three titles are fully annotated and evaluated in the second half of the book. Their work—thoroughly researched, critically analyzed, superbly written, and accessible to the largest audience—leads to their conclusion that "the body of literature analyzed in this study is not doing all it might to demonstrate that youth and people they care about are at risk for HIV infection." Books set in Africa and Papua New Guinea, however, expose the realities these areas face in dealing with HIV. They conclude that more teen books are needed that portray the realities of HIV/AIDS in our country.
— VOYA