What Is Adapted in Youth Adaptations?: A Critical Comparative Content Analysis of Military Memoirs Repackaged as Young Adult Literature

Mark A Sulzer; Amanda Haertling Thein; Renita R Schmidt

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What Is Adapted in Youth Adaptations?: A Critical Comparative Content Analysis of Military Memoirs Repackaged as Young Adult Literature

Journal article

Peer reviewed

What Is Adapted in Youth Adaptations?: A Critical Comparative Content Analysis of Military Memoirs Repackaged as Young Adult Literature

Mark A Sulzer, Amanda Haertling Thein and Renita R Schmidt

Journal of language & literacy education, Vol.14(1), p.1

2018

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Abstract

Adapting and rebranding general market memoirs for the young adult literature market is a growing trend in the publishing world. Grounded in Critical Youth Scholarship, this study explores this trend through an analysis of two general market memoirs of Navy SEALs and their revised and repackaged youth market counterparts. Using a systematic approach we call "Critical Comparative Content Analysis" (CCCA), this study found that the youth adaptations were substantially altered to produce worlds stripped of complexity, offering sanitized versions of military action, heroism, and humanity. We argue that through content changes, youth readers are denied access to complex portrayals of the world, as well as questions that might arise with and through them. Instead, youth readers are constructed as needing explicit life lessons and reductive depictions of lived experience. For scholars and teachers, this study demonstrates the importance of inquiries that not only critically approach the content of YAL, but also foreground and trouble limiting conceptions of youth readers themselves. This study also highlights the value of "comparison" as a conceptual and pedagogical tool for carrying out this work. Further, this study recommends continued methodological innovation oriented toward genre-specific qualities of young adult literature, including its production and marketing.

Literary Criticism

Military Service

Military Personnel

Adoption (Ideas)

Young Adults

Didacticism

Publishing Industry

Adolescent Literature

Comparative Analysis

Literature Appreciation

Autobiographies

Content Analysis

Literary Genres

Qualitative Research

Trend Analysis

Details

Title: Subtitle: What Is Adapted in Youth Adaptations?: A Critical Comparative Content Analysis of Military Memoirs Repackaged as Young Adult Literature
Creators: Mark A Sulzer
Amanda Haertling Thein
Renita R Schmidt
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Journal of language & literacy education, Vol.14(1), p.1
Publisher: Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Georgia
ISSN: 1559-9035
eISSN: 1559-9035
Number of pages: 27
Language: English
Date published: 2018
Academic Unit: Graduate College Admin and Gen; Teaching and Learning
Record Identifier: 9984095164602771

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