Disturbing the Universe Format: Paperback

The Young Adult novel is ordinarily characterized as a coming-of-age story, in which the narrative revolves around the individual growth and maturation of a character, but Roberta Trites expands this notion by chronicling the dynamics of power and repression that weave their way through YA books. Characters in these novels must learn to negotiate the levels of power that exist in the myriad social institutions within which they function, including family, church, government, and school.

Trites argues that the development of the genre over the past thirty years is an outgrowth of postmodernism, since YA novels are, by definition, texts that interrogate the social construction of individuals. Drawing on such nineteenth-century precursors as Little Women and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Disturbing the Universe demonstrates how important it is to employ poststructuralist methodologies in analyzing adolescent literature, both in critical studies and in the classroom. Among the twentieth-century authors discussed are Blume, Hamilton, Hinton, Le Guin, L'Engle, and Zindel.

Trites' work has applications for a broad range of readers, including scholars of children's literature and theorists of post-modernity as well as librarians and secondary-school teachers.

Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature by Roberta Seelinger Trites is the winner of the 2002 Children's Literature Association's Book Award. The award is given annually in order to promote and recognize outstanding contributions to children's literature, history, scholarship, and criticisim; it is one of the highest academic honors that can accrue to an author of children's literary criticism.

The author deconstructs a number of YA novels by writers such as Francesca Lia Block, Chris Crutcher, Virginia Hamilton, S. E. Hinton, Madeleine L'Engle, and Paul Zindel, analyzing how adolescents negotiate their place in the power structures in their lives (school, family, religion, identity, government). The author also discusses how sex, death, and money both empower and repress teen protagonists. She believes that adolescent characters understand their own power (or lack thereof) by struggling with these institutions. A plethora of philosophies and theories (Freud, Foucault, Lacan, etc.) is cited as Trites looks intently at elements of narrative structure, metaphorical constructs, ideologies, and more. This is a complicated, detailed, and intellectual analysis, not for the faint of brain or casual aficionado; however, it is an interesting treatise about an important body of literature.
Bette Ammon, Missoula Public Library, MT
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