This engaging study examines diverse genders and sexualities in a wide range of contemporary fiction for children and young people. Mallan's insights into key dilemmas arising from the texts' treatment of romance, beauty, cyberbodies, queer, and comedy are provocative and trustworthy, and deliver exciting theoretical and social perspectives.

Autorentext
KERRY MALLAN is Professor in Education at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. She co-edited Youth Cultures: Texts, Images, and Identities (2003), an IRSCL Honour Book. Her most recent book, New World Orders in Contemporary Children's Literature: Utopian Transformations (2008), is co-authored with Clare Bradford, John Stephens, and Robyn McCallum.

Inhalt
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Rethinking Gender Desire, Pleasure, and Romance: Postfeminism and Other Seductions The Beauty Dilemma: Gendered Bodies and Aesthetic Judgement Gendered Cyber-Bodies: The Dilemma of Technological 'Existenz' Queer Spaces in a Straight World: The Dilemmas of Sexual Identity No Laughing Matter... Or Is It? The Serio-Comic Side of Gender Conclusion Notes References Index