The authors position young adult fiction as case studies of youth composing in and out of school. The purpose of this paper is to examine youth literacy and writing practices in select, contemporary young adult literature (YAL), especially how and why literate activity is sponsored, negotiated or occluded by teachers and schools. This study is supplemented by an interview with Sonia Nazario about the adaptation process as well as implications for students, teachers, and scholars. That’s an important takeaway from this work because all too often, adaptations operate under reductive assumptions about who youth are as readers and thinkers: namely, that youth readers require role models who pursue their goals in a simplified reality. For scholars of young adult literature, the content differences between the two versions of Enrique’s Journey forward our knowledge about this genre that marks youth as its reader-a genre with the capacity to adapt content for a youth audience without sanitizing that content. This CCCA of Enrique’s Journey revealed patterned differences between the original and youth adapted versions, including generalizations, added section breaks, and a more focalized account of the journey from Enrique’s perspective however, unlike many youth adaptations, the social complexity of migration was maintained across versions.

Based on Nazario’s Pulitzer-Prize winning journalism, Enrique’s Journey recounts the story a migrant teenager from Honduras who made his way across Mexico, crossed the US border, and reunited with his mother in North Carolina. Enrique’s Journey was written and adapted by Sonia Nazario.

This study used critical comparative content analysis (CCCA) to look at how migration was represented in the original and youth adapted versions of Enrique’s Journey. Original books and their youth adapted counterparts differ in patterned ways, often sanitizing content and positioning youth readers as unready to grapple with the social complexity of important issues. Nonfiction books are increasingly being adapted for the young adult literature market.

Zits by Jerry Scott