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Part of
Emotion in Texts for Children and Young Adults: Moving stories
Edited by Karen Coats and Gretchen Papazian
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 13] 2023
► pp. 193–216

Chapter 9
Taking the reluctance out of reluctant reading

Frustration, shame, and curiosity in literacy narratives

| Holyoke Community College
This chapter examines literacy narratives that feature reluctant readers. These narratives focus less on literacy development and more on the development of the affective skills that will help the protagonists to work through their reluctance to read. The novels thus treat affects as skills that can be learned, rather than as spontaneous or passive experiences. The phenomenon of the reluctant reader novel speaks to adult anxieties over the citizenship behaviors thought to be connected to literacy. In emphasizing affective skills, these novels also offer reassurance and new ways to think about literacy and citizenship.
Keywords: literacy, reluctant reader, frustration, shame, wonder, affective education (or affective pedagogy), citizenship education, virtue, gender, race
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Affective pedagogy: A primer
  • Shame
  • Frustration
  • Wonder
  • Conclusion: What does ‘reluctance’ mean? who feels reluctance?
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 January 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.13.09les
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