ABSTRACT

Throughout the 1990s Avon and Harper Books released a series of Growing Up anthologies addressing and edited by major Asian-American, Black, Chicano, Native American, Puerto Rican, and Latino/a writers, respectively. An overview of teaching strategies and curricular approaches to making these literatures a more integral part of any curriculum, from pre-K to graduate school. The young adult literature (YAL) because it is newer, less familiar, more overlooked, and undervalued. A survey of the most prominent YA and children's literature textbooks over the last 20 years, and the numerous scholarly sources that they cite, reveals that multicultural literature can diminish stereotyping, 'raise the consciousness and awareness of differences between and among people across contexts, continents, and culture', and allow readers to 'identify and collaborate with the perspectives and practices of oppositional subjects', experience shifts in perspective, and come to challenge 'the workings of prevailing power systems'.