ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two versions of Malala Yousafzai’s memoir, I Am Malala, which detail Yousafzai’s experiences as a young Pakistani girl who advocated for the educational rights of girls and was shot by the Taliban. The chapter illustrates activities grounded in Critical Comparative Content Analysis (CCCA)—a critical approach that provides middle and high school students opportunities to study how young adult literature (YAL) is constructed and what it assumes about youth readers. These activities engage students in comparisons of general market and YAL versions of Yousafzai’s memoirs, focusing on peritexual features, chapter frames, and anchor images. This chapter demonstrates how such activities shed light on differences in the ways in which the two versions of the memoir depict Malala’s cultural attitudes and experiences of violence. Additionally, this chapter discusses questions that are raised about perceptions of youth readers. Finally, this chapter argues that activities grounded in CCCA provide important scaffolding for critical readings of multicultural YAL.
