A Day No Pigs Would Die, Speak, Thirteen Reasons Why. These are some of the most beloved, and most challenged, books. Leaving controversial titles such as these out of your collection or limiting their access is not the answer to challenges. While ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom reports more than 4,500 challenges to young adult literature from 2000 through 2009. This handbook gives you the information you need to defend challenged books with...

"In this diverse collection, 28 writers describe positive experiences they have had on the autism spectrum and reveal how the most unexpected things can be a source of positivity. Their insights are moving, honest, often hilarious and almost always surprising. From hair-raising travel experiences to dynamic parenting, teaching music to volunteering, running a marathon to taking on a PhD, they show that autism need not limit life."--Back cover.

Provides quick, accurate answers to hundreds of question about the historical background and setting of 300 often-studied literary works, including novels, plays, poems, speeches and short stories. Contains profiles of three hundred notable literary works written from ancient times through the end of the twentieth century, relating them to the historical context in which they were written and in which they are set; arranged alphabetically by title...

In one of his letters Hart Crane wrote, "Appollinaire lived in Paris, I live in Cleveland, Ohio," comparing--misspelling and all--the great French poet's cosmopolitan roots to his own more modest ones in the midwestern United States. Rebelling against the notion that his work should relate to some European school of thought, Crane defiantly asserted his freedom to be himself, a true American writer. John T. Irwin, long a passionate and brilliant critic...

From D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation in 1915 to the recent Get Out, audiences and critics alike have responded to racism in motion pictures for more than a century. Whether subtle or blatant, racially biased images and narratives erase minorities, perpetuate stereotypes, and keep alive practices of discrimination and marginalization. Even in the 21st century, the American film industry is not "color blind," evidenced by films such as Babel (2006),...

Provides critical overviews of the most-studied plays of all time periods, nations, and cultures. Includes discussions of themes, characters, critical reception, dramatic devices and traditions as well as cultural and historical context.