Thematic Analysis of Social Issues in Ten Young Adult Novels

The purpose of this study was to complete a thematic analysis on ten randomly selected young adult novels published in the year 2018. Novels were selected based on the criteria of (1) being published in the year 2018, (2) age-appropriate for middle and high school students, (3) written in English and (4) not being a part of a series. The novels were published in the United States or Canada. The thematic analysis was conducted to determine recurring social issues presented in the novels that are affecting young adults. The novels examined in this study are: What If It’s Us, Swing, Unclaimed Baggage, When Elephants Fly, Meet the Sky, The Chaos of Now, A Very Large Expanse of Sea, Broken Things, Words We Don’t Say, and Sadie. This study suggested how to integrate the novels in a middle or high school setting and whether the novels could be used in a lesson or should be housed in a school library. Each novel was read, analyzed for themes, and categorized to determine main themes of the text. Every novel dealt with a different social issue including: addiction, death, loss, friendship, and school

A publicação em Portugal e no Brasil dos romances Young Adult dos últimos cinco anos (2017-2021) dos Big Five norte-americanos

Esta dissertação consiste numa análise de como os romances Young Adult (YA) dos últimos cinco anos (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 e 2021) publicados originalmente pelos grupos editoriais norte-americanos conhecidos como Big Five foram publicados nos dois maiores mercados literários em língua portuguesa – o português e o brasileiro. Os Big Five são o Hachette Book Group, a HarperCollins, o Macmillan Publishing Group, a Penguin Random House e a Simon & Schuster e a base dessa análise consiste na recolha e tratamento de um conjunto de dados de todos os romances YA inéditos publicados por esses grupos nos Estados Unidos da América entre 2017 e 2021 em formatos físicos e das edições correspondentes portuguesas e brasileiras. O principal objetivo é perceber de que modos os mercados literários tradicionais dos três países diferem – e se aproximam – no que diz respeito à publicação deste tipo de literatura, da qual os adolescentes são o principal público-alvo.This dissertation is an analysis of how the Young Adult (YA) novels from the last five years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021) originally published by the American publishing giants known as Big Five have been published in the two largest literary markets in Portuguese – the Portuguese and Brazilian markets. The Big Five are the Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, the Macmillan Publishing Group, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, and the basis for this study is the collection of specific data regarding all YA novels physically published by those publishing groups in the U.S.A. between 2017 and 2021 and their corresponding Portuguese and Brazilian editions. The primary goal of this analysis is to understand in which ways the publishing industries in these three countries are both different and similar when it comes to publishing this kind of literature which is, for the most part, written and published with adolescents in mind