Crossover Literature and Age in Crisis at the Turn of the 21st Century

At the turn of the 21st century, the widely visible popularity of children’s and young adult literature with adult readers lead literary critics and cultural commentators to ask whether the inhabitants of Western culture were refusing to grow up. Whilst books had been crossing over the line between the adult and children”s book market ever since their separation had been introduced, the perceived rise in this traffic led to a felt crisis concerning age and identity. At the example of the Harry Potter and the Twilight novels, Maria Verena Peters analyzes the discourse about childhood, coming of age and adulthood inside and outside the pages of children”s and young adult literature as the 20th century came to an end and a new millennium was beginning. Her analysis uncovers that this discourse was determined by an anxiety that without the patriarchal, heterosexual, nuclear family, age cannot serve to produce meaningful identity categories. In addition to the prominent two novel series of the title, the PhD thesis covers a wide range of popular culture artefacts, from Near Dark to the The Big Bang Theory and from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Hotter than my Daughter. It builds upon key findings of fan studies to paint a picture of the intersectionality of age, gender, class and consumption in the marketing, reception and critique of children’s and young adult literature.