Intertextual Resonances in Seven Novels

Here are seven novels that tell stories of empowerment. In their different ways, however, these are also seven stories about stories. They refer, sometimes subtly and sometimes explicitly, to well-known literary patterns such as fairy tales, as well as to particular works of literature. The allusions in these novels serve to inform readers about the novels' literary contexts, but I will argue that they also serve another purpose perhaps more vital to young adult literature: they extend invitations to young readers to look beyond the story they are reading, thereby encouraging discoveries both literary and personal.

Since Julia Kristeva first used the term in 1967, "intertextuality" has remained the subject of ongoing debate and discussion by scholars. In his essay Semiotics for Beginners, Daniel Chandler offers a very basic definition: "the term intertextuality would normally be used to refer to allusions to other texts." Perry Nodelman writes that "to focus on a text's intertextuality is to focus on the ways it depends on the reader's knowledge of its connections with other writing" (Pleasures 75). In this discussion, I will focus on just that: the ways these novels make demands on readers' knowledge of those kinds of connections. Specifically, I will show how the novels entice, and sometimes challenge, readers with allusions to other stories and works of literature.

Stories that refer to other stories are common in children's literature and in young adult fiction in particular. In her critical study, Diana Wynne Jones: Children's Literature and the Fantastic Tradition, Farah Mendlesohn uncovers a "multiple overlay" of story in Jones's Charmed Life, explaining that "there are two texts to be read: one written to tempt the ignorant, the other to create delicious collusion with the knowledgeable" (xxviii). Tim Wynne-Jones concurs in a discussion of his novel The Boy in the Burning House, which incorporates references to Stephenson's Treasure Island: "these allusions are not meant as a sly literary conceit. It is not meant to exclude the kid who does not get the reference, but rather to encourage the kid who does" (19).

Allusions like those described by Wynne-Jones are to be found in all seven novels. Although it is a common literary device, it may be especially well suited to young adult fiction. Rosmarin Heidenreich points out that when patterns of allusion are employed, "[a]ttention is . . . focused in large measure upon the readers' own perceptual and cognitive processes as they attempt to construct meaning in their reading of the text" (122). This strategy is definitely one that encourages young readers to approach reading actively, thereby helping to prepare them for further analytical reading. "Some texts allude directly to each other . . . This is a particularly self-conscious form of intertextuality: it credits its audience with the necessary experience to make sense of such allusions and offers them the pleasure of recognition" (Chandler). This pleasure, as well as the validation that arises from solving intertextual puzzles, may also increase the appeal of literature to young readers.

Waking Beauties

Fairy-tale elements resonate through each of the seven novels. Alyxandra Harvey-Fitzhenry's Waking and Christine Walde's The Candy Darlings explicitly revisit well-known fairy tales. The Unwritten Girl and Grace and the Ice Prince...