Despite incredible sales success, popularity, and a fifty year history, easy readers are
one of the most neglected forms of children’s literature. Called everything from “the poor
stepchild of the more glamorous picture book or children’s novel” to “literary flotsam,” easy
readers are too-often regarded as insubstantial, superficial, sub-par literature.
This thesis provides the first comprehensive, theoretically grounded examination of
easy readers and endeavors to prove that a surprising complexity lurks beneath the easy
reader’s decodable surface. In order to illuminate both extra-textual and textual complexity,
easy readers are treated generically and examined using the contemporary genre theories of
Amy Devitt and Adena Rosmarin. This thesis ultimately unearths a heretofore unexplored
complexity in the easy reader’s publication history and generic emergence, and finds that the
easy reader genre has literary potential and can accommodate works of artistic merit.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/2727 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Ozirny, Shannon |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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