Leaf Journal: On Writing for Young People
type: channel
description: Publishing scholarly articles on the practice of creative writing for young people. Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. Sign up to our Mailing List.
language: en
publication name: Leaf Journal: On Writing for Young People
issn: 2753-6920
copyright: CCBY-NC-4.0
items: Time-Play: Slipping the Bounds of a Classic Children’s Genre
items: ‘I Need To Learn – Am Learning’: How To Use Inexperience To Craft A Young Adult Voice
items: The Second Reading and Beyond: Exploring Re-Readability in Children’s Novels
items: Crossing the Line: Considering the Dual Accessibility of the Verse Narrative for Reluctant Readers and Young People with Mental Health Problems
items: Towards True Sick Lit: How to Write a Productive YA Novel about Emetophobia
items: Editors' Letter
items: The Child’s Experience of Relatives with Mental Health Problems: How Can Middle Grade Authors Combat Stigma?
items: How to Write Queer Antagonists in YA Fiction Without Making Queerness a Signifier for Evil
items: The Evolution of AI Characters in Children’s Literature
items: Navigating Disability in Children’s Publishing: Insights from Disabled Authors
items: Queering the Short Story Cycle for Young Adult Fiction
items: A Practice-Based Research Approach to Selecting Point of View in a Young Adult Fantasy Fiction Novel
items: Inventing the Perfect Crush: Arguing for Middle-Grade Narratives with Aromantic Leads
items: Writing Generative Black Anger in Young Adult Historical Fiction
items: Beyond the Binary: Shapeshifting and Nonbinary Identity in Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction
items: A Guide to Responsible Scaring: What are the Limitations of Horror in Young Adult Fiction?
items: A Call to Mind: How are MG Authors Challenging the Stigmatisation of Mental Health?
items: How Do Authors Negotiate Contemporary Notions of Gender and Historical Accuracy When Creating Female Characters in Middle Grade Historical Fiction?
items: Learning Curve: The University-Set Novel Made Palatable, and Appropriate, for Young Adult Readers
items: When the Plot Thickens: Writing the Textured Children’s Novel in an Era of Corporate Taste
items: “A Balance Between the Real and the Fictive”: Writing Nuanced Queer Representation in Young Adult Historical Fiction
items: Representing “Otherness”: Animals in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, and Beyond
items: Writing Hopeful Climate Fiction for Middle Grade Readers
items: Volume 2 Editors' Letter
items: The Trickster Figure in Queer YA: A Case Study of Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves
items: The Post-Apocalyptic Space, Character, and Morality in Middle-Grade Children’s Literature
items: How to Write Children’s Literature About War and Other Vulnerable, Controversial Topics
items: Well-versed? If Novels in Verse Are So Accessible, Why Don’t We Have More?
items: Under the Hood of the Verse Novel: A Consideration of Variation in Form and Technique in the Contemporary Verse Novel for Young Adults
items: Learning Craft From Children’s Authors

Time-Play: Slipping the Bounds of a Classic Children’s Genre
type: item
description: The time-slip story is a classic of children’s literature. It has evolved over time, with more recent iterations using the form to re-read and re-write the past. This article offers a closer examination of time-slip as a genre, considering the nuances of ‘slip’, the possibilities of ‘living history’ and the tension between fantasy and realism. It proposes ‘time-play’ as a new way of claiming our practice when we write into this fertile space.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: time-slip
  topic: keywords
subject: fantasy
  topic: keywords
subject: genre
  topic: keywords
subject: living history
  topic: keywords
creator: Ruth Moore
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Ruth Moore (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2026-07-01
publication date: 2026-07-01
doi: 10.58091/7d4s-9p89

‘I Need To Learn – Am Learning’: How To Use Inexperience To Craft A Young Adult Voice
type: item
description: What is it that separates the young adult voice from the adult voice in prose? Both might engage in alcohol, sex, crime, war, violence. Both change, grow, love, fail, fall apart. And yet there is a distinct, gut-driven sense of when we’re reading (or writing) the wrong voice. Through a practice-based methodology analysing the evolution of my drafting process and using extracts from my YA novel Bleed, and informed by a close reading of Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On and Suzanne Collins’s The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I argue that one of the crucial elements that truly shapes a young adult voice in prose is inexperience. While young adult narrators may be approaching the same experiences as adult narrators, they are (usually) approaching them, if not for the first time, then without the depth of long experience, which gently codes narrative voice, tone, and language choice. Young adult narrators confront these experiences with all the bravado of someone who has never failed and all the anxiety of someone who has never succeeded, and this is an insight I would like to offer to other authors.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: narrative voice
  topic: keywords
subject: point of view
  topic: keywords
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: young adult literature
  topic: keywords
subject: inexperience
  topic: keywords
subject: narration
  topic: keywords
creator: Elizabeth Train-Brown
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Elizabeth Train-Brown (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2026-07-01
publication date: 2026-07-01
doi: 10.58091/2hn5-0904

The Second Reading and Beyond: Exploring Re-Readability in Children’s Novels
type: item
description: Writers for young people often know firsthand that when children love a novel, they may read it over and over, sometimes across many years. This reality, however, rarely influences conversations on craft. Aiming to write books children will love means aiming to write books that will remain rewarding or even deepen with every reread – books that feel practically inexhaustible. What craft features facilitate this? Can we reverse engineer this particular literary magic? This article investigates these questions via an analysis of Frances Hardinge’s novel Cuckoo Song (2014). Drawing on ideas about rereading proposed by scholars and authors such as Alison Waller, Colette Drouillard, Joan Aiken, K.M. Weiland, and Donald Fry, this paper looks at how Hardinge constructs a beautifully complex web of a novel that cannot be fully apprehended in a single reading. Based on this analysis, the article then distills some techniques for building this sense of inexhaustibility into children’s fiction, such as the deliberate inclusion of material that will only be noticed, gain meaning, or become emotionally impactful on a second or even later reading; the artful weaving of connections across the text; the creation of complex secondary characters; and the central placement of human paradox or unresolvable mystery.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: craft of fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: writing for children
  topic: keywords
subject: rereading
  topic: keywords
subject: Frances Hardinge
  topic: keywords
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
creator: Noah Weisz
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Noah Weisz (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2026-07-01
publication date: 2026-07-01
doi: 10.58091/6rmk-xp92

Crossing the Line: Considering the Dual Accessibility of the Verse Narrative for Reluctant Readers and Young People with Mental Health Problems
type: item
description: As the child literacy crisis deepens, and young people’s mental health collectively worsens, the barriers to reading I observed as a teenager growing up in the North East of England have only increased. Simultaneously, the verse narrative has been hailed as an accessible format in YA fiction. My article asks: accessible for who? I identify barriers that both vulnerable readers and reluctant readers can face in accessing important issue-based verse narratives and discuss potential accommodations. These include considering reading age, lowering the risk of imitative suicide, and writing representation that follows the philosophy of “nothing about us without us”. I also discuss the specific features of my own verse narrative project in terms of accessibility, including vocabulary, white space, and episodic poems. The poems discussed in the article are included as an appendix. Historically, mental health problems and barriers to reading have been treated as disparate issues. My article brings them together to demonstrate that the verse narrative has unique potential to include both of these disadvantaged groups, in the hope that YA authors can use the form to intentionally reach a wider range of readers.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: mental health
  topic: keywords
subject: accessibility
  topic: keywords
subject: verse novel
  topic: keywords
subject: reluctant readers
  topic: keywords
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
creator: Edward Davies
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Edward Owen Davies (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2026-07-01
publication date: 2026-07-01
doi: 10.58091/nxky-xm08

Towards True Sick Lit: How to Write a Productive YA Novel about Emetophobia
type: item
description: Emetophobia is a condition that affects a significant percentage of the world’s population, and yet it has been largely overlooked by medical professionals and poorly represented in children’s literature. While vomit is frequently used for gross-out humour in books for young readers, authentic representation of the emetophobic experience remains woefully scarce. Drawing on Raina Telgemeier’s Guts, Tuppence Middleton’s Scorpions, and John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down, I examine how lived experience, extended metaphor, narrative playfulness and embedded bibliotherapeutic practices can be harnessed to produce realistic and transformative depictions of emetophobia for sufferers and non-sufferers alike. Applying Levy’s evidence-based bibliotherapeutic framework, I argue that productive Sick-Lit can lace narratives with therapeutic potential while avoiding romanticised or stereotypical portrayals of illness so commonly featured in the controversial subgenre. By analysing these texts alongside extracts from my own creative practice, I propose a framework for a YA emetophobia narrative that is authentic, hopeful, and marketable beyond its immediate community of sufferers.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: emetophobia
  topic: keywords
subject: young adult literature
  topic: keywords
subject: sick lit
  topic: keywords
subject: illness narrative
  topic: keywords
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
creator: George Purves
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 George Purves (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2026-07-01
publication date: 2026-07-01
doi: 10.58091/akya-qm70

Editors' Letter
type: item
description: A word from the Managing Editors abou tthe articles in this issue.
subject: Editors' Letter
  topic: section
creator: Elen Caldecott
creator: Lucy Cuthew
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Elen Caldecott, Lucy Cuthew (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/

The Child’s Experience of Relatives with Mental Health Problems: How Can Middle Grade Authors Combat Stigma?
type: item
description: The effects of the stigmatisation of people with mental health problems (MHPs) should not be underestimated; stigma becomes a barrier to seeking help and can lead to feelings of shame, fear and isolation for children within the family. Through the examination of three Middle Grade (MG) depictions of relatives with MHPs – The Rollercoaster Boy by Lisa Thompson, The Tiger who Sleeps Under My Chair by Hannah Foley and Boy in The Tower by Polly Ho-Yen – this article will investigate how MG authors can portray characters with MHPs realistically, compassionately and with the aim to combat stigma. I suggest that using metaphors to describe MHPs can both aid understanding for children and provide a clear separation between the person and their symptoms, thus reducing blame. When stories acknowledge the experience of stigma and confront it directly with empathetic characters who hold alternative viewpoints, the negative stereotypes which young readers are likely to encounter in their lives are directly challenged. I discuss why MHPs must be normalised by providing a wide-range of characters across the MG reading experience. MHPs are common, can affect anyone and are often invisible. In truth, they are simply part of being human.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: mental health problems
  topic: keywords
subject: stigma
  topic: keywords
subject: middle grade
  topic: keywords
subject: family
  topic: keywords
creator: Hannah Durkan
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Hannah Durkan (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/5af7-9797

How to Write Queer Antagonists in YA Fiction Without Making Queerness a Signifier for Evil
type: item
description: In the past few years, LGBTQIA+ representation in children’s and young adult literature has markedly improved, both in terms of quantity and quality of portrayal. This article analyses two recent queer books, The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth and the first Heartstopper graphic novel by Alice Oseman, to unpick how to write a queer antagonist without reverting to harmful stereotypes and tropes. Both books are written by queer authors and have a brilliant and nuanced rainbow of queer representation. The proliferation of queerness in both books and the shared struggle against internalised homophobia prevent the antagonists’ sexuality from becoming a metaphor for evil. Additionally, both antagonists are set within a larger antagonistic force or system.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: queer
  topic: keywords
subject: LGBTQIA+ representation
  topic: keywords
creator: Jo L. Baker
rights: Copyright (c) 2026 Jo L. Baker (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2026-07-01
publication date: 2026-07-01
doi: 10.58091/hzyv-9195

The Evolution of AI Characters in Children’s Literature
type: item
description: This article explores how AI characters in children's literature are evolving from the traditional ‘Pinocchio paradigm’, where artificial beings strive to become human or gain human approval, toward more autonomous identities. With a focus on Mary Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot, and Kirsty Applebaum’s TrooFriend, it analyses narrative techniques used to help AI characters assert these distinct identities. Drawing on Hayles' (1999) posthumanist theory, which challenges the assumption that consciousness and identity must be rooted in biological humanity, this article argues that, while progress has begun, AI characters in these texts remain constrained by the anthropocentric framing that has been challenged more successfully in other media. It proposes an evaluative framework for AI representation, inspired by the Bechdel test, to encourage authors to depict AI characters on their own terms.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: AI
  topic: keywords
subject: characterisation
  topic: keywords
subject: AI ethics
  topic: keywords
subject: posthumanism
  topic: keywords
creator: Rachel Hamilton
creator: Christopher Piper
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Rachel Hamilton, Christopher Piper (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/229g-f020

Navigating Disability in Children’s Publishing: Insights from Disabled Authors
type: item
description: Despite making up an estimated 16% of the global population, only around 5% of children’s books feature disabled protagonists, and the majority of these are written by nondisabled authors. This article presents the findings of a study exploring the experiences of six disabled children’s authors navigating the publishing industry. It examines challenges they face in writing authentic disabled characters, barriers in accessibility, editorial biases, and the complexities of representing disability from lived experience. The study also looks at the impact of the #OwnVoices movement in promoting authentic disability representation, while addressing the potential limitations of the term as it has evolved since being coined by Corinne Duyvis in 2015. The findings highlight the need for systemic changes in publishing, such as improved accommodations, individualised support for authors, and better representation of disabled people in all facets of the publishing industry.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: lived experience
  topic: keywords
subject: disability
  topic: keywords
subject: publishing
  topic: keywords
subject: own voices
  topic: keywords
creator: Daniela Rozental
creator: Joanna Nadin
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Daniela Rozental, Dr Joanna Nadin (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/z5cr-gq05

Queering the Short Story Cycle for Young Adult Fiction
type: item
description: Queer Young Adult (YA) fiction is continuing to grow alongside the budding diversity of the wider spectrum of gender and sexualities in literature, and intersecting factors therein, but for the most part queer YA realism novels follow normative novel structures that may privilege a singular point of view. Writers for adults seeking ways to represent a diverse range of identities across characters and storylines have adopted the short story cycle. Maxine Hong Kingston, Louise Erdrich and many more short story cycle authors have used the form to explore identity and community, which are themes relevant to writing young LGBTQIA+ characters. Yet this form has been underutilised in YA fiction to tell queer stories. This article considers the potential of the short story cycle for writers telling queer stories to young people. I identify multiple perspectives, connected structure and fragmentation characteristic of the form to make it suitable for telling LGBTQIA+ stories, particularly for characters at the intersection of multiple identities. By reviewing notable examples and scholarship on cycles, I considered how key features were implemented in my own creative practice. My YA short story cycle features multiple intersectional LGBTQIA+ characters and explores themes of identity and community.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: short story cycle
  topic: keywords
subject: queer writing
  topic: keywords
subject: queer young adult literature
  topic: keywords
subject: LGBTQIA+ representation
  topic: keywords
creator: Chloe Cannell
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Dr Chloe Cannell (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/mvwh-ed17

A Practice-Based Research Approach to Selecting Point of View in a Young Adult Fantasy Fiction Novel
type: item
description: This article presents a practice-based research approach to selecting point of view (POV) for a Young Adult (YA) fantasy novel. Recognising that POV selection is project-specific and that theoretical frameworks alone are insufficient, this research moved beyond prescriptive models to discover a point of view appropriate to the overall poetics of the novel. I experimented with different POVs to explore which option best supported a vision for a novel that invited empathy and imagination through three elements: the ‘narrative self’, the ‘self in the story’, and the ‘gap between the two’. I ultimately found a close third-person POV to be most appropriate, but the research process highlighted the pressures of multiple other influences such as personal preferences and abilities, genre conventions, and authorial intentions. The article concludes with reflections on the usefulness and feasibility of taking a project-specific approach to POV selection.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: point of view
  topic: keywords
subject: YA fantasy fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: empathy
  topic: keywords
subject: practice-based research
  topic: keywords
creator: Julia OConnor
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Julia OConnor (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/751z-az43

Inventing the Perfect Crush: Arguing for Middle-Grade Narratives with Aromantic Leads
type: item
description: In this article, I set out some of the concerns and issues I faced while planning and writing a middle-grade novel. The novel, Ash's Infallible Guide for the Perfect Crush, set in an Indian middle school, stars an aromantic protagonist. I argue that, while Young Adult (YA) fiction is seeing an increase in the number of asexual and aromantic characters as part of a wider increase in LGBTQA+ fiction, these portrayals tend to be of white or American characters. Often they are ‘out’ when the story begins. This meant that these YA counterparts couldn’t serve as exemplars for my own work-in-progress. Other compounding difficulties were the issues of when someone might know they are aromantic or asexual (limited studies suggest that these identities are somewhat less stable than other minority sexualities), and the more conservative nature of Indian children’s publishing. These issues have all affected my decision-making as an author and the personality of Ash, at the heart of the novel.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: Creative Writing for Young People
  topic: keywords
subject: growing up
  topic: keywords
subject: aromanticism
  topic: keywords
subject: Indian KidLit
  topic: keywords
creator: Varsha Varghese
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Varsha Varghese (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/adbv-gh86

Writing Generative Black Anger in Young Adult Historical Fiction
type: item
description: In the face of social injustice and racism, Black people in the United States must be careful about showing strong emotions publicly. The label ‘angry Black person’ is often used by white Americans made uncomfortable by displays of anger by Black citizens. Historical fiction with Black characters immerses the young reader in an era and can show them how Black Americans may have reacted emotionally when confronted with unfairness, and unjust practices. Autumn Allen, Kim Johnson, and Michelle Coles have all written historical fiction featuring male protagonists, and in this article, I examine how they portray their main characters, who channel anger to positive, generative ends in difficult and even dangerous situations. While considering anger from different perspectives, such as the inner struggle, power dynamics and historical agency, I also analyse the positioning of anger within the narrative structure, so that writers can make better decisions when deciding where to place the emotion in their novels; this will also allow me to better structure my own work-in-progress.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: historical fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: African American studies
  topic: keywords
subject: anger
  topic: keywords
subject: social justice
  topic: keywords
creator: Laura E. Jacquemond
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Laura E. Jacquemond (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/geke-7c29

Beyond the Binary: Shapeshifting and Nonbinary Identity in Middle-Grade Speculative Fiction
type: item
description: Middle-grade speculative fiction provides a unique space for exploring nonbinary identity through the trope of shapeshifting. Historically, gender-complex characters in fantasy have been positioned as “Other,” with transformation linked to monstrosity or marginalisation. However, contemporary works, such as Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard and Yoon Ha Lee’s Tiger Honor, offer contrasting portrayals of nonbinary shapeshifters. Magnus Chase foregrounds gender fluidity through Alex Fierro, whose ability to shift between male and female forms parallels nonbinary identity but is at times framed as an exception within a cisnormative world. Tiger Honor, by contrast, integrates the protagonist, Sebin’s, nonbinary identity seamlessly within a setting where gender complexity is accepted without question. This article examines how these portrayals inform the creation of Val Silver and the Dragon’s Secret, a novel that reclaims shapeshifting as a metaphor for empowerment rather than othering in my creative practice. Drawing on posthumanist and queer theoretical perspectives, I argue that the shapeshifter archetype can disrupt binary gender norms, offering young readers inclusive and affirming representations of nonbinary identity. By situating shapeshifting within a framework of self-discovery, rather than isolation or trauma, speculative fiction fosters a space where nonbinary characters can thrive.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: nonbinary identity
  topic: keywords
subject: middle-grade fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: shapeshifting
  topic: keywords
subject: speculative literature
  topic: keywords
creator: Candice Lemon-Scott
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Dr Candice Lemon-Scott (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/55re-yv82

A Guide to Responsible Scaring: What are the Limitations of Horror in Young Adult Fiction?
type: item
description: Through a close reading of recent Young Adult (YA) horror novels – including Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare; Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis; and I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shea – as well as Dan Hunt’s own work-in-progress, this article explores the building blocks of the YA horror genre. It explores how YA horror adapts and challenges traditional genre limitations to suit a younger audience, investigating the boundaries of fear in YA fiction by asking: how scary is too scary? The article argues that hesitations toward writing YA horror fiction stem from a misconception that the genre is bound by restrictive rules, leading to diluted narratives. However, this perception often arises from a lack of research and understanding. To challenge these misconceptions, the article offers a framework for “responsible scaring” in YA horror writing.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: young adult
  topic: keywords
subject: horror
  topic: keywords
subject: creative writing
  topic: keywords
subject: publishing
  topic: keywords
creator: Dan Hunt
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Dan Hunt (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/gpxe-4r95

A Call to Mind: How are MG Authors Challenging the Stigmatisation of Mental Health?
type: item
description: With primary schools experiencing a mental health crisis, there is a rising need for the conversations around mental health disorders (MHD) to become normalised so that children at this age feel seen and heard. I am interested in how these children are being represented in Middle Grade (MG) fiction. How may anthropomorphism be used in MG fiction to defamiliarize MHD to render them less threatening? How may characters who exhibit MHD be drawn in a sensitive way so that the experiences are normalised and to remove stigma? Using five contemporary MG novels, I explore how animal or toy characters with MHD may provide a safe distance between the child and the subject. There is also the suggestion that animal characters allow the child reader to reflect upon the unspoken, primal feelings, which they would otherwise be unable to articulate. I also examine how metaphor may be a useful tool when representing MHD as it provides an image onto which the feelings may be safely externalised and even accepted. I look at how multifaceted characters enable the child reader to view such experiences as normal, and only one aspect of a character arc, thereby giving the child reader hope.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: mental health
  topic: keywords
subject: anthropomorphism
  topic: keywords
subject: stigmatisation
  topic: keywords
subject: taboo
  topic: keywords
creator: Elaine Lambert
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Elaine Lambert (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-05-24
publication date: 2025-05-24
doi: 10.58091/5KPB-SX03

How Do Authors Negotiate Contemporary Notions of Gender and Historical Accuracy When Creating Female Characters in Middle Grade Historical Fiction?
type: item
description: Historical fiction provides an accessible and engaging means for children to understand the wider abstract notion of history. However, this capacity to influence children’s understanding of history means that authors have a particular responsibility to their young audience. There is an obligation to accuracy as well as the challenge of balancing potentially conflicting ideologies from the past and present. This essay considers specifically how notions of gender have been interpreted in children’s historical fiction. I examine various approaches to portraying female characters in historical settings, with reference to four recent Middle Grade historical fiction texts: Frost Hollow Hall by Emma Carroll; Wishing for Tomorrow by Hilary McKay; The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay and The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown by Elizabeth Laird. In my analysis, I identify how successful I believe these strategies have been and how they might influence my own future writing.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: historical fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: gender
  topic: keywords
subject: accuracy
  topic: keywords
subject: female
  topic: keywords
creator: Anna Trusty
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Anna Trusty (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-05-24
publication date: 2025-05-24
doi: 10.58091/4e0m-fw53

Learning Curve: The University-Set Novel Made Palatable, and Appropriate, for Young Adult Readers
type: item
description: From brooding Dark Academia to steamy New Adult, the university setting and the young people inhabiting that space have proven consistently newsworthy. To read the headlines, one might assume that dark, edgy, or boundary-pushing content is the only way the post-high school demographic is being depicted and catered to in current literature. There is, however, a contingent of authors whose work is gentler in its approach, offering readers a softer potential vision of their late teens. This subset of novels proves that the university setting has its place in Young Adult literature, in a way that’s appropriate, relatable, and/or inspiringly aspirational depending on the reader’s current phase of life. That trend is examined in this article, using a trio of standalone novels published in the past decade which primarily focus on teen protagonists’ first year at college or university: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (2013), Loveless by Alice Oseman (2020), and Begin Again by Emma Lord (2023).
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: young adult
  topic: keywords
subject: new adult
  topic: keywords
subject: dark academia
  topic: keywords
subject: university
  topic: keywords
subject: campus novel
  topic: keywords
creator: Caitlin Clements
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Caitlin Clements (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-05-24
publication date: 2025-05-24
doi: 10.58091/VFW2-N326

When the Plot Thickens: Writing the Textured Children’s Novel in an Era of Corporate Taste
type: item
description: Amidst today’s competitive children’s publishing market, craft principles can be difficult to disentangle from well-intentioned tips on how to secure a literary agent or create a marketable book. Agents’ own “corporate taste” (a term coined by scholar Laura B. McGrath) influences what gets written and published, bending children’s literature toward stories with a fast-paced, straightforward, easily pitchable plot. Yet much of what makes a great novel for children lies in everything left out of the pitch – in the textural material that lends a novel not narrative energy but the layered richness of lived experience. This article explores this tension by examining Rebecca Stead’s bestselling, Newbery Medal-winning middle-grade novel When You Reach Me (2009). Gripping, hooky and short, it satisfies key tenets of market-based craft advice yet actually spends over half its pages on subplots. By investigating how this book integrates suspense and quick pacing with the enriching qualities of texture, this article seeks to illuminate techniques writers can use to thicken their stories’ textures and build more impactful novels without falling afoul of industry constraints.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: texture
  topic: keywords
subject: middle-grade (MG) fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: craft of writing
  topic: keywords
subject: publishing industry
  topic: keywords
creator: Noah Weisz
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Noah Weisz (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-05-24
publication date: 2025-05-24
doi: 10.58091/NDYW-CG45

“A Balance Between the Real and the Fictive”: Writing Nuanced Queer Representation in Young Adult Historical Fiction
type: item
description: Historical Young Adult fiction is booming, but there is still a vast disparity in whose stories are being told – or rather, not told – as there remains a lack of queer representation in the genre. This article investigates why this might be the case and makes recommendations for how to write queer characters that strike the fine balance between historical facts and the sensibilities of a modern audience, based on the work of three authors writing in the genre: Mackenzi Lee; Rachael Lippincott and Benjamin Alire Saenz. I identify the ‘queer joy approach’, the ‘romanticising approach’ and ‘chiaroscuro’ as narrative strategies in their works. Finally, the article explores how I have implemented these strategies in my own creative practice.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: LGBTQIA+
  topic: keywords
subject: LGBTQ
  topic: keywords
subject: queer representation
  topic: keywords
subject: historical fiction
  topic: keywords
creator: Julia Dielmann
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Julia Dielmann (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-05-24
publication date: 2025-05-24
doi: 10.58091/x226-kb37

Representing “Otherness”: Animals in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, and Beyond
type: item
description: In this article, I examine the portrayal of animals in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Dodie Smith’s The One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Specifically, I consider the issue of the alterity (or “otherness”) of animals as a category, and the extent to which this is reflected (or not) in these two texts. I then proceed to consider this question in relation to more recent children’s books and my own practice as a writer. This article reflects on and develops, in the context of the specific texts cited above and my personal practice as a writer, the discussion by Mimi Thebo of animal representation in children’s literature in her article ‘Talking Tigers: Concepts of Representational Ethics Applied to Non-Human Characters in Writing Children’s Fiction’.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: animal representation
  topic: keywords
subject: dodie smith
  topic: keywords
subject: lewis carroll
  topic: keywords
subject: animal alterity
  topic: keywords
creator: Piu DasGupta
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Piu DasGupta (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-05-24
publication date: 2025-05-24
doi: 10.58091/CXMY-HD17

Writing Hopeful Climate Fiction for Middle Grade Readers
type: item
description: Many children suffer from climate anxiety. How can children’s fiction help them? Through the lens of three Middle Grade novels – The Last Bear by Hannah Gold; A Cloud Called Bhura by Bijal Vachharajani and Where the World Turns Wild by Nicola Penfold – this essay examines the nature of climate anxiety, asks why addressing it for Middle Grade readers is particularly important, and looks at ways in which authors can write hopeful and helpful climate change stories. Research shows that many children feel adults do not talk to them enough about climate change, which can lead to feelings of helplessness. This is where story-telling can come in. I suggest that fiction writers can draw inspiration from Greta Thunberg, who has empowered children by speaking of their fears and offering them a shining example of how a child can make a difference. Offering hope is vital, both to children’s mental well-being and indeed for the future of the planet. Hope is about imagining a desired future and taking action to bring it about. In hopeful climate fiction children can explore the world’s troubles in a safe way, and take inspiration from the actions and feelings of the protagonists. I discuss the responsibilities of authors of climate-fiction in this context.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: climate
  topic: keywords
subject: anxiety
  topic: keywords
subject: hope
  topic: keywords
subject: responsibility
  topic: keywords
creator: Rupert Barrington
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Rupert Barrington (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-05-24
publication date: 2025-05-24
doi: 10.58091/SC82-EN91

Volume 2 Editors' Letter
type: item
description: The journal editors, Elen Caldecott and Lucy Cuthew, introduce the seven articles that make up this issue of 'Leaf Journal, On Writing for Young People'.
subject: Editors' Letter
  topic: section
subject: editors' letter
  topic: keywords
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
creator: Elen Caldecott
creator: Lucy Cuthew
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Elen Caldecott, Lucy Cuthew (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-05-24
publication date: 2025-05-24
doi: 10.58091/6qbv-j808

The Trickster Figure in Queer YA: A Case Study of Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves
type: item
description: As scholars such as Helena Bassil-Morozow have explored, the trickster character type—with its roots in mythology, folklore, and oral storytelling traditions—has been constantly reinvented and remixed in the context of contemporary literature and pop culture. The themes of liminality, marginality, shape-changing, and questioning authority with a playful and rebellious sense of humour, mean that the trickster may be especially at home in work aimed at adolescent readers, particularly those of marginalised identities. The emerging space of queer Young Adult (YA) literature is thus a vibrant storytelling landscape for trickster characters and trickster tales. This paper explores the queer trickster characteristics of Vanja, the anti-heroine of Margaret Owen’s Little Thieves. Vanja is a young, queer, marginal figure, her character arc concerned with agency and autonomy. She uses shapeshifting magic and clever subterfuge to impersonate nobility and steal from the rich, transgressing the borders of wealth and class, all while offering the reader a critique of the power structures and entitled individuals that support this social divide. Vanja’s liminality, humour, and eventual emergence as an (accidental) folk hero mark her as a queer teenage trickster protagonist and an effective example of the potential in this storytelling space.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
subject: young adult
  topic: keywords
subject: queer fiction
  topic: keywords
subject: trickster
  topic: keywords
subject: queer young adult
  topic: keywords
subject: liminality
  topic: keywords
subject: character archetypes
  topic: keywords
creator: Alex Henderson
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Dr Alex Henderson (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2025-07-03
publication date: 2025-07-03
doi: 10.58091/7akp-4336

The Post-Apocalyptic Space, Character, and Morality in Middle-Grade Children’s Literature
type: item
description: Stories for young readers overwhelmingly aim to educate on what is good and how a person must behave as a moral member of society. The question of how characters may further solidify moral right and wrong in the post-apocalyptic setting of my story The Neverending Sea became a focus for my research. Through this paper, I present: the discoveries made on the importance of children’s spaces in the post-apocalyptic; how characters can present a reader with moral dilemmas from the safety of the page, and perhaps, how they can be used to socialise young readers’ sense of right and wrong.
subject: Conference Proceedings
  topic: section
subject: mortality
  topic: keywords
subject: children's literature
  topic: keywords
subject: post-apocalypse
  topic: keywords
creator: Vlad Marinescu
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Vlad Marinescu (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-15
publication date: 2023-12-15
doi: 10.58091/V1B4-YC85

How to Write Children’s Literature About War and Other Vulnerable, Controversial Topics
type: item
description: Difficult times require expanding the range of topics covered by children's literature. Over the past year and a half, Ukrainian literature has been enriched with many topics of children’s literature, which were not accepted for discussion before February 2022. I am researching the question of how to translate the unspeakable into plain language and protect Ukrainian children through multilingual fairy tales about the war, engaging the concepts of cognitive metaphor, narrative psychology, fairy-tale- and biblio-therapy. The aspect of fairy-tale-therapy (in other words, the option to create a narrative to discuss things thoroughly with a young reader) offers a wide range of possibilities for those who are interested in writing for young people. Writing on such a vulnerable topic, a writer would need to consider a wide range of issues to make their texts non-traumatic. When creating texts as a future tool to relieve stress for the young audience, we must be attentive to the main principles, which I highly recommend are followed by any young/young adult fiction author (I am specifying this particular genre because this is what I am specialising in). Questions arising include: how best to write Ukrainian children’s literature – and texts in general – about the war and other controversial topics? What to expect from the vulnerable matters’ discussion development in the text? Is it better to get rid of all the expectations before writing a book? Or to filter diligently not to traumatise your reader? And will the usual, common metaphors work in the field of the unusual?
subject: Conference Proceedings
  topic: section
subject: young adult
  topic: keywords
subject: children's literature
  topic: keywords
subject: migration
  topic: keywords
subject: war in ukraine
  topic: keywords
subject: narrative psychology
  topic: keywords
subject: generational memory
  topic: keywords
subject: cognitive metaphor
  topic: keywords
subject: how to support and defend children through narratives
  topic: keywords
creator: Viktoriia Medvied
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Viktoriia Medvied (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-15
publication date: 2023-12-15
doi: 10.58091/VCXE-8P60

Well-versed? If Novels in Verse Are So Accessible, Why Don’t We Have More?
type: item
description: In her presentation, Tia Fisher will examine the elements in verse novels which work so well for a hard-to-reach young audience. She will go on to explore some reasons for the format’s currently ‘niche’ status within publishing and suggest ways we might make verse novels as popular with gatekeepers in the UK as they are in the US. With much focus from reading professionals on engagement (it was, for example, the theme of the Youth Libraries Group conference in September 2023), verse novels are an excellent way to entice developing or dormant young readers to pick up a book for pleasure.
subject: Conference Proceedings
  topic: section
subject: verse novel
  topic: keywords
subject: craft
  topic: keywords
subject: engagement
  topic: keywords
creator: Tia Fisher
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Tia Fisher (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-15
publication date: 2023-12-15
doi: 10.58091/CRZM-8B87

Under the Hood of the Verse Novel: A Consideration of Variation in Form and Technique in the Contemporary Verse Novel for Young Adults
type: item
description: The verse novel form is on the rise and holds particular appeal for young people, but there has not been much analysis to date of the technical choices available to verse novelists; technical choices not necessarily available to writers of prose or conventional poetry. As a verse novelist myself, I wanted to understand more about how contemporary US and UK writers experiment with their craft to evoke responses in their readers. In this article, I look broadly at the development of the form and the critical reaction to it, analysing what constitutes a verse novel and why it isn’t just ‘chopped up prose’. I go on to examine five recently-published verse novels from 2018 to 2021 and consider the effects of technical choices made by the authors, and the degree to which they work for the reader.
subject: Scholarly Articles
  topic: section
subject: writing processes
  topic: keywords
subject: novels in verse
  topic: keywords
subject: literary form
  topic: keywords
subject: verse novel
  topic: keywords
subject: narrative verse
  topic: keywords
subject: YA
  topic: keywords
subject: creative writing for young people
  topic: keywords
creator: Tia Fisher
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Tia Fisher (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-15
publication date: 2023-12-15
doi: 10.58091/b030-f729

Learning Craft From Children’s Authors
type: item
description: When researching and writing my first MA Writing for Young People essay, I made two observations: my peers and I were overwhelmed with how to go about it and, through the process, I learned more specific and applicable techniques for the craft of children’s writing than I had from craft manuals. To write my essay, I utilised my knowledge of teaching essay structure to teens. I share the process I took to create my Writing for Young People essay in order to illustrate how a scholar can apply the same steps to their own interests. Steps that I discuss include developing a focus question, reading and researching, collating observations and making conclusions, and outlining, drafting, and polishing. Though some of the steps I offer seem obvious, I collect them to support new scholars in efficiently writing an essay and to support them in unlocking a way to learn from children’s authors. Throughout I model from my own essay, sharing the strategies I learned about using animal companions to develop the protagonist in Middle Grade novels. I end with one example of how I have applied what I learned to my current manuscript.
subject: Conference Proceedings
  topic: section
subject: academia
  topic: keywords
subject: essay
  topic: keywords
subject: character development
  topic: keywords
subject: animal companion
  topic: keywords
creator: Sarah Dyer
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Sarah Dyer (Author) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
date: 2023-12-15
publication date: 2023-12-15
doi: 10.58091/etn8-3525