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Alternating Narratives as Puzzles

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Alternating Narratives in Fiction for Young Readers

Part of the book series: Critical Approaches to Children's Literature ((CRACL))

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Abstract

Nodelman considers a range of ways in which novels with alternating narratives provide young readers with help in figuring out how their various parts fit together: sections labelled with characters names, differing fonts and orthography, contrasting uses of past and present tense and first-person and third-person narration. While describing how these features aid in solving the puzzles these novels provide for their readers, Nodelman also considers how the solutions to those puzzles bring these apparently unusual novels closer to the conventions of mainstream fiction for young readers.

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Nodelman, P. (2017). Alternating Narratives as Puzzles. In: Alternating Narratives in Fiction for Young Readers. Critical Approaches to Children's Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50817-7_2

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