Choice 评论
Mallan (education, Queensland Univ. of Technology, Australia) offers an engaging look at the nature of gender quandaries in children's fiction, film as well as print. She introduces the ways one can use various critical approaches--including feminist, postfeminist, queer theory, and psychoanalytical--to address a number of topics: e.g., defining beauty, clarifying established sexual characteristics, and furthering understandings of gender relations. By incorporating popular film and children's picture books along with longer fiction, the author draws in a broader audience than she otherwise might. For example, the first chapter analyzes the film Shrek (2001) as a bildungsroman. In other chapters she looks at, for example, Cecily von Zeigesar's You Know You Love Me: A Gossip Girl Novel (2002) in terms of female agency; Scott Westerfeld's Uglies (2005), Stephenie Meyer's The Host (2008), and Ellen Wittlinger's Parrotfish (2007); and the films Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and She's the Man (2006). Joining an ongoing dialogue, this book, according to the author, was strongly influenced by the work of Judith Butler--Undoing Gender (2004), Bodies That Matter (1993), and Gender Trouble (CH, Oct'90, 28-1264). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. T. L. Stowell Adrian College