The achievement of adolescent literacy learners has become a significant topic of research and policy. This review of literature links current literacy learning theories, research that addresses the individualized nature of adolescent readers, and the literature delineating adolescent literacy policy. Researchers using naturalistic inquiry have studied adolescent readers from a variety of perspectives; interview-based studies show adolescents having some commonalities in reading preferences. Current pedagogical models include reader response, strategic reading, and critical literacy; each model has benefits and drawbacks for marginalized readers. Adolescent literacy policy fosters the belief that we are in a crisis that calls for intervention. The article concludes with recommendations for policy and research that would better serve marginalized adolescent readers.

Despite a growing body of work that draws attention to the presence of violence in the mass media and its effects on youth, little critical attention has been paid to the role of violence in young adult literature. The authors believe that by bringing violence to the foreground in the study of texts, they can enrich and deepen what these stories offer readers. They suggest that the study of textual representations of violence is an important and underdeveloped aspect of literary analysis. Using a conceptual model, the authors analyzed violence in contemporary young adult fiction on three levels: individual, institutional, and cultural‐structural. They present descriptive analyses of eight novels and offer ideas and resources for engaging students in critical inquiry of the violence portrayed.

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As one of multiple ways to explore the reading process, eye movement miscue analysis is a tool that provides a continuous record of eye fixations and movements over an entire text, and a record of the oral reading of that text and the miscues (observed responses) that readers produce. The authors present profiles of two successful college readers who doubted their reading efficacy. Using data from eye tracking, miscue analysis, and the retelling, the authors invited the readers to examine their assumptions about reading and how they positioned themselves as readers. Data presented were drawn from the readers’ eye movements during the reading of two texts—one an informational text and the other a constructed text with embedded errors—and are discussed in relation to the readers’ perceptions of reader identity and processes. Implications for teachers include strategies for helping readers address common misconceptions about reading and reclaim their role as meaning makers.

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