 Abstract | Verse novels are new sorts of books for children and adolescents that can be found on Australian bookshop and library shelves, and awards lists. This thesis, 'Lines in space: Australian verse novels for children and young adults (YA)' - in conjunction with 'Copper Coast' locates verse novels as a significantly different genre of writing for the younger-than-adult market. Verse novels feature pared-back prose, set out as for poetry, which also tell a story, or a number of stories, in first- or third-person narratives, from single or multiple points of view. The exegesis argues and the creative product illustrates that child and YA verse novels employ: voice-zones assembled in plot sequence; spare language; white space; and lines shaped into text tiles. The assumption that a verse novel is verse is challenged in this thesis. Verse novelists, like ordinary prose writers, may choose elements of expression traditionally associated with poetry but such features are not essential in verse novels for children and adolescents. What count are the characterisation, voice, and narrative pull, through the lines in space. Using as a methodological research tool texts that have won awards, this exegesis surveys primary, review and critical literature, tracing contemporary beginnings of verse novels for children and adolescents in Australia. Critical research in relation to the creative product provides a conceptual framework that is briefly applied to a variety of contemporary American and Australian exemplars, including a focus on Catherine Bateson's YA verse novel, his name in fire. This thesis identifies a recent local flourishing of junior verse novels. Practice-led research is married with creative praxis in the innovative form of a verse (voice-zone text tile) novel manuscript for teens, 'Copper Coast'. Reflection on the process of research and craft for the manuscript concludes the exegesis.
NB: THE CREATIVE COMPONENT OF THIS THESIS IS EMBARGOED UNTIL MARCH 2017. |
