Guns for Young Readers: Schoolhouse Fiction 1820–2020

• In Event: Reading Between the Lines: Curriculum, History, and Ideology

Abstract

Explores the presence of gun violence in fictional works accessible to young readers in the U.S., readers who in contemporary terminology are considered “tweens,” “teens,” and “young adults.” From the 1820s to 1850s American authors’ first novels with frontier themes emerged; these works, culminating with the dime novel, appealed to adults and younger readers alike. From 1860 to 1960, publishers marketed fiction to a younger readership in an arc that encompassed dime novels, pulp fiction, and comic books as well as middle brow westerns and detective novels. Beginning in the 1960s, fiction appeared in various genres categorized as “Young Adult.” Some of this fiction began to feature guns wielded by disaffected students perpetrating gun homicides in and around the school.

Author

• Jim Carl, Sacred Heart University