The environmental crisis is one of the most pressing societal concerns today. Speculative fiction frequently questions current political, legal and cultural attitudes by portraying future scenarios in which some ecological disaster has changed the world order. Scottish children’s author Julie Bertagna has given her contribution to these speculations on the consequences of letting current trends in environmental behaviour continue unchallenged with her young-adult novel Exodus (2002), part of a trilogy continued in 2007 with Zenith and completed in 2011 with Aurora. This paper explores the pedagogical value of young-adult speculative fiction and examines Bertagna’s survival narrative as a questioning of environmental justice, in the light of contemporary theories on young-adult fiction, ecocriticism and human rights.
The Pedagogical Value of Young-Adult Speculative Fiction: Teaching Environmental Justice through Julie Bertagna’s Exodus
Valentina Adami
2019-01-01
Abstract
The environmental crisis is one of the most pressing societal concerns today. Speculative fiction frequently questions current political, legal and cultural attitudes by portraying future scenarios in which some ecological disaster has changed the world order. Scottish children’s author Julie Bertagna has given her contribution to these speculations on the consequences of letting current trends in environmental behaviour continue unchallenged with her young-adult novel Exodus (2002), part of a trilogy continued in 2007 with Zenith and completed in 2011 with Aurora. This paper explores the pedagogical value of young-adult speculative fiction and examines Bertagna’s survival narrative as a questioning of environmental justice, in the light of contemporary theories on young-adult fiction, ecocriticism and human rights.
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