Where are you from?: locating the young adult self within and beyond the text

This article explores the interconnections between young adult (YA) fiction and three YA readers' constructions of place within and beyond the text. It employs a qualitative, multiple case study design, and utilizes discussion groups, semi-structured interviews, and the creation of place-journals to interpret some of the ways in which three YA readers, from two contrasting Canadian communities, respond to how place and place-identity are construed within their own lives, and within two YA fiction texts. Drawing on geography theory and reader-response criticism, it offers a critical description of the moment in time when these texts, these readers, and the researcher met as part of a reading transaction, within a particular time and space. I argue that these YA readers are aware of the role of place within their own lives, and that they use these individualized constructions to shape their encounters with these texts.