Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Alleen Pace Nilsen

Critical Essay by Alleen Pace Nilsen

The process of naming characters is a fascinating area of young adult literature. In some of the best books, characters' names have been chosen or devised so carefully that they qualify as poetry. Many of them are phonologically interesting, employing such poetic devices as rhyme, repetition, and rhythm. The communication is often on more than one level with different readers appreciating different connotations and different layers of symbolism. And also like poetry, they are semantically compact in that they communicate a great deal of information within a very few syllables….

Once I began noticing interesting names, they seemed to appear in almost everything I read. But a nagging suspicion began to grow that perhaps I was reading more into the names of characters than their creators ever intended…. As a way of checking my suspicions, I decided to write to an author and ask specifically about the process of creating...
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