ENGL 3320 Literature for the Middle Grades

Keywords and phrases for finding literary criticism

By genre or form

• Children’s literature
  Possible keywords: children's books, children's fiction, adolescent literature
• Verse Novels
  Possible keywords: novels in verse, poetic narratives, narrative poetry, free verse, storytelling AND poetry
• Graphic Novels
  Possible keywords: comics, visual storytelling, sequential art, multimodal narratives, illustrated literature, visual literacy

By topic

• Disability and neurodiversity
  Possible keywords: disability representation, neurodiversity, neurodivergent characters, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, inclusive literature, accessibility in literature
• Microaggressions
  Possible keywords: microaggressions, prejudice, racism, bias, discrimination, social identity, stereotypes, privilege
• Empathy
  Possible keywords: empathy, emotional intelligence, social emotional learning, compassion, perspective taking, moral development, caring, emotions in literature

A note on searching for a title or author directly

In many databases and scholarly search engines (like Google Scholar) searching for the title of a work will surface results for book reviews or interviews which are not peer-reviewed. To avoid this problem, combine the title/author with a keyword relevant to your topic.

Examples: "The First Rule of Punk" AND activism, Kwame Alexander AND genre

Create a Search Strategy

The most efficient way to search in a database is to use the words AND, OR, and NOT to define relationships between keywords and phrases. Learning how to use these operators ensure that you will be able to quickly find articles that are most appropriate for your topic.

AND - combines terms and narrows results. The database must find all of the keywords and phrases in an article in order to return results.

OR - identifies alternate terms and expands results. The database will return results with any (or both) of the keywords in the record.

NOT - subtracts results containing the NOT term, narrowing the results. The database will search for articles containing the first time, then remove results that contain the NOT term.

Use "OR" to maximize your search results

Using the boolean operator OR can make searching in the databases quicker and easier, but you have to format the search correctly.

1. Open an advanced search in your chosen database (many databases default to advanced search)
2. Enter your keywords leaving the operator box set to AND
3. Add alternate terms to the appropriate box using OR between each term (you can add as many terms as you'd like
4. Click "Search" and evaluate your results

Look for additional keywords in:

• Abstracts/Summaries even if the article is not relevant to your research, it may provide terms common to the field or other term related to your research.
• Book Indexes are basically keywords lists that help you navigate information in a physical book.
• "Suggested Topics" or "Related Searches" in databases and Google Scholar. Often these can help you rephrase terminology into the "official" database subjects.