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Professor John Noell Moore

John MarsdenJohn Noell Moore's new book John Marsden: Darkness, Shadow, and Light. A master storyteller, John Marsden is Australia's best known writer for young adults. Marsden first found success with the publication of So Much To Tell You. Since then he has gone on to publish many popular and well-recognized titles, including those in the Tomorrow Series and The Ellie Chronicles. In his books, Marsden explores adolescents caught in a world of opposites, of innocence and guilt, idealism and realism, and joy and despair. Marsden's world view and his faith in adolescents serve as the backdrop for John Noell Moore's critical readings of Marsden's major novels. In John Marsden: Darkness, Shadow, and Light, Moore investigates the full spectrum of Marsden's work, beginning with the author's life as a teacher and writer. Throughout the book, Moore weaves together Marsden's recurring themes, chief among them writing and storytelling as ways of constructing identity in the transition from childhood to adulthood and the ability of young adults to endure hardships and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds. The book is a valuable addition to the current scholarship on young adult literature and will be welcomed by middle and high school English teachers and students alike. 

Dr. Moore has dedicated his book to William and Mary English Professor Emerita Elsa Nettels, whom he describes as the teacher “who opened wide the doors of the House of Fiction and taught me the demands and rewards of literary scholarship.”

Dr. MooreAbout the Author

 

 John Noell Moore, Ph.D., is Professor of Education/Secondary English at the College of William and Mary in Virginia where he teaches pre-service teachers in English Methods, Planning Instruction in English, and Literature for Adolescents. He also supervises student teaching internships and conducts the internship seminar. His research focuses on ways of interpreting young adult literature from multiple theoretical perspectives; most recently he has begun working on the postmodern young adult novel and the challenges of teaching postmodern texts. 

A Virginia secondary school English teacher for almost two decades, he is the author of Interpreting Young Adult Literature: Literary Theory in the Secondary Classroom (Heinemann/ Boynton Cook 1997) and John Marsden: Darkness, Shadow, and Light (Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 2011) as well as book chapters and articles on English studies and English teaching in English Journal, Callaloo, The ALAN Review, Theory into Practice, and The Virginia English Bulletin. He is active in the National Council of Teachers of English and in the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents and the Commission on English Education of that organization.

A former Co-Director of the Southwest Virginia Writing Project at Virginia Tech, he holds an A.B. with Honors in English (William and Mary), an M.A. in Applied Music: Piano Performance (Radford University) and a Ph.D in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in secondary English education (VPISU). He has received awards for excellence in teaching from the English Department at Purdue University. In 2003 he was the recipient of the Alumni Fellowship Award for Excellence in Teaching at The College of William and Mary. In 2004 he received the Instructional Leadership Award from the Virginia Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, and in 2006 he was named The Dorman Family Distinguished Term Associate Professor of Education at William and Mary.

Dr. Moore lives in Williamsburg with his wife Carol, a former high school librarian and Director of the School of Education’s Learning Resource Center.