LYRE Center Faculty

Rebecca Barnhouse teaches medieval literature in the English department at Youngstown State University. She combines her interests in the medieval era and young adult literature in her scholarly work, for example, in Recasting the Past: The Middle Ages in Young Adult Literature (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook 2000) and The Book of the Knight of the Tower: Manners for Young Medieval Women (Palgrave MacMillan 2006), as well as in articles for The ALAN Review, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Literature and Medicine. She edits The LYRE Review. 

E-mail: rbarnhouse@ysu.edu                                            

 

Mary Lou DiPillo is assistant dean of the Beeghly College of Education at Youngstown State University and one of the authors of a $2.5 million Title II federal grant entitled "Tri-County Partnership for Excellence in Teacher Preparation." Her publications and presentations include investigations of the ways children’s literature develops visual literacy and ways information trade books, especially in the field of mathematics, impact thinking, reading, and writing. 

E-mail: mldipill@cc.ysu.edu

 

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Philip Ginnetti, dean of the Beeghly College of Education at Youngstown State University, is also an associate professor and former chair of the department of Teacher Education. His area of expertise is elementary education with a specialization in reading and language arts, which he teaches at the graduate and undergraduate levels. His work includes publications in strategies for implementing children’s and young adult literature for improving the teaching of writing in the elementary school. He currently serves as president-elect of the Ohio Council of the International Reading Association. 

E-mail: ysureading@aol.com 

 

 

Betty Greenway, a member of the English department at Youngstown State University, teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in children’s literature. She has written A Stranger Shore: A Critical Introduction to the Work of Mollie Hunter (Scarecrow 1998), Twice-Told Children's Tales; The Influence of Childhood Reading on Writers for Adults (Routledge 2005), and Aidan Chambers: Master Literary Choreographer (Scarecrow 2006), edited a special issue of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly on ecology in children’s literature, and published articles on many authors, including Cynthia Voigt, Chris Crutcher, Farley Mowat, and Dylan Thomas, and on many subjects, including teaching poetry to young people, place in children’s literature, modern Robinsonnades, and images of school. 

E-mail: blgreenway@ysu.edu

                                                              

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Martha Pallante, chair of the History department at Youngstown State University, has a special interest in the history of children’s literature. Her Ph.D. dissertation, "Children and their Books: Children’s Religious and Moral Literature in Early New England, 1700-1850," has led to many publications and presentations on children’s and young adult literature, including ways in which children’s literature can be a tool for understanding the past and recent work on self-help or wellness literature for young women in turn-of-the-century America. 

E-mail: fr160101@ysub.ysu.edu 

 

 

 

Susan Russo, a graphic designer, illustrator, and painter, teaches in the Art department at Youngstown State University. She designed the LYRE Center logo and has written or edited and illustrated many books for children, including The Ice Cream Ocean and Other Delectable Poems of the Sea (Lothrop 1984), Joe’s Junk (Holt 1982), and The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky: Night Poems (Lothrop 1979), and she has illustrated The Great Banana Cookbook for Boys and Girls, written by Eva Moore (Clarion 1983), Mrs. Tortino’s Return to the Sun, written by Shirley and Pat Murphy (Lothrop 1980), and Eats: Poems, written by Arnold Adoff (Lothrop 1979). She has spoken at numerous young author’s workshops and has been a visiting children’s book artist in many schools.  

E-mail: scrusso@cc.ysu.edu

 

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Gary Salvner is a professor of English Education and chair of the English Department at Youngstown State University, where he teaches courses in young adult and children’s literature, English methods, and compositions, and he also co-directs the YSU English Festival.  He is the author of Presenting Gary Paulsen (Twayne, 1996) and numerous articles on English teaching and young adult literature.  Dr. Salvner is also co-editor with Virginia Monseau of Reading Their World:  The Young Adult Novel in the Classroom, Second Edition (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook 2000).  A former president of ALAN, he was named an Ohio College English Language Arts Educator of the Year.

E-mail: gsalvner@cc.ysu.edu   

 

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Sharon Stringer is the author of Conflict and Connection: The Psychology of Young Adult Fiction (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook 1997), has published in the ALAN Review, and has presented at NCTE and the ALAN workshop. As a professor of Psychology at Youngstown State University, she teaches courses in adolescent psychology and human development. Her interests include integrating young adult literature with topics in adolescent psychology such as psychological resiliency, morality, identity development, and family relationships. 

E-mail: sastring@cc.ysu.edu

 

 

                                         

Julie Thomas, a member of the Psychology department at Youngstown State University, has as one of her research interests the fostering of resiliency in adolescents through young adult literature. With Sharon Stringer she presented the results of a study, "Journeys Toward Self-Understanding Using Illustrations from Young Adult Literature," at the ALAN workshop and hopes to extend this project to help foster resiliency in emotionally challenged students. 

E-mail: jethomas@cc.ysu.edu