Animals in Adolescent Literature

This is an interesting article titled "The Animal Within: Recognizing the Fullness of Adolescent Selves", which describes how animals are depicted in young adult novels. Many of the parallels made include how we have an "animal" nature, but we need to move past it in order to become adults. It caught my attention because I had read- and loved- some of the books that are discussed in the article. It also addresses an "otherness" which can certainly be applied to animals as well as an adolescent age group.

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v32n2/vogel.pdf