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What Would *Insert YA Heroine Here* Do?

Brenna Clarke Gray

Staff Writer

Part muppet and part college faculty member, Brenna Clarke Gray holds a PhD in Canadian Literature while simultaneously holding two cats named Chaucer and Swift. It's a juggling act. Raised in small-town Ontario, Brenna has since been transported by school to the Atlantic provinces and by work to the Vancouver area, where she now lives with her stylish cyclist/webgeek husband and the aforementioned cats. When not posing by day as a forserious academic, she can be found painting her nails and watching Degrassi (through the critical lens of awesomeness). She posts about graphic narratives at Graphixia, and occasionally she remembers to update her own blog, Not That Kind of Doctor. Blog: Not That Kind of Doctor Twitter: @brennacgray

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Sometimes, when faced with difficult real life situations, I find myself wondering how my favourite young adult heroines would feel and act in a similar context. I mean, the fact is that lots of them don’t really have to deal with these sorts of problems very often, which got my brain a-clickin’. How would our heroines deal with banal, everyday things like an annoying coworker or a website that won’t align properly or a car alarm going off? Or, in the flowcharts that follow, how would they cope with having to pay the rent?

Like, maybe Katniss from Hunger Games?

Or Anne from Anne of Green Gables?

Or Hermione from Harry Potter?

Or even Bella, from Twilight?

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Brenna Clarke Gray holds a PhD in Canadian Literature and teaches in the Vancouver area.  She posts about graphic narratives at Graphixia, and occasionally she remembers to update her own blog, Not That Kind of Doctor. Follow her on Twitter: @mittenstrings