ORIGINAL PAPER Girlhood, Sexual Violence, and Agency in Francesca Lia Block’s ‘‘Wolf’’ Elizabeth Marshall Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract This essay examines the representation of adolescent girlhood, sexual violence and agency in Francesca Lia Block’s contemporary fairy tale collection The Rose and The Beast. Focusing specifically on the tale ‘‘Wolf,’’ the author provides a literary analysis of how Block draws on and reworks traditional Western fairy tale variants to reintroduce repressed material about father–daughter incest and sexual violence within the family. This theoretical analysis is augmented by a discussion of how 25 students enrolled in an undergraduate young adult literature course for pre-service English education students read Block’s ‘‘Wolf.’’ The author concludes that despite Block’s revisionist attempts to attend to the rapacious father figure, evidence from student readings reveals that they interpret ‘‘Wolf’’ in ways that fit broader cultural pedagogies of femininity that position the girl as a victim who must learn to defend her body. The author concludes with a discussion of the possibilities and limitations of how gender, sexual violence, and agency can be represented, read, and taught in a contemporary context amidst conflicting cultural scripts of girlhood vulnerability and empowerment. Keywords Francesca Lia Block Á Girlhood Á Feminist theory Á Teacher education In Francesca Lia Block’s (2000) revised fairy tale collection The Rose and The Beast adolescent heroines attend raves rather than balls, travel through city streets Elizabeth Marshall is an Assistant Professor in the faculty of education at Simon Fraser University, where she teaches courses in children’s and young adult literature. Her work has been published in Children’s Literature Quarterly, The ALAN Review, The Lion and the Unicorn, and Gender and Education. E. Marshall (&) Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC v5a 1s6, Canada e-mail: Beth_Marshall@sfu.ca 123 Children’s Literature in Education DOI 10.1007/s10583-008-9083-7