Every teacher I know wants to recommend books to their students that they will love. Yet, in the back of his or her mind they realize that some of the books they want to recommend might cause a problem for the school board, a parent, an administrator or for the kids themselves. As we consider this issue, we find ourselves moving closer to the issue of censorship. What does it mean to censor a book? Is deciding not to include a book in a unit a form of censorship? When a teacher is sensitive to the norms of a community, is that being reasonable or self censoring? I contest that as teachers we need to build strong rationales for the units we develop. Even though most teachers are moving forward with good intentions, conflicts arise. Occasionally, someone wants to object to a teacher's choice.

When this situation happens, one of the people you want to consult is Jeff Kaplan. Jeff has been thinking and writing about this issue for along time. Banned book week is coming up at the end of the month. It is the perfect time for Jeff to remind us of the variety of resources that are available for teachers who encounter issues with banned books. 

Banned Books Week
http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/​

The Banned Books Week Coalition is a national alliance of diverse organizations, bound by their commitment to increase understanding and awareness of the ‘universal right to read.’ The Coalition is committed to engaging varied literacy communities and inspiring participation in the annual Banned Books Week through social advocacy programming about the problem of book censorship. Launched in 1982, the Coalition continues to sponsor a host of programs designed to highlight the First Amendment and to list the most current and controversial banned books in the United States.

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
http://cbldf.org/​

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the First Amendment rights of those individuals who work in the comics medium industry. Since 1986, the CBLDF has paid for the legal defense of individuals whose Frist Amendment rights were threatened for making, selling and even reading comic books. The CBLDF also assists libraries in challenges to comics and graphic novels by securing letters of support, and access to resources to defend and promote graphic novels when they are under challenge by censors.

People for the American Way
http://www.pfaw.org/​

People for the American Way was founded in 1981 by legendary television and film producer Norman Lear, the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, and a group of business, civic, religious and civil rights leaders who were troubled by the divisive and angry rhetoric of newly minted and politicized televangelists. Dedicated to the promise of America’s freedoms – most notably, freedom of speech and freedom of religion – this organization promotes political causes dedicated to improving the lives of all. This website has an extensive collection of resources involving books that have been and/or are under current attack for troubling language, content and information.

https://www.slj.com/
School Library Journal is the ‘go to’ publication for anyone interested in the latest on publications for children and adolescents. Filled with quality, up-to-date information, interviews, teaching strategies, job opportunities, and of course, book reviews on good books for children and young adults, this premiere award-winning site has for than 60 years kept ahead of the time, informing all who are interested about what is current and real in the world of books for young people and adults alike. Although not a definitive source for finding resources to deal with literary censorship issues, this excellent daily publication continues to enlighten and inform through its multiplicity of webcasts, podcasts, and lively discussion posts. ​

Until next week.

Lesley's work for Dr. Bickmore YA Wednesday and YA literature in general needs no introduction. She has contributed many times. Take a look at the contributor's page and then hit Control F and put in "Lesley" and you will find all of her posts.

We had planned to post this on 9/11 as a remembrance, but we keep hearing that teachers are looking for resources and Lesley has them here. We will repost on this Friday as well.

It was a beautiful day in Philadelphia—and most of the East coast. Blue skies, sunshine, warm temperatures for September 11th. I was preparing my room for my classes that would begin after our first period 8th grade Team meeting when my partner teacher ran in. “Turn on the television.” It was a day we will never forget.
 
No historical event may be as unique and complicated to discuss and teach as the events of September 11, 2001, the day terrorists crashed planes into, and destroyed, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. At the time of this event no child in our present K-12 educational system was yet born, but, in most cases, their parents and educators would have been old enough to have some knowledge of, and even personal experience with, these events, making this a very difficult historic event for many to teach. However, with the devastation and impact of these events on our past, present, and future and as ingrained a part of history these events are, they need to be discussed and understood as much as possible.

Last year I was speaking to a new acquaintance about 9/11. He told me that his father was working in the Towers and did not survive the attack. “My son was 2 years old at the time; he is now 19 and has never learned about the events of that day. It was not taught or even mentioned in his schooling.” When visiting schools to facilitate 9/11 Book Clubs in Grade 5-9 classrooms, I have observed that most students do not recognize the connections between the events of September 11, 2001, and the actions, of our military in the Middle East, where many of these same students’ parents and relatives are serving, as part of the U.S. response to these terrorist attacks.
 
This has been a challenging year; there have been countless complications from the COVID-19 pandemic, some more tragic than others, but all distressing and disappointing. For the last 18 years, the Tribute in Light has marked the anniversary of the events of September 11th. However, the pandemic has forced the tribute’s organizers to cancel this year’s Tribute in Light as well as the reading of victims’ names by family members. But there are ways we can mark this anniversary, honor the victims, and tribute the history of this event.

​One of the most effective ways to learn about any historical event, and the distinctions and effects of that event, is through a novel study—the power of story. The sixteen novels reviewed in this blog each present a different perceptive on these events, whether from the view of an 11-year-old boy waiting for his father’s return from a job that takes him into the Twin Towers, a 16-year-old whose family was torn apart 15 years before when her teenage brother died in  the Towers, a Muslim family facing racism on the days following 9/11, an adolescent coping with the possible physical effects of 9/11 syndrome after being rescued from her day care in the World Trade Center complex, fifth graders learning about events from 15 years before, or survivors from the March 11, 2011 Japanese tsunami visiting NYC to meet with survivors of September 11,2001. The stories are set in in a variety of settings, not only New York City, but Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, Shanksville, Florida, Japan, Pakistan, and Maine. These novels portray challenges, difficult decisions, loss, grief, uncertainty, PTSD, discovery, resilience, and heroism and are written in prose, free verse, and as a play for readers in a range of ages, reading levels, and interests.
 
I have found the most effective way to confront difficult topics while still presenting a variety of perspectives and differentiated reading experiences for our diverse readers is through reading in book clubs. When classes read 5-6 novels about 9/11 where small groups of students are collaboratively reading, they can access differing perspectives to a story and generate important conversations within each book club and between book clubs. A complete unit on this topic for English-Language Arts and Social Studies classes is outlined—with daily focus lessons and student examples—in chapter 10 of Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum.

​The events of 9/11 are challenging to describe and discuss, especially with children who were not yet born, which at this point is most of our student population. I think that is so because, as adults, we each have our memories of that day and Life Before. I was a middle school teacher on the day the Towers fell. I remember standing in my classroom as our team teachers watched the morning news. Thankfully, our students were in their Specials and were not witness to the shock and tears on our faces. I don’t remember much of that day, but we were located in Philadelphia and did not immediately feel the effects. But the events o that day have affected our country and all our citizens as well as our contemporary world. The importance of studying and discussing 9/11 as part of American history is highlighted in Jewell Parker Rhoads novel Towers Falling, set in September, 2016.

Nine Ten: A September 11 Story is another novel effective in introducing young adolescent students to the many events of September 11, 2001. Nora Raleigh Baskin’s novel is set during the days leading up to 9/11—in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Columbus, and Shanksvlle, Pennsylvania, where readers follow four diverse middle-grade students affected by the events of 9/11. Sergio, Naheed, Aimee, and Will first cross paths in the O’Hare Airport on September 9. The four young adolescents are Black, White, Jewish, and Muslim and are collectively surviving loss, guilt, poverty, parental absence, neglectful fathers, bullying, the navigation of peer relationships, as well as the angst of middle school, “…everything felt different, as if you suddenly realized you had been coming to school in your pajamas and you had to figure out a way to hide this fact before anyone else noticed.” (p. 48). In their own ways they are each affected by 9/11, and on September 11, 2002, these four and their families again converge at Ground Zero, each there for different reasons, but this time their paths back together have meaning.
 
There are a multitude of important conversations to be generated by this little novel, a story of Before and After. I was especially grateful that the events and heroes of Shanksville were memorialized. In fact there are many aspects of heroism brought forth in the novel to discuss. But Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story is the story of people and three days in their lives, “Because in the end it was just about people…Because the world changed that day, slowly and then all at once.” (p. 176).

2. Buxbaum, Julie Hope and Other Punch Lines. Delacorte Press, 2019.

​For many people the world is divided into Before and After, the dividing line being September 11, 2001. Such is the case for Abbi Hope Goldstein and Noah Stern.

On her first birthday Abbi was saved by a worker in her World Trade Center complex daycare center. As she is carried out, wearing a crown and holding a red balloon, the South Tower collapsing behind, a photographer takes the picture that has branded her Baby Hope, the symbol of resilience. Abbi spends her childhood and adolescence in relative fame; strangers hug and cry, share their stories with her, frame and hang the photograph in their homes, and news outlets hold “Where is Baby Hope Now” stories.

Noah was a baby in the hospital, fighting for his life, on 9/11 when his father went back to his office in the World Trade Center for his lucky hat, never to return home. He and his mother now live with her new husband and Noah is obsessed with comedy.

At age 15, Abbi is experiencing a suspicious cough, keeping it a secret from her parents and grandmother. Connie, the daycare worker, has recently died from cancer, most likely 9/11 syndrome, and Abbi takes a job as a camp counselor in a nearby town, looking for some anonymity and a chance at a “happily ever after” to the story that began with “Once upon a time” (9/11). Unfortunately, Noah, a fellow counselor, recognizes her and blackmails her into helping him interview the four other people in the iconic Baby Hope picture, convinced that the man in background wearing a Michigan cap is his father and also convinced, since his mother won’t talk about him, that his father chose not to come home after escaping from the Tower.

This is a novel about 9/11, one that presents yet more facets than many other 9/11 novels, such as 9/11 syndrome which is affecting many of those who were at Ground Zero, heroism and sacrifice, survivor guilt, and “[What] happens when the story you tell yourself turns out not to be your story at all.” (280)
​
This is primarily a novel about relationships—shifting relationships with family, friends, ex-friends, strangers, and romantic partners. I absolutely adored these characters—Noah and Abbi especially (and their evolving relationship) and Noah’s BFF Jack, Abbi’s divorced-but-best-friends-and-maybe-more parents, her grandmother who is experiencing the onset of dementia, and even Noah’s stepfather who learns to make jokes. I was sorry when the novel ended, not that the story was unfinished but my relationship with the characters was.

​3. Cerra, Kerry O’Malley. Just a Drop of Water. Sky Pony Press, 2016. (Middle Grades)

​Relationships are built over time, but how much can they withstand? Jake Green and Sameed Madina have always been friends. They have grown up together; they run track together; they play war games together; they have each other backs; they plan to always remain friends “but only till Martians invade the earth.”

But then the events of September 11, 2001, occurred, and Martians did invade the earth, only they looked like Sam and his family—Muslim. Because one of the terrorists had lived in their neighborhood and was a client at the bank where Mr. Madina worked, Sam’s father comes under FBI surveillance, and the neighborhood divides in their support. Not Jake, though. He believes in his friend and his friend’s family, physically fighting the school bully who refers to Sam as a “towelhead” and arguing with his own mother whose own grief keeps her from supporting their neighbors.

When his father is taken into custody, Sam refuses to attend school, abandons his cross-country team, and distances himself from Jake, taking a new interest in the Islam religion. But Jake does not give up, and the boys reconnect to peacefully stop their racist classmates, Bobby and Rigo, from attacking the local mosque. Afterwards, Jake realizes that they both have been affected by 9/11; he has learned that you can be both scared and brave at the same time, but he has also has learned that adversity can be defeated peacefully. And Jake realizes that Sam is now different. “For the first time I see Sam, a Muslim. An American Muslim. But he is still just Sam, no matter what.”

4. Donwerth-Chikamatsu, Annie. Somewhere Among by Annie Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2016. 

​Ema is binational, bicultural, bilingual, and biracial. Some people consider her “half,” and others consider her “double.” Her American mother says she contains “multitudes,” but Ema sometimes feels alone living in Japan somewhere among multitudes of people.
 
When fifth-grader Ema and her mother go to live with Ema’s very traditional Japanese grandparents during a difficult pregnancy, author Annie Donwerth-Chikamatsu’s verse novel takes the reader through six months (June 21, 2001-January 2, 2002) of customs, rituals, and holidays, both Japanese and American. There are challenges, such a choosing a name for the new baby that brings good luck in Japan and that both sets of grandparents can pronounce. Ema celebrates American Independence Day and Japanese Sea Day, and she now views some days, such as August 15 Victory Over Japan Day from diverse perspectives.
 
On September 11, 2001 Ema experiences both two typhoons in her town and the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in America—on television. As the reader traverses the intricacies of two fusing two distinct cultures with Emi and her family, our knowledge of others is doubled

5. Levithan, David. Love is the Higher Law. Random House Children’s Books, 2009.

​“…even if I felt something was wrong, I would never have pictured this. This isn’t even something I’ve feared, because I never knew it was a possibility/” (5) “’We are not supposed to comprehend something like this,’ my mother says to me…. I don’t want to comprehend. Instead, I will try to remember what matters.” (16)
 
The attacks of September 11, 2001, affected our country as a whole, but it is even harder to imagine the effect on those who lived in NYC. Claire, Peter, and Jasper are three teenagers living in NYC on that date. Claire leaves her high school to pick up her brother from his elementary school; Peter has already left school and is at the record store, thinking about his impending date with Jasper; and Jasper is at home alone, his parents visiting their native Korea, before he leaves for college. None of the three are directly affected—none of their parents worked in the World Trade Center, none of their friends or relatives were killed; they were not physically hurt—but the events of this day color the year following. “I want to know why this is so much a part of me.  I want to know why this thing that happened to other people has happened so much to me.” (104)
 
Readers view the day through their alternating perspectives. We view the constructive acts of strangers as Claire observes,  “There are skyscrapers collapsing behind us, and nobody is pushing, nobody is yelling. When people see we’re a school group, they’re careful not to separate us. Stores are not only giving away sneakers, but some are handing out water to people who need it. You’d think they’d take advantage and raise the prices. But no. That’s not what happens.” (14) and Peter reflects,  “And the people I care about, suddenly I care about them a little more, in this existential way.” (82)
 
Even though Peter and Jason’s date does not go well, another ramification of the day, the three become friends, especially Claire and Peter who attend high school together, Jason returning to college. And the year continues, each is a little changed. As Peter observes, “ If you start the day reading the obituaries, you live your day a little differently.” (123)
 
By December Jasper observes that he has finally gone an entire day without thinking of 9/11 but then wonders what that means. Claire feels the weight of the day lighten a little, but “It is still strange to see the skyline. I have never seen an absence that it so physical.” (126)
 
On the anniversary of 9/11 Claire retraces the steps she took on that day, and Peter and Jason finally have a second date. On March 19, 2003, the day of the United States invasion of Iraq, the three reunite, and Claire observes, “And we are so different from who we were on September 10th.  And also different from who we were on the 11th. And the 12th. And yesterday.” (163) Together they have found the “antidote” to the fear and uncertainty; they have each other as they individually navigate the world and remember what matters.

6. Lowitz, Leza. Up from the Sea. Ember, 2016. 

​“The bigger the issue, the smaller you write.”--Richard Price

Instead of focusing on the overwhelming statistics generated by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan—nearly 16,000 deaths and 3,000 people missing—the event becomes even more intense and compelling as author Leza Lowitz relates the story of one town and one boy and the resilience of many.

The story begins on March 11 when Kai, a half Japanese, half American 17-year-old and his teachers and classmates experience the “jolting of the earth,” and as trained, they evacuate, running for their lives, looking for the highest place, as their town is destroyed. Written powerfully in free verse, the reader feels the fury of nature as the water “churns,” “thrashes,” “surges,” “sweeps,” “charges.” Kai ends up in a shelter having lost his mother, his grandparents, and one of his best friends. His father left years before to return to America.

Faced with overwhelming loss and trauma, Kai walks into the ocean but is saved by one of his classmates and convinced to accept the opportunity to go to New York City on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 where he will spend some time with young adults who lost their parents as teens in the 9/11 attacks. At Ground Zero, Fia tells him, “Bravery means being scared and going forward anyway.”

Kai hopes to find his father in NYC but returns to his village to help the young adolescents who lost their families and to rebuild his town. “I want to be/ like that tree/ deep roots/ making it strong/ keeping it/ standing tall.” And it is to his roots Kai returns and stays—“The quake moved the earth/ ten inches/ on its axis./ I guess/I shifted,” too.”

Up from the Sea, well-written as a verse novel (a format that engages many reluctant readers), would serve as an effective continuation to a 9/11 study. Readers should already be aware of the events of 9/11 to understand the connection between Kai and Tom but will comprehend the trauma and loss experienced, and resilience that is required, by anyone who faces adversity.

​7. Maynard, Joyce. The Usual Rules. St. Martin’s Press, 2004. 

​The Usual Rules is an emotional and insightful novel about the effects of the events of September 11th on the families and friends of the victims—those left behind.
​
The reader learns about the close relationship between 13-year-old Wendy and her mother through flashbacks: her mother's divorce, the sporadic visits of her father, her mother's marriage to her "other dad," and the birth of her half-brother. And then her mother goes to work at her job at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001—and does not return. Wendy’s world changes. “Then September happened and the planet she lived on had seemed more like a meteor, spinning and falling” (p. 175).

The reader experiences not only Wendy's (and Josh's and Louie's) loss but the suffering and uncertainty of those left behind. Could her mother be walking around, not remembering who she is? As the family hangs signs, we learn how different this loss was for many people who held out hope for a long time without a sense of closure. And this loss was different because it was experienced by many—an entire country in a way. “Instead of just dealing with your own heart getting ripped into pieces, wherever you looked you knew there were other people dealing with the same thing. You couldn’t even be alone with it” (p. 95).

We see the loss through the eyes and hearts of a daughter, a very young son, and a desperately-in-love husband. Wendy leaves Brooklyn and goes to her biological father’s in California. Among strangers, she re-invents her life. As those she meets help fill the hole in her life, she fills the hole in theirs. Books also help her to heal.

Even though there are quite a few characters in this novel, but they all are well-developed, and I found myself becoming involved in all their lives, not only Wendy, Josh, and Louie and even his father Garrett, but Wendy’s new friends—Carolyn, Alan, Todd, Violet… On some level they all have experienced trauma and loss, and within these relationships, Wendy is able to heal and return to rebuild her family.

Although I did not want this novel to end and to leave these characters, this well-written novel taught me more about the effects of September 11, loss, and the importance of relationships and added a new perspective to my collection of 9/11 novels.

8. Mills, Wendy. All We Have Left.  Bloomsbury, 2016. 

​September 11. A day that changed all our lives in some way. As we see in Nine, Ten: A September 21 Story, there clearly was a Before and After. But there also was a Then or That Day and an After.

All We Have Left was so compelling that I read from dawn to dusk and did not put the book down until I finished. The novel intertwines two stories, that of 18-year-old Travis and sixteen-year-old Alia who were in the Towers as they fell and the story of Travis’ sister, Jesse, who, fifteen years later, is part of a dysfunctional family whose lives are still overwhelmingly affected by That Day and Travis’ death.

Seventeen year old Jesse is not sure who she is, who she should be, who she should hate, and who she can love. Her life is overshadowed by 9/11, her mother’s mourning, and her father’s hate.

But both Alia in 2001, and Jesse in 2016, learn that “Faith and strength aren’t something that you wear like some sort of costume; they come from inside you” (p.329) as does love. And Jesse realizes that she has to work on “treasuring right here, right now, because that’s important.” As one character says but all the characters learn, “You can fill that void inside you with anger, or you can fill it with the love for the ones who remain beside you, with hope for the future.”

What I appreciated about this novel is that is shows yet another side of how 9/11 affected people, especially adolescents, those adolescents who populate American schools everywhere. I strongly feel that students should not only be learning about the events and effects of 9/11, but that, through novels, readers learn more about how events affect people and especially children their ages.

​9. Padian, Maria. Out of Nowhere. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2013. 

Another novel as a complement to a 9/11 Novel Study would be Maria Padian’s novel about the ways life in an idyllic small Maine town quickly gets turned upside down after the events of 9/11.
 
“Things get a little more complicated when you know somebody’s story.…It’s hard to fear someone, or be cruel to them, when you know their story.”

The majority of the 21.3 million refugees worldwide in 2016 were from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia. The United States resettled 84,994 refugees. Together with immigrants, refugee children make up one in five children in the U.S. More than half the Syrian refugees who were resettled in the U.S. between October 2010 and November 2015 are under the age of 20.
.
In Out of Nowhere by Maria Padian, narrator Tom Bouchard is a high school senior. He is a soccer player, top of his class academically, and well-liked. He lives in Maine in a town that has become a secondary migration location for Somali refugees. These Somali students are trying to navigate high school without many benefits, including the English language. They face hostility from many of their fellow classmates and the townspeople, including the mayor; one teacher, at the request of students, permits only English to be spoken in her classroom. When four Somali boys join the soccer team, turning it into a winning team, and when he is forced to complete volunteer hours at the K Street Center where he tutors a young Somali boy and works with a female Somali classmate, Tom learns at least a part of their stories. Tom fights bigotry, especially that of his girlfriend—now ex-girlfriend, but he still doesn’t comprehend the complexity of the beliefs, customs, and traditions of his new friends, and his actions have negative consequences for all involved. While trying to defend the truth, Tom learns a valuable lesson, “Truth is a difficult word. One person’s truth is another person’s falsehood. People believe what appears to be true and what they feel is true.”

10. Polisner, Gae. The Memory of Things. St. Martin’s Griffin, 2016. 

​The first 9/11 novel I read, The Memory of Things is lovely story about the effects of the events of 9/11. Another reason we read is to understand events we have not experienced and the effect of those events on others who may be like ourselves. After witnessing the fall of the first Twin Towers on 9-11 and evacuating his school, teenager Kyle Donahue, a student at Stuyvesant High School, discovers a girl who is covered in ash on the Brooklyn Bridge; she has no memory of who she is. The son of a detective, he takes her home to help her rediscover who she is, why she was where she was, what she was doing there, and her connection to the events.
 
Author Gae Polisner wrote The Memory of Things in alternating narratives—Kyle's in prose, the girl writes in free verse—the two characters sharing their stories and perspectives, introducing adolescent readers, many of whom had were not alive during 9/11, to the effects of this tragedy in their own ways.

11. Rhodes, Jewell Parker. Towers Falling.  Little, Brown and Company, 2016.  

​I was a middle-school teacher in 2001. It was challenging to know how to discuss the events of 9/11 as we lived through them. How is a teacher to meaningfully discuss this momentous event with students who were not even born in 2001? Towers Falling is a thoughtful, provocative, well-written, albeit emotional, novel about this topic written sensitively and appropriately for readers as young as Grade 4, an ideal novel for middle grades Social Studies classes as it focuses on not only the history of 9/11 and its place in American history but the ever-widening circles of relationships among, and connections between, Americans beginning with families, friends, schools, communities, cities, states, countries.
 
The 5th grade characters explore “What does it mean to be an American?” as well as why history is relevant, alive, and, especially, personal as three students—one Black, one White, one Muslim—explore the effects of the events of 9/11 on each of their families. Déja’s “journey of discovery” about the falling of the Towers helps her father work through his connection to the event and his resulting PTSD.

12. Rogers, Tom. Eleven. Alto Nido Press, 2014.  

“After today, everything’s changed.”
“Sometimes when a terrible thing happens, it can make a beautiful thing seem even more precious.”

Eleven is the story of Alex who is turning 11 on September 11, 2001. I was concerned that the character would be too young for this topic. I also thought that, the character age’s implied that the novel wouldn’t contain the complexity the topic deserves. but, boy, was I wrong! I was hooked with the complexity of the first 2-page chapter. I wasn’t sure what was happening in this introductory chapter, but it was not a feeling of confusion as much as “It could be this; no, it could be this…” and inference and interpretation, even visualization.

I also forgot that New York City kids grow up faster, taking public transportation throughout the city, but more importantly, I forgot that when you need or expect a young adolescent to rise to the occasion, he will.

Alex loves airplanes and dogs—and he doesn’t realize it, but he loves his little sister Nunu who is relegated to her side of the bedroom they share by a black and yellow “flight line” down the middle of the room. And he loves his father, even though Alex told him, “I hate you,” the night before 9/11. When the Towers fall, Alex rises to the occasion, taking care of his little sister and an abandoned dog, making the sacrifice to return the dog he has always wanted to his owners when the vet finds a chip, facing bullies, making “deals” in the hopes these deals and good works will offset what he said to his father and ascertain his return from the Towers, and comforting Mac, a lonely man who is awaiting his only son’s return from the Towers.

In Eleven author Tom Rogers builds a character who is authentic, a kid who events serve to turn into a young man. Alex’s mother had said to him, “I need you to be grown up today” and, even though he was focusing on his misdeeds of the day, he did. “I’m proud of you, young man…. Young Man. Alex liked how that sounded.”

This book is not graphic but does not skirt the events. Readers hear the news announcement about the four airplanes and, more chilling, a description of an empty hospital—“There were no gurneys rolling through to the ER, no sick and wounded in pain. There wasn’t a patient in sight. And he knew then that none would be coming.” A powerful examination of the events of 9/11 and how they affected ordinary people—and one boy’s birthday.

13. Stine, Catherine. Refugees. Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2005. 

​Refugees adds another dimension to the 9/11 novels.

Dawn is a foster teen who runs away to New York City and becomes affected by the events of 9/11. As she plays her flute on the streets near Ground Zero to earn money for food, she is approached by families of victims who ask her to play for them and the memories of their loved ones. As Dawn comes to believe this is her mission, she teaches herself music she feels appropriate for those of many cultures and stages of life. In doing so, she opens up to strangers and new friends, something she couldn't do with her foster mother.

Johar is an Afghani teenager, weaver, and poet. His father is killed by the Taliban, his mother is killed by a land mine, his older brother joins the Taliban, and his aunt is missing, leaving Johar to care for his three-year-old cousin. He and his cousin flee to a refugee camp in Pakistan where he works for the Red Cross doctor, Dawn's foster mother, another person who must learn to show love.

Dawn and Johar connect through phone calls and emails, and as they all work toward forming a family—one that spans the globe—the reader learns how war, the U.S. involvement, and the events of 9/11 affected those in many countries. This would be a book I would recommend for proficient readers with an interest in war or history.

P.S. After I read this book and posted my original Goodreads review, I was listening to a discussion about the days following 9/11 in the Middle East on NPR and found that I could actually follow it; therefore, I realize that I learned more than I thought from this novel.

14. Tarshis, Lauren. I Survived the Attacks of September 11, 2001. Scholastic Inc., 2012.

​“A bright blue sky stretched over New York City.” That is what many of us who were alive on September 21, 2001, remember—the cloudless blue sky of northeastern United States—the contrast between the perfect day and the day which has changed our world.
 
As the son of a firefighter, Lucas was aware of the effects of danger and disasters. His father had been severely injured in a warehouse fire and was still not himself (“It turned him quiet.”). It had been a while since they had worked together on the firetruck model in the basement. But it was another tragedy that brought them back together as a family.
 
Lucas had sneaked into NYC that September 11 morning to ask his uncle to intercede on his behalf. After three concussions in two years of football, his parents and doctor were taking him off the team, and Lucas loved being on a team, a team of two with his father, his dad and uncle’s Ladder 177 firehouse, and especially his football team. Lucas was near Ground Zero when the planes hit the Towers, and when his father went looking for him, they were able to make it safely back to the fire station, helping others along the way.
 
Readers view the attacks of 9/11 up close and personal through Lucas’ eyes; they experience his loss, the heroism of the firefighters, and the resilience of his father. We feel the dust of the falling Towers, see the sky fogged with dust and ashes. “It wasn’t like regular dust. Some of the grains were jagged—bits of ground glass.… The dust, Lucas realized. That was the tower. It was practically all that was left.”
 
The story ends on a realistic but positive note with Lucas, not a player, but still a valued member of the football team.  “Nothing would ever be the same again.” But his father told him, as time passed, it would get, not easy, but easier.
 
This was the first book in Tarshis’ I Survived series that I have read, and I was impressed with the writing, development of the main character, and the complexity of ideas presented in such a short text. This novel could be employed for MG or YA readers who are less proficient or more reluctant readers; English Language Learners who may not be ready for a longer or more complicated text; students who are short on time through absences, trips, or other obligations or who joined the class during the unit; or as a quick whole-class read for background before students break into book clubs to read one of the other 9/11 novels.

15. Thoms, Annie, ed. With Their Eyes: September 11th: The View from a High School at Ground Zero. HarperTempest, 2002.

​“Journalism itself is, as we know, history’s first draft.” (xiii)

With Their Eyes was written from not only a unique perspective—those who watched the attack on the World Trade Center and the fall of the towers from their vantage point at Stuyvesant High School, a mere four blocks from Ground Zero, but in a unique format. Inspired by the work of Anna Deavere Smith whose work combines interviews of subjects with performance to interpret their words, English teacher Annie Thoms led one student director, two student producers, and ten student cast members in the creation—the writing and performance—of this play. 
 
The students interviewed members of the Stuyvesant High study body, faculty, administration, and staff and turned their stories of the historic day and the days that followed into poem-monologues. They transcribed and edited these interviews, keeping close to the interviewees’ words and speech patterns because “each individual has a particular story to tell and the story is more than words: the story is its rhythms and its breaths.” (xiv) They next rehearsed the monologues, each actor playing a variety of roles. Although cast members were chosen from all four grades and to represent the school’s diversity, actors did not necessarily match the culture of their interviewees.
 
They next planned the order of the stories to speak to each other, “paint a picture of anger and panic, of hope and strength, of humor and resilience” (7), rehearsed, and presented two performances in February 2002.
 
With Their Eyes presents the stories of those affected by the events of 9/11 in diverse ways. It shares the stories of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, special education students, an English teacher, a Social Studies teacher, the School Safety Agent, the Building Coordinator, a dining hall worker, a custodian, an assistant principal, and more, some male, some female, some named, others remain anonymous. Written as a play, readers are given a description of each character. Read and performed as a play, readers will experience the effect of Nine Eleven on others, actual people who lived that day and persisted in those days that followed, sharing their big moments and little thoughts.
 
“the air felt on the outside like something that you might smell at a,
or feel at a barbecue,
but it didn’t, it…it hurt you.
It hurt your windpipe.
I could feel like, things collecting on my esophagus or on my lungs,
and I don’t think that is something that I will ever forget.” (44)
--------
“and you know
what an odd thing this is
a peculiar little odd thing
just a little quirk, just
an odd thing, but, ah, the day before
on Monday evening I had taken the time to shine my shoes.
‘cause it’s kind of weird I took the time to shine my shoes
and I did a good job, right,
and then Tuesday morning
it was a beautiful sunny day
you know
and as I was dusting myself off
from the debris of the north tower
I—I shook my clothes off and then I looked down
at my shoes and my shoes were a whole ‘nother color
they were completely covered
and I thought to myself
‘I just shined them yesterday’…” (102)
--------
And the pregnant English teacher who said,
 
“…during that time of feeling afraid I felt like I was
crazy to be in New York…
and I had lots of conversations with my friends about
whether or not we would…
we would consider, you know, just completely changing our
lives and leaving New York
So far I don’t know anyone who has done that.
But do I plan to raise my child in New York? Yes.” (90)
 
You know, I really believe in healing
And I believe that, the city will
um… be
healed.
I think you have to believe that.” (93)
 
With Their Eyes was written with the thoughts and pens of a school community.

16. Walters, Eric. We All Fall Down. Penguin Random House Canada, 2006.

​“The sky was so blue, without the trace of a single cloud, that it looked like a postcard. It felt more like a summer day than a September day. It was a nice day not to be in school. Then again, being in my father’s office wouldn’t be that much different or better. (36)
 
The day was September 11, 2001, a teacher meeting day during which students at Will’s high school were to shadow their parents at their workplaces. Ninth-grader William’s father John worked in international trade in the World Trade Center.
 
Upon arrival, father and son went to the 107th floor Observation Deck for a quick tour and history of the Center and view of the city. “Maybe my father was right and the World Trade Center and all the money that passed through here each day really did represent the United States.” (42)
 
At 8:46, shortly after arriving at John’s office on the 85th floor of the South Tower, they felt the force of an explosion. And as he looked out the window Will saw a gaping hole in the North Tower, billowing smoke, thousands of pieces of paper—some on fire—and, before he could look away, he was horrified to notice a man and woman jumping from windows of the building.
 
Will’s father, as acting head of his office and fire warden for the floor, demanded that his staff and other businesses on the floor close and evacuate for the day. But at 9:03, just before John and Will were able to leave, the second plane hit the South Tower.
 
Readers follow the father and son as they make the harrowing journey down 85 floors through heat and smoke, formulating split-second decisions and stopping to rescue and carry an injured woman, only to experience the collapse of the building as they reach the lobby.
 
A quick but dramatic read, Eric Walters’ novel lets readers experience a close-up account of the day and the panic and fear and heroism of ordinary people—John and Will, the men carrying a man in a wheelchair, the firemen and police—as Will discovers another side of his father and John realizes how much time he has devoted to his job rather than to his family.
 
The title derives from the children’s rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie,” a song that is actually about the Black Death during the Dark Ages. Will learns this in history class on the previous school day, a foreshadowing of events to occur. 

​Walters, Eric. United We Stand. Penguin Random House Canada, 2006.

​The sequel to We All Fall Down  begins on September 12, 2001 when Will’s best friend’s father, a firefighter at Ground Zero, last seen as he climbed the steps of the North Tower, is missing.

 
A middle school and high school teacher for twenty years, Lesley Roessing was the Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Georgia Southern University (formerly Armstrong State University) where she was also a Senior Lecturer in the College of Education. In 2018-19 she served as a Literacy Consultant with a K-8 school. Lesley served as past editor of Connections, the award-winning journal of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. As a columnist for AMLE Magazine, she shared before, during, and after-reading response strategies across the curriculum through ten “Writing to Learn” columns. She now works independently, writing, providing professional development in literacy to schools, and visiting classrooms to facilitate reading and writing lessons. She can be contacted at lesleyroessing@gmail.com or through Facebook Messenger.
 
Lesley is the author of

• Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core 
• Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed. The Sentences They Saved 
• No More “Us” & “Them: Classroom Lessons and Activities to Promote Peer Respect 
• The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension
• Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum
• and has contributed chapters to
  • Young Adult Literature in a Digital World: Textual Engagement though Visual Literacy
  • Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum
  • Story Frames for Teaching Literacy: Enhancing Student Learning through the Power of Storytelling (in press)

Until next week.

In the new era of teaching during COVID19, many teachers might find it even more exhausting to be in front of students all of the time. I know I find myself doing a lot more preparation to be in a Zoom classroom. 

I want to help. I am happy to visit your in person or virtual classroom as a guest expert on YA literature (Free through the rest of the year.). I can Zoom in for a discussion/lecture of an author, a book award, a genre—verse novels, historical fiction, nonfiction, or I can book talk a couple of classic YA books or voice my opinion of a few new releases. Contact me through a comment on the blog, send me a private message through FACEBOOK, or send me note in my UNLV email.

​Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday began as a way to report on a summer summit on the research and teaching of YA literature that I hosted at LSU in 2014. After that report, I started writing nearly every week and started recruiting others to share their ideas about researching and teaching YA literature. I learned more than anyone else.
​
A year later and after another Summit at LSU, I moved to UNLV. The Summit took a hiatus as I learned my way around a new university and made contacts throughout Las Vegas. In the meantime, I kept writing and recruiting contributors for the blog. I sent our more annoying emails and learned more about websites and about how to use social media. For the last three years the blog has averaged more than a 250,000 unique visits and many more page views. Thank you.

A few years in, I realized that I needed to archive what I was doing and what the contributors were offering. So, I established new sections to enhance the blog. Over the winter break between 2016 and 2017 I started a new feature: Dr. Bickmore’s Weekend Picks. Since January 2017, I have been posting a book I think that adolescents will like every Friday. At first, just a selfie with the book, but that didn’t seem like quite enough. I began to add a brief annotation. After a year, I realized that I needed new perspectives. I tend to drift toward older, realistic YA fiction that focuses on Race, Class, and Gender. I began asking others to take a month. That started with Sarah Donovan, moved to Gretchen Rumhor and, then, I recruited Lesley Roessing. All three of these woman have profoundly influenced how I think about YA literature. They have unique experiences, ideas, and expertise.  
​
Others have also contributed to the weekend picks: Jenny Paulsen, Jon Ostenson, Shanetia Clark, Stephanie Toliver, Tiye Cort, Georgia McBride, Nancy Johnson, Shelly Shaffer, Morgan Jackson, Rob Bittner, and Katie Sluiter. There are few more folks waiting in the wings for their turn.  If you want to take on a month, send me a note.

I have also used blog as a place to communicate with my YA literature classes, archive the Summits as they continued at UNLV, and as a place to look at my research interests -- the National Book Award and Music and YA (both need more work).​
​
If you teach a YA course, I think you will find one or more of these sections useful, especially the contributions of others. If you are classroom teacher, I think you might find the blog posts an interesting way for you to think about how you might use YA in the classroom. In addition, I think that the Weekend Picks can be a convenient place for your students to browse for new reading options. Librarians can help teachers organize and sort information quickly if they are familiar with the blog. Finally, as a parent the weekend picks can help you see current trends and established YA novels that are grabbing the interest of scholars and teachers that work with YA literature all of the time.

Until next week.

I have known Kia from the time I was a graduate student and attended a CEE (now Elate) summer conference in 2005. She is one of the most generous people in English Education. I meet Diane three years ago as she applied to present at the first UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of YA Literature in 2018. She causally mentioned that she knew Kia's work. Then, Kia, who was also planning to attend, commented on Diane's work. At the Summit, they meet and became fast friends and have been doing work together ever since. This summer that presented together at the 2020 Summit.  In this post they discuss their presentation on one of my favorite topics, the retelling of Classics in YA fiction.

Last week's post by Ashley Boyd and Janine Darragh hit at exactly the right time for me. I was getting ready to start a new semester and was going to teach my two classes remotely. For us "remotely" means live, synchronous class meetings through a Zoom format. The fact that we are holding school at a university at all is both an act of politics and an act of capitalism. Universities need the tuition money in order to keep the doors open as they receive less and less of their funding from state resources and more and more from, grants, endowment, and other sources.

I think it is wrong when we pretend that we are neutral actors in the classroom. We are not. What we teach, who we call on, or who we allow to maintain the conversational floor are all micro, and perhaps in some cases, macro political acts.

My current YA syllabus (see link) is political and an attempt to be a more inclusive teacher of diverse books; books that more closely align with the students who are in my classroom. It has been engaging as I have spent a bulk of the summer intentionally reading more diverse books and expanding my range.

I have also spent the month of August look back at past contributions from guest contributors. I have been ignoring my own and, frankly, I tend to sing one note a bit too often.  However, for the rest of this post I am going to link to a few of my posts and the post of others that have been overtly political and perhaps with a call to action is one way or another. 

The first post I look back to is a reaction I had to a statement by Secretary of State DeVos. 
A Diverse Reading List for Betsy DeVos
​I still think she is tone deaf to the needs of diverse students in every possible way. For example, school choice means nothing if students do not have the means to get themselves to get to that school. What if the school of choice is full? What about this attend to the supposed waste in education, but fully fund education. 

​I think the books I suggest are good starting point.

My second post is my brief review of one of the most important works of YA nonfiction in the last several years.
Blood Brother: An introduction to Jonathan Daniels 
​I can't say enough about this beautiful and tragic work. Rich and Sandra Neil Wallace do a remarkable job of illustrating the power of being and ally and the reminder that it is not without a cost.

I have written frequently about gun violence in a variety of ways. On June, 15, 2016 I wrote directly in response to the Pulse night club shooting.
Say His Name!
 I return frequently to some version of Janelle Monae's song "Hell You Talmbout."  This post and a few other moved me to collaborate with Shelly Shaffer and Gretchen Rumohr in the production of an edited, and yes, political book, Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Arts Classroom. What you don't have it yet? Make sure your school library has a copy or two. As you explore this book you will find an abundance of great classroom suggestions.

Rob is a colleague that I just don't see often enough.  Every conversation I have had with him has left me already looking forward to the next one. In January of 2016, Rob responded to the current political climate and pointed to some YA books you might consider.
Ugh! The No More Political Talk Except for this Last Blog about YAL & Politics & Activism
​In the course of this commentary he provides a wealth of book--fiction and nonfiction that you might consider sharing with your students.

Alice Hays is another one of those wonderful ASU graduates who leave Tempe, Arizona and enacts change where she is.  Alice has been talking about YA literature  and Social Activism as long as I have known her. 
Fiction to Action: YA Literature to Inspire Social Activism by Dr. Alice Hays
Her post is a perfect companion to last week's post and fits in this group for sure.

If I am not mistaken, Jennifer is primarily a social studies teacher, but a huge advocate for YA Literature. She and I have guard many doorways at ALAN Workshops over the years. 
Imagining the Past & Envisioning the Present through Young Adult Literature
​She can surely provide you with a wealth of resources if you want to bridge the ELA and the SS classrooms and curricula. I will be forever grateful that she introduced me to Candace Fleming. 

​

How do we think critically about political events? How do we understand the media coverage--left, right, and center? How do we respond? Gretchen is one of most calming influences in my life, but that doesn't mean she isn't without an edge.
Teaching the Angry--or Peaceful--Mob with YA Literature by Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil
Looking back at this post seem especially important since it was written before the current political wave of social unrest and protest and the political convention-or was this even the forerunner and foreshadowing moment of tensions and misunderstanding to come.

I gave a shout out to the products from ASU, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention Susan Groenke and her students at the University of Tennessee. One of those is Arrianna. 
Books as Refuge: Turning to YAL During Times of Uncertainty by Arianna Drossopoulos
​This is another post that shouts out to be included in this collection.

Do we forget? Do we cover up? Do we just ignore and pretend? I recently meet a white woman in her 50s who grew up in Tulsa, OK. She explained to me that she knew absolutely nothing about the Tulsa Race Massacre (Riots?) until the Watchman series on HBO arrived. 
Dreamland Burning: A Charge to Make Sense of the Present by Interrogating Our Past by Ashley D. Black
Ashley post on Dreamland Burning is a great introduction to the even and how YA fiction addresses the time period. One might ask "Is it even possible to get an accurate, unbiased report of any unsettling event?" I hope so, but it probably takes more time and patience that we often allow ourselves before we spout an opinion.

In light of the anniversary of 100 years of women's suffrage in the United States, I can't skip this one. 
Herstory YA Literature to read together during Women's History Month by Deborah Van Duinen
I think we need to constantly remind ourselves about the level of inequity that still exists between men and women--in our work places, in the number of acts of micro aggression that a women will experience compared to men, and how much of the work within most families that women are simply expected to do automatically.

The last one for this post (There are more browse around the contributor's page.) is by Morgan Jackson a local Las Vegas teacher. I can't believe that it took us so long to meet. Morgan has jump right into the local and national YA community as soon has she was made aware of the existence of ALAN and other organizations.
YA Literature as Protest by Morgan Jackson
​Are you wondering where to start? Have all of these posts troubled how you think about literature and literature instruction in the classroom? If so, you are ready for Morgan's post. If you are still wondering and pondering if classrooms are political, well you need Morgan's post.

Until next week.

Many of us who work at universities in teacher preparation programs are wondering if we have been doing enough to promote social justice ideas. The recent events have, perhaps, caused us to think about the inequality of access to health care. The ongoing social unrest helpfully forces us to look inward at our own racist actions and beliefs. How can we do better? How can we be better? Two literacy educators who help me think about this work are Ashley Boyd and Janine Darragh. I am glad they offered to post for the blog.

If you’re reading this blog post, most likely, you, like us, believe wholeheartedly in the potential of young adult literature to change lives. We have heard such testimonies from adolescent readers, and have had, on occasion, the same experiences ourselves. As we work with young people, preservice, and in-service teachers in the field of young adult literature, we are further convinced that these books we love have the capacity to not only impact readers on an individual level, but also to alert students to the potential they have to enact change in their communities and the world. 

​YAL tackles topics such as racism, heternormativity, poverty, and indigenous rights, not only thereby reflecting the lived experiences of students who are marginalized by systems of oppression, but also assisting readers who may have less knowledge of particular areas. Through reading, students can grow in their understanding and empathy, and potentially be inspired to take action.
 
In 2009, Steven Wolk connected YAL’s reflection of social issues to its potential to enhance readers’ democratic sensibilities.  He avowed “teaching for social responsibility with good books does far more than encourage civic participation; it redefines the purpose of school and empowers all of us—students, teachers, administrators, parents—to be better people and live more fulfilling lives” (p. 672).  His notion extends civic learning from the social studies classroom and into the English Language Arts classroom, employing books as a means to help students develop critical literacies and to unpack the world around them.  This work is crucial, especially in the contemporary moment, when democratic participation is key to creating change and addressing the multitude of inequities plaguing our society in every state across the nation as well as around the world.

We, of course, agree with Wolk, though we continually found ourselves wondering if, perhaps, there was a way to extend his work. How, we wondered, can we provide opportunities for students that build on their learning of social issues through young adult literature, opportunities that go beyond discussion and reflection and allow them to act?  This question has motivated our work as English teacher educators, researchers, and collaborators over the past four years, and we have engaged in these multiple contexts to develop and implement a process built around young adult literature that helps readers of various levels undertake social action projects. 
 
When engaging in social action projects, students determine a contemporary problem that exists in their community (local, national, or global), design steps to address it, and implement their action.  Our model, which we call COAR, includes four explicit steps:  Contextualize, Organize, Act, and Reflect (Boyd, 2017; Boyd & Darragh, 2019).  We do not conceptualize COAR as a stringent framework but rather a way to guide students through the process smoothly and with attention to detail. 
 
In the first step, contextualize, students determine a social problem rooted in their understanding from their reading.  Through trial and error, we have realized the importance of specifically narrowing from issue to problem.  For example, one group of students with whom we have worked limited their topic from ‘racism’ to ‘the stereotyping of Black men’- a topic inspired by their reading All American Boys (Reynolds & Kiely, 2015). We have learned that for students to design a project with tangible actions and results, this initial move of contextualizing and narrowing is key.  If students attempt to tackle topics that are too broad, they tend to feel overwhelmed and at a loss for what to do. Additionally, as part of this phase, it is important for students to gather information on their topic of interest. We suggest students complete extensive background research on the problem they name as well as posit why and how this problem is connected to systems of power. 
 
Next, students determine their action related to the problem they identified and organize for it.  In this step it is crucial that students contact the correct individuals needed to participate or to provide guidance for their actions.  If they were to propose a campus march to support the #BlackLivesMatter movement, for example, they would need to decide how to spread the word, what route the march would take, what permissions must be garnered, and who would speak. In the third step, students perform their planned action and collect evidence, such as images and artifacts, to document the implementation.  Finally, they reflect on the process, noting successes and challenges, and plan for next steps.  The reflection and next steps portion is key so that students can begin to view change as ongoing and realize that social action should not stop at the conclusion of one event.  

​Between the two of us, we have found success using COAR in middle school, high school, and university classrooms.  For example, in one middle school, students read All American Boys, a book about an incident of police brutality and the aftermath in the local community. One middle school reader shared that this book allowed them “to see the huge problem we have with racism and how it affects everyone.”  They applied their understandings of racism, police brutality, and white privilege to conduct a number of social action projects. For example, the whole class crafted graffiti art in the school courtyard to share messages they learned from the book and felt needed more attention.  One small group composed a rap about racial equity and shared it with the local school resource officer, and another group created anti-stereotype posters and hung them around the school (Boyd & Miller, 2019).  

​In the university classroom, we have challenged students in our own Young Adult Literature courses to complete social action projects with the members of their college campuses as their audience.  After reading Ruta Sepeteys Between Shades of Gray (2012), a piece of historical fiction that traces a young Polish girl’s journey to survive work camps during the Stalin era, readers undertook a project to raise awareness of refugees’ experiences. They partnered with our local campus library to create a book display with additional texts and distributed requests to sign a petition related to the United Nations refugee campaign.  Of social action projects, one of the group members stated, “I think it’s an enormously valuable perspective shift to show students that they can be the ones making a difference and working for a better world.”  

While we allowed our students to choose social justice issues connected to the young adult novels they read in our classes, an overwhelming majority of our university student groups selected mental health as their issue, narrowing their topic to various related problems.  One group, for instance, connected their work to the stigma surrounding mental health problems referenced in The Unlikely Hero of Room 13b (Toten, 2015).  In the novel, a teenage male diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder takes part in group therapy where he meets new friends and embarks on a romantic relationship with one of his fellow members.  One cluster of our students designed an action in which they advertised resources available on campus and through student services to assist with mental health.  The students connected with a foundation established for a local football player who had recently died by suicide and distributed bracelets with messages of hope and phone numbers for campus resources in a well-trafficked area on campus after publicizing the distribution event on social media.  

Another group partnered with a psychology professor to offer a viewing of a film that
they felt inaccurately represented mental disorders and led a critical dialogue afterward with their forty participants. Still another created an interactive display on campus with resources, books, and a space to share coping strategies for stress and anxiety. 
 
Inspired by the novel Darius the Great is Not Okay (Khorram, 2019), one group sought to investigate the ease and barriers connected to accessing mental health supports on campus. Group members identified that the new counseling center was not on current campus maps and did not have signage outside of the building to guide students to its location. This group started a petition for funding to update the campus maps and purchase a building sign. 

​In addition to these projects, students who read Speak (Anderson, 1999) debunked dominant narratives of victim-blaming in instances of sexual assault through visual displays of clothing with accompanying messages in popular spaces on campus; others created a blog related to their reading of The Queen of Water (Resau, 2012) to describe their new awareness of human trafficking and to raise others’; and still others led an open mic event to increase attentiveness to climate change after reading Pitch Dark (Alameda, 2019).   

This community-oriented work made the books come alive for students and gave them a way to express the indignation they felt while reading or a manner through which to share new perspectives.  Many articulated in their reflections positive sentiments such as “the greatest reward out of this project was knowing that we made an impact” or shared that the projects “get students thinking about social issues” and allow them to “engage in the world” while “involving higher level thinking to fulfill the requirements.”  Many also noted the tendency for young people to not be taken seriously, but felt this project had the potential to change those perceptions.  Young adult literature has previously connected to these more additive and complex understandings of youth (Petrone, Sarigianides, & Lewis, 2015), and these projects provide an additional validation of that possibility. 
 
We have built on our students’ work in Reading for Action: Engaging Youth in Social Justice through Young Adult Literature (2019).  In the book, we focus on one social justice topic per chapter and one young adult novel.  Amongst other topics, we include bullying, global poverty, the gender spectrum, and women’s rights, and we offer myriad before, during, and after reading strategies as well as ideas for social action projects for each. As former secondary teachers ourselves, we know how busy teachers are, so we tried to provide as many resources as possible, including other young adult and canonical texts connected to each issue, music, film, and electronic resources. Although we emphasize that ideas for action should come from the students, we hope to provide samples to illustrate the kind of work we envision that students can accomplish.    

​Given the current predicament of schools, we feel it important to provide a brief note about the potential of these projects in a virtual space.  As much of social action projects is self-directed and relies on research and communication via the Internet, email and telephone, we believe that such work fits well in this era of online education.  Furthermore, many of our students’ projects relied on social media to advertise or to complete the action itself, as several created websites, blogs, or Twitter and Instagram accounts to raise awareness.  Even open mic nights could be held through online platforms such as Zoom and community film viewings through arenas such as Netlix Party provide a way to chat collaboratively while watching from different places. Therefore, this work can still be undertaken in the context we now face, and we hope that it is. 
 
Young adult literature gives us a medium through which to read, think, and talk about issues that may be uncomfortable for some or discerned as controversial in society.  It provides us with insight, perspective, and experience; the rich texts we have now develop readers’ empathy and afford for a depth of personal connection. We believe that harnessing this capacity of YAL and channeling it into action is key for addressing inequities and building communities. As we have said before, “Reading is important. Discussions can be valuable. But reading for action- that is something that can empower, inspire, and ultimately change the world for the better” (Boyd & Darragh, 2019, p. 195). Certainly, in these unpredictable times, we need that more than ever. 

​Boyd, A. & Darragh, J.  (2019).  Reading for action:  Engaging youth in social justice
through Young Adult Literature.  Rowman & Littlefield. 
 
Boyd, A. & Miller, J.  (2020).  Let’s give them something to talk (and act!) about: 
Privilege, racism, and oppression in the middle school classroom.  Voices from the Middle, 27(3), 15-19. 
 
Boyd, A. & Darragh, J.  (2019).  Critical literacies on the university campus:  Engaging
pre-service teachers with social action projects.  English Teaching:  Practice & Critique, 19(1), 49-63.   
 
Petrone, R., Sarigianides, S.T., & Lewis, M.A. (2015). The youth lens: Analyzing
adolescence/ts in literary texts. Journal of Literacy Research, 46(4), 506-533.
 
Wolk, S.  (2009) Reading for a better world:  Teaching for social responsibility with
young adult literature.  Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 52 (8), 664-673.  

Until next week.

Let’s imagine that some one in your family will be chosen by a lottery to experience the effects of the Covid virus. They will be expected to show up and report for infection. The result will be unknown. How much medical care they will receive is up in the air and how mild or serve the case will be is a mystery.
​
This is one of the strange ideas I think about as I pedal my bike around Las Vegas 5 to 6 times a week. Since mid-March, I have covered over 1300 miles and 140 on a couple of 20 year old bikes with fantastic Brooks saddles. 

Communities closed schools in the spring when the numbers of COVID cases and deaths were much lower. Yet, we are talking about going back to school in a variety of formats. I am not sure I have heard of a format that I think will be successful. By that I mean, a system or program that will really take into account poverty, racist practices and policies, teacher and parent workloads and realities, and the fact that elementary kids are restless, nose picking, clingy beings that really can’t be held accountable to were masks, not touch each other, or use screen time in appropriate was for 5 to 7 hours a day.
​
As a society we seem willing to talk about starting things up as if we were in normal times. Well, we are not in normal times. The numbers are everywhere. I don’t need to recite them here. In simple terms, in six months we are at 160,000 deaths (even if we admit that some of the number are inflated it is still crazy and unacceptable.). that is more than two times the number of dead in during the entire Vietnam conflict, more than WW1, and we are approaching half the number of dead in WW2 with many projects that we will reach the 405,399 total before we have a vaccine and the pandemic under control.

Let's go back to imagining. If we knew that we would be forced to take on COVID without question on a certain date, would we be more involved? Would we be more respectful?

Back to my bike riding. When I first started riding the streets were vacant. I saw no one on the streets and only a few cars. Now, the streets and traffic are back to normal. I am still on the streets. Why, it is safer than going to a gym. On the bike, I breathe in and out alone and without contact.

I don't regret reading any of these. I could, after all, just stop listening. I thoroughly enjoyed The Marrow Thieves, Thirteen Doorways Wolves Behind Them All, The Librarian of Auschwitz, and What if it's Us. I could write about all of them. Instead, I am going to write briefly about books that I have ignored for too long or that I might not have picked up at all if they hadn't been just waiting there to be checked out on Libby.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston

I have know about this book for several years. Some of my colleagues have blogged about it and I know that is a key text when people connect YA to Shakespeare's plays. 

I was unprepared for the absolute power of listening to the Hermione Winters tell her story of abuse and neglect. This is a prime example of when actually listening to the text might be more powerful than just reading it. This a tremendous text that explores the consequences of rape from the point of view of a victim and a survivor.

Countdown and Revolution by Deborah Wiles

Again, This trilogy by Deborah Wiles has been on my radar for awhile. I had it on my shelf and then I would let a student take it. As we know, those books rarely find their way back home, but they do find their way into classroom. Listening to these books back to back was a great experience. I loved how she wove the characters together from one book to the other, I loved the use of music, and I loved how real characters were mingled in with the fictional ones. 

Reading these books reminded me of reading the works of John Dos Passos. I think his USA Trilogy is too often neglected. I hope we don't do that with this wonderful trilogy.

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

This books was not on my radar. I did have a copy. I even had a copy on my "to be read" list. The blurb grabbed me, but I just hadn't taken it up yet. Then browsing titles through my Libby app, this one popped up. The books I had hoped to check out weren't available and I had quite a few on my wait list, but The Grace Year was ready for immediate check out. 

This was a powerful text imagining how the rights of women are often systematically stifled my community customs and beliefs. In fact, it demonstrates how easily women will push against each other to maintain those systems of oppression instead of striving to support one another.

For me this book is part fairy tale, part dystopian nightmare, and all about the strength of a young Tierney James who finds a way to survive and flourish in this speculative fiction that might remind you of the Handmaid Tale

Sadie by Courtney Summers

Maybe above all other things I liked this book because it was a great "who done it" story. It kept me making connections throughout the whole narrative. There is a lot to love about this book in terms of its structure, his character development and its style.  It also fits within the tradition of early realistic YA fiction in which young adolescents try to figure things out with absent adults or without the help of adults who might make the world better for the adolescents in their life if they were gone.

The Lovely War by Julie Berry

This cover didn't work for me. I get it now and it works, but I think you should check it our for yourself. This is a fantastic love story set in back ground of WW1; yet, told from the perspective of Greek gods who are in the midst of the chaos of WW2. This story is a powerful story of love, loss and reconciliation. Yes, they are still meddling in the lives of the mortals around them.

I could say something about each of these books. I loved the simple escapism of the novels by Grisham and Patterson. I should also tale about Stamped and Please Ignore Vera Dietz. As always, I recommend that you browse around a bit.

Until next week.

Cindi is one of the lovely people I meet as a result of hosting a Summit at UNLV. Cindi attended the first one as a presenter and has stayed connected. I love her love of YA and her perspective. We finally arranged a time for her to do a post. Take it away Cindi.

I have been thinking about what a YA course should look like for 18 years now. I am still not sure. What I do feel pretty firmly about are just a few issues.

1. Students should read a ton. They need to read a lot more that we have time for in a one semester class. If we are teaching classes full of future teachers we want them be able to make recommendations to all of the students that walk into their classrooms or tune in through some online tool. The more experience with adolescent literature our teachers and librarians have,  the better served the students will be.

2. That should be exposed to as many genres as possible. This means that we should be be teaching some genres that we may not gravitate towards in our own reading. I don't read much fantasy, but I am grateful for the advice and recommendation I glean from Melanie Hundley, Stephanie Toliver, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and many others.

3. They should also be reading in a wide variety formats. I still hear some teachers are reluctant to teach graphic novels, books in verse, or the short story. Given the results of many award winners and award nominees over the last several years, we should be getting over this bias as soon as possible.

4. I think student should be aware of the the major awards, their histories, and the books that have made the short list in these awards.

5. There should be a large element of choice. I think this is especially true once students are introduced to the various major awards and aware of what is available in the various genres and categories middle grades, realistic fiction, scifi, fantasy, novels in verse, or memoirs. 

6. My last point for today's consideration is that the books should follow the guidance of Rudine Sims Bishop and provide our students, and by extension, their future students with windows, mirrors, and sliding doors. These remains true when the majority of the teaching force remains white middle class women and classrooms are rapidly becoming more diverse throughout the country. 

If I were to only teach books that matched my interest, I would be reading realistic fiction for older adolescents that focused on race, class, and gender. Given the current examples of political and racial unrest, I am selecting a lot of books that match my interests, but that also represent a variety of formats. I have a mix of a few established titles, but I am drifting to quite a few books that are relatively new. I have also included books representing many diverse peoples written by insiders from those communities. 

Take a look. I would love to hear from you. I am sure that I share a few titles with many of you. At the same time, I know that I won't be teaching some of your favorites--or mine. I do think that we are in the midst of a fabulous influx of new authors. Yet, the fact remains that we have many well established authors who are still writing and producing wonderful  works. (It is almost a physical pain that I am not teaching dig. by A.S. King or 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith.) Every time I look at the list I can think of twenty authors or books that would fit in with what I am trying to do. Don't get me wrong, that is not a bad thing. In fact, quite the opposite, it speaks to an abundance of quality YA literature in the current moment. In fact, like many of you I enjoy a "to be read" list that is gigantic. So in fact, I am not complaining. I am relishing in a moment when it might be difficult to create a bad reading list if one is attuned to the current moment of YA literature.  

Holes by Louis Sachar

Okay. I love this book and I am quite found of the movie. I can do without the way Disney imagine the lizards, but overall it does a good job. Starting with this book gives me a chance to talk about how the film industry has taken to YA literature at a lot of levels. I also like how this book is simultaneously about race, class, and gender in multiple ways. I have often argued that if I were teaching AP literature again, I would start with this book. I love the fractured narrative with intertwining narratives and elements of magical realism. I think if students can identify the literary elements in this text, they can tackle them in some of the books by some of the more traditional authors used in AP courses--Faulkner, Morrison, Dickens, Bronte and many others. 

Merci Suárez Changes Gears by Meg Medina

​There is so much to love about this book and about Meg Medina. She has written wonderful children's literature and wonderful YA fiction. With Merci Suárez Changes Gears she has written what I consider a middle grades novel that garnered her the Newbery medal in 2019. This novel not only explores various aspect of Merci's coming of age story it also examines a multi-generational Cuban family. 

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

Few YA novels have the staying power of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I can't even imagine how many editions have been published. It has been in print for 44 years and countless number of young black readers have been able to see themselves in the lives of Cassie and her family and friends. With this book they have a mirror and for many white children reading this book is their first experience with book as a window. 

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Every time I think about this novel, I hear my good friend and colleague, Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides forcefully, but politely telling me that American Born Chinese is a perfect book.  If such a thing really exists, she might just be right. Certainly, for the history of the graphic novel and its consideration in the classroom and the literary canon this book needs to be mentioned in the same sentence with Maus by  Art Spiegelman and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. 

 New Kid by Jerry Craft

Craft's book was nominated for almost every award possible. I quick look at Craft's website demonstrates the list of accolades heaped on this 2020 Newbery winner. I love Craft's quote about his own work: "I make the kind of book I wish I had as a kid."

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Woodson's memoir remains one of my favorite books of the last 20 years. It was one of those books that I knew I was going to write about as I read it. I was talking about it non stop even before it began winning award after award. Finally, I had a chance to write about it for First Opinions, Second Reactions. In my essay, I discuss how the book transported me back to my own childhood.  Our experiences shape us. 

The Poet X  by Elizabeth Acevedo

Acevedo's stunning debut novel carries one of the most powerful and original voices in Young Adult literature. In addition, If your students listen to the audio version of this book, they will hear not only the power of Acevedo's words they will listen to the author herself read her work.  Clearly, based on the reception of her next two books we have remarkable new talent in the world of YA literature.

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

Okay, I admit it, I am officially an old guy. The Vietnam War surrounded my adolescent years. I remember the news reports. I can still hear Walter Cronkite reading the news reports of battles in a far away place that became even closer as people we knew lost brothers and fathers in that conflict. As a young teacher I lived next an extended family of Vietnamese refugees. My children grew up and played with their children and grand children. This beautiful novel in verse captures the struggles of family trying to make their place in a new world.

March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

I am late finishing this post. I have been on a long needed break. As a result, I am finishing this post as I listen to President Barack Obama pay tribute to John Lewis at his funeral at at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Often YA Literature stands as a witness to historical acts of social justice. In our current moment, I can't imagine teaching a course on YA literature without using texts like this one that calls attention to moments of change. All acts are political. Without flinching I plan to teach a course that demonstrates how writers of YA fiction take on the issues of race, class, and gender. I can't do everything, but I can do this. I can "Get in good trouble, necessary trouble."  

Dear Martin ​by Nic Stone

Nic Stone has become one of my favorite authors. I love the range of her style and her themes. For my money, Dear Martin stands as one of the lights on a hill as classrooms and communities talk about police violence. As your students fall in love with The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas or How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon or Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes remind them of this wonderful book.

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

This book is a remarkable example of collaboration. While I love the story, the characters, and the craftsmanship, I am enthralled with the work accomplished by the combined work of Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. I believe that our issues will find a resolution more quickly if we can work together to discuss hard and uncomfortable situations. Jason and Brendan model that work for us.

I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal

I had the great privilege of meeting both Gilly and Kim at a dinner as part of my activities at the 2019 NCTE convention. I didn't know the book, but I knew I had found another model of collaboration. Kim and Gilly work together to tell the tough stories that ask the tough questions and explore the potential answers that will move us forward. Read this book! Then, find a way to collaborate with someone in order to answer the difficult questions that surround you. Let's find a way to take a step forward. I immediately began to scheme so that they could speak at the 2020 UNLV Summit. What a gift. 

Patron Saints of Nothing ​by Randy Ribay

I spend time finding books that represent own voice writers who are writing novels that represent under represented, diverse communities. I was invited to a dinner in Las Vegas with Laurie Halse Anderson about a 18 months ago and she was carrying a book. I asked her what she was reading and she began carrying on about the Patron Saints of Nothing. I have learned to pay attention to Laurie's recommendations. And, since I am putting her novel, The Impossible Knife of Memory, reluctantly to the side this year it is only fitting that I include this fine novel. It didn't take me long to be a fan and Randy Ribay was on my short list to be a keynote speaker at the 2019 ALAN workshop. Thankfully, he was being promoted by his publisher, so that was a quick conversation. His keynote speech is available at this link on his webpage.

Internment​ by Samira Ahmed

I love the cover of this book. The word Resist written across the hat could be the subtitle for this book. As I read it I felt that it could be written as a direct response to incarcerated children and families on the southern border of our county. Of course it wasn't. Books take a while to get from the authors imagination to the page, through the editing process, and into the hands of readers. Ahmed does a remarkable job envisioning a situation of governmental abuse and the fear of the "other" that seems all to prevalent in our society today. 

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
 
Dystopian, apocalyptic, and futuristic fantasy that wonders what might become of us if we continue to push each other into silos that prohibit us from moving forward. This book quickly reminded me in tone of McCarthy's The Road, of Huxley's Brave New World, Golding's Lord of the Flies and in some interesting ways it becomes a journey novel that questions Twain's Huck Finn as an alternate tale of the difficulty of finding what has been promised. Cherie Dimaline is a member of the Georgian Bay Metis Community in Ontario. While the book can easily be defined as Canadian, this indigenous author reminds us how artificial the boundaries that are drawn in the new world really are. They were drawn across traditional tribal lands with little regard for the people who were already there. 

If I Ever Get Out of Here ​by Eric Gansworth

One of my favorite topics to examine in YA literature is the role of music in a book. Eric Gansworth's passionate narrative of a Tuscarora youth finding his way through adolescences is punctuated by the music of 1975. This period piece can not only be read, but students can enhance their experience by listening to the music that inspires and contextualizes Shoe's experiences.    

Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida ​by Victor Martinez

This book by Victor Martinez was the first book to win the National Book Award in 1996. This is a perfect example of a book that shouldn't be ignored just because it is old. The power of this own voices narrative deserves a moment of revitalization. 

To Build a Heart ​by Maria Padian

I have been a fan of Maria Padian's work for quite awhile. Trevor Ingerson sent me a few books and Maria Padian's Wrecked had a little post it note that suggested this book might suit my interests. Well, Trevor was right. Now with her newest novel, How to Build a Heart, Padian demonstrates that she is a moving force in YA fiction. I look forward to discussing this book with my students. ​Izzy Crawford misses her father who died Iraq. For six years Izzy and her mother have lived with relatively little support from her mother's family in Puerto Rico and her father relatives in North Carolina. Can this mixed race girl find a place to belong?

Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro

Oshiro's debut novel took me completely by surprise. I loved how this story of both grief and action built around some of the issues that are at the center of current protests throughout America's cities. I kept wondering why I hadn't heard about this book sooner. I am anxious to see what comes next.

Read Between the Lines ​by Jo Knowles

I love this book! It was one of the books that I think deserves another opportunity to be re-promoted. When I first read it I thought "This book is going to be on everyone's list!" While that didn't happen, what did happen is that Jo Knowles is
on everyone's list. I don't know any one who has read one of her books who is not taken by her themes, characters, and style. Last year at the 2019 ALAN Workshop she demonstrated her commitment to kindness. Unfailingly her books demonstrate the power of fiction to inspire hope. At UNLV, we look forward to hosting Jo as one of the keynote speakers at the 2021 Summit on the Teaching and Research of Young Adult Literature.  

I am looking forward to what my student have to say about these texts. I am also interested in see what they self select as well. 

What are you going to offer your students. I would love to know.

​Until next week.

Once again we have another terrific post from the amazing reader and my friend Lesley Roessing. She has produced  quite few posts in the past for Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday and she references some of them in her introduction. You can always find them and the post by others on the contributors page. Take it away Lesley

The year 2020 is presenting challenges for all of us, but there are children in our classrooms who deal with significant, even critical, challenges all the time. Many times these children are hiding in plain sight—from their teachers, counselors, and peers, struggling on their own and revealing resilience beyond their years. One in fourteen children have a parent who is incarcerated. There are 7.4 million refugees of school age, and in 2017 25% of all US children had at least one immigrant parent. One in six children live in poverty, and 1.4 million children are homeless. Probably the highest numbers are children who have experienced loss and abandonment.
 
Everyone experiences loss differently, but death has become all too common in our children’s worlds. The statistics are overwhelming:

• In 2018, a total of 2,839,205 resident deaths were registered in the United States. (CDC) Not all these deaths affected our students and their peers, but a high percentage were parents, grandparents and other relatives, guardians, siblings, friends, and other people with whom our students may have had relationships.
• 1 in 5 children will experience the death of someone close to them by age 18 (Journal of Death and Dying)

• 1.5 million children are living in a single-parent household because of the death of one parent. (Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing. 2008)

• In 2018, 400,000 people under 25 suffered from the death of a loved one (National Mental Health Association).

• In 2008, it was predicted 1 in 20 children aged fifteen and younger will suffer the loss of one or both parents. These statistics don’t account for the number of children who lose a “parental figure,” such as a grandparent or other relative who provides their care. (Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing)
• It is estimated that 73,000 children die every year in the United States. Of those children, 83% have surviving siblings. (Home Healthcare Nurse, 2011)
• In a 2001 study of 11- to 16-year-olds, 78% reported that at least one of their close relatives or friends had died. (Harrison and Harrington)
• In 2012 the American Federation of Teachers reported that 7 in 10 teachers currently had at least one student in their class(es) who had lost a parent, guardian, sibling or close friend in the past year.

In all these ways, a high percentage of our students and their peers are affected by death, loss, and grief.
​
However, parents and guardians leave children in many different ways and for many diverse reasons, some beyond their control. In the United States, more than 7,000 children are abandoned each year. Some are abandoned at birth; others later in life. Some are given up for adoption or go into the foster care system, and many live with relatives. Abandonment fears can impair a child's ability to trust others. A child’s self-esteem can also be affected by lack of parental support.
 
Story can be instrumental in supporting children and adolescents facing loss and handling grief and also effect empathy for their peers who are coping with losses. Children need to see their lives and the lives of their classmates reflected in story to feel heard. Whole-class selections provide a base for discussions about loss and create classroom community. Five or six of these novels can be employed for classroom book clubs. And independent self-selected novels on the theme of loss allows readers to share and compare their characters’ journeys.
 
Below, I review and recommend 26 novels (and one memorial for the victims of the Parkland shootings) on the topic of Surviving Loss & Abandonment. At the end of the blog is a list of 70 novels—the reviewed novels and additional novels I have read within the last five years.
 
Because of their need to face grief and survive loss at early ages, these characters can be added to my previous YA Wednesday guest blogs on strong girls, strong boys, and strong girl-boy partnerships in MG/YA literature:

• “The New Nancy Drew: Strong Girls in YA Literature” 
• “50 More Strong Girls in MG/YA Literature—Part A" 

• 50 More Strong Girls in MG/YA Literature—Part B" 

• “25 Strong Boys (Plus 5 Strong Girl-Boy Partnerships) in MG/YA Literature 

The story begins on March 11 when Kai, a half Japanese, half American 17-year-old and his teachers and classmates experience the “jolting of the earth,” and as trained, they evacuate, running for their lives, looking for the highest place, as their town is destroyed. Written powerfully in free verse, the reader feels the fury of nature as the water “churns,” “thrashes,” “surges,” “sweeps,” “charges.” Kai ends up in a shelter having lost his mother, his grandparents, and one of his best friends. His father left years before to return to America.

Faced with overwhelming loss and trauma, Kai walks into the ocean but is saved by one of his classmates and convinced to accept the opportunity to go to New York City on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 where he will spend some time with young adults who lost their parents as teens in the 9/11 attacks. At Ground Zero, Fia tells him, “Bravery means being scared and going forward anyway.”

Kai hopes to find his father in NYC but returns to his village to help the young adolescents who lost their families and to rebuild his town. “I want to be/ like that tree/ deep roots/ making it strong/ keeping it/ standing tall.” And it is to his roots Kai returns and stays—“The quake moved the earth/ ten inches/ on its axis./ I guess/I shifted,” too.”

Well-written as a verse novel, Up from the Sea would serve as an effective continuation to a 9/11 study. Readers should already be aware of the events of 9/11 to understand the connection between Kai and Tom but will comprehend the trauma and loss experienced, and resilience that is required, by anyone who faces adversity.
​

When the story begins, Bridget and Nova have run away from their latest foster home, and Nova has been placed in a new home with loving foster parents and their older daughter; they all want to get to know Nova, her limitations, but also her capabilities. Meanwhile Nova begins school, repeating sixth grade, experiencing endless testing (her social worker has classified her as “severely mentally retarded”) and getting to know new peers in her special education room, each with their own challenges and abilities. The classmates bond, but Nova is desperately waiting for the day of the Challenger launch with the first teacher aboard; Bridget has promised to find her so they can watch the launch together.

The story is told in alternating third-person, the story of Nova’s life with Francine, Billy, and Joanie and school, and first-person which the reader views through Nova’s letters to Bridget—which are, in her real life, illegible. I found it very effective to read about people and events and then re-read them from Nova’s perspective.

Having read that the story incorporated the 1986 Challenger space shuttle launch, I began reading this novel with a feeling of trepidation. I assume that this might be experienced in a different way by readers of diverse ages and background knowledge. The novel presents a moving story, and Nova becomes a character we can all champion as she experiences the disadvantages and finally the benefits of the foster system. Readers will learn a lot about space and the space program, but they will also learn how many times and ways people are judged on assumptions.
​
In 2018 the CDC determined that approximately 1 in 59 children is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). According to a study by Boston University, about 30 percent of people diagnosed with ASD "never learn to speak more than a few words." Also, on any given day, there are nearly 428,000 children in foster care in the United States. Today’s children are dealing with multiple challenges, and many are in our classrooms. And this is why novels, such as this  debut novel, belong in our school and classroom libraries.

Note: Including this novel in a unit of book clubs about Death or Surviving Loss may serve as a spoiler for readers.​

Books, such as these, which present sensitive issues and challenges that readers may themselves be facing, especially benefit from being read in small collaborative groups—book clubs. Book clubs can offer books on a variety of subtopics and written in diverse formats that may interest or connect to a range of readers and written at different reading levels, providing differentiation for readers.
 
In small groups readers more readily participate in discussions, especially when discussion techniques are taught as a book club skill. Book club participants of all ages have reflected that some advantages of book clubs are that are supportive and allow for deeper discussion with more participation and the sharing of multiple perspectives.
 
A unit can be designed to examine, through novels, the effect of a death from different circumstances on adolescents who had divergent relationships with the deceased. The unit could also analyze and compare differing genres in which novels about death are written—i.e., prose, verse, and graphic novels as well as novels written from differing points of view. Besides all the obvious advantages of book clubs, these books on different subtopics and reading levels and types of writing allow for more reader choice.
 
As an alternative, educators could choose one subtopic (Loss of a Parent, Loss of a Sibling, Loss of a Friend), for each of their classes, and readers would choose from 5-6 books in that category to form book clubs.
 
The class could be divided into five or six book clubs after students review 5-6 choices and each choose a book at their comfort reading level and in which they are interested. Each choice will generate conversations on disparate topics, focusing on assorted literary elements, and at a variety of cognitive levels, inducing students to read critically and converse meaningfully. At times individual members of book clubs could meet with members of other book clubs in inter-club meetings to compare and contrast their novels, how the authors wrote about death, and how their characters handled loss and grief.
 
Planning, organizing, facilitating, and assessing book clubs, as well as teaching readers to write their reflections while reading to increase comprehension; how to plan and hold meaningful, respectful discussions; and ways to present their novels after reading to the class as text synthesis are outlined—with student examples—in Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs Across the Curriculum.

A middle school and high school teacher for twenty years, Lesley Roessing was the Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Georgia Southern University (formerly Armstrong State University) where she was also a Senior Lecturer in the College of Education. In 2018-19 she served as a Literacy Consultant with a K-8 school. Lesley served as past editor of Connections, the award-winning journal of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. As a columnist for AMLE Magazine, she shared before, during, and after-reading response strategies across the curriculum through ten “Writing to Learn” columns. She now works independently, writing, providing professional development in literacy to schools, and visiting classrooms to facilitate reading and writing lessons. She can be contacted at lesleyroessing@gmail.com or through Facebook Messenger.
 
Lesley is the author of

• Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core 
• Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed. The Sentences They Saved 
• No More “Us” & “Them: Classroom Lessons and Activities to Promote Peer Respect 
• The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension
• Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum
• and has contributed chapters to
  • Young Adult Literature in a Digital World: Textual Engagement though Visual Literacy
  • Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum
  • Story Frames, an upcoming book on teaching writing

Death of Parent(s) and Grandparent(s):
Abbott, Tony. Junk Boy
Acevedo, Elizabeth. Clap When You Land
Alexander, Kwame. The Crossover
Alexander, Kwame. Rebound
Baptist, Kelly J. Isaiah Dunn is My Hero *
Bryant, Jen. Pieces of Georgia
Buxbaum, Julie. Hope and Other Punch Lines
Connor, Leslie. A Home for Goddesses and Dogs *
Erskine, Katheryn. Seeing Red *
Erskine, Kathryn. Quaking
Gemeinhart, Dan. The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise *
Gephart, Donna. In Your Shoes *
Henkes, Kevin. Sweeping Up the Heart *
LaCour, Nina. We Are Okay.
Lowitz, Leza. Up from the Sea *
Lyga, Barry. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl
Maynard, Joyce. The Usual Rules *
Padian, Maria. How to Build a Heart
Polisner, Gae. In Sight of Stars *
Quick, Matthew. Boy 21
Reynolds, Jason. The Boy in the Black Suit
Roe, Robin. A List of Cages
Sloan, Holly. Counting by 7’s
Schwartz, Elly. Give & Take *
Thomas, Angie. On the Come Up
Woodson, Jacqueline. Locomotion
Woodson, Jacqueline. Miracle’s Boys
Death of Sibling(s):
Abbott, Tony. Denis Ever After *
Appelt, Kathi, Maybe a Fox
Dooley, Sarah. Free Verse
Erskine, Katheryn. Mockingbird
Knowles, Jo. See You at Harry’s
Koertge, Ron. Coaltown Jesus
Leaver, Trisha. The Secrets We Keep
Lyga, Barry. Bang *
Mills, Wendy. All We Have Left
Moore, David Barclay. The Stars Beneath Our Feet
Niven, Jennifer. All the Bright Places
Panteleakos, Nicole. Planet Earth is Blue *
Polisner, Gae. The Summer of Letting Go *
Reynolds, Jason. Long Way Down *
Ribay, Randy. Patron Saints of Nothing (cousin) *
Sanchez, Erika L. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Death of Friend(s) and Classmates:
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Wintergirls
Benjamin, Ali. The Thing about Jellyfish
Connor, Leslie. The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle *
Fields, Terri. After the Death of Anna Gonzales
Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars
Haydu, Corey Ann. The Someday Suitcase *
Jackson, Tiffany D. Monday’s Not Coming *
Jacobson, Jennifer Richard. The Dollar Kids
Lerner, Sarah, ed. Parkland Speaks *
Magoon, Kekla. How It All Went Down
Paterson, Katherine. Bridge to Terabithia
Polisner, Gae and Baskin, Nora Raleigh. Seven Clues to Home *
Silvera. Adam. They Both Die at the End
Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give
Woodson, Jacqueline. Behind You
Parent Abandonment/Neglect:
Atkinson, Mary. Tillie Heart and Soul *
Benway, Robin. Far from the Tree
Burg, Ann E.   All the Broken Pieces
Bryant, Jen. Kaleidoscope Eyes
Creech, Sharon. Walk Two Moons
Crossan, Sarah. The Weight of Water
Crossan, Sarah. Apple and Rain
Hackl, Jo Watson. Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe *
Hunt, Lynda Mullaly. One for the Murphys
Hunt, Lynda Mullaly. Shouting at the Rain *
Jacobson, Jennifer Richard. Small as an Elephant *
LaMarche, Una – Don’t Fail Me Now
Lenz, Niki. Bernice Buttman: Model Citizen
Magoon, Kekla. The Season of Styx Malone *
Perkins, Mitali. Forward Me Back to You *
Sarno, Melissa. A Swirl of Ocean
Zarr, Sara. Gem & Dixie
 
* books reviewed in this blog