This blog post takes the time to celebrate collaboration while pointing to the ways that Young Adult Literature can be used as a tool to bridge the subject silos of both Social Studies and English Language Arts classrooms. 

The Academy can be lonely, isolating work. We have to create independent reputations and that requires at least some individual work and writing. At the same time, most of us understand that we need help from other to frame our ideas, to receive feedback, to do collaborative work on committees, to plan program curricula, and a variety of other projects. For example, as a relatively new assistant professor I was a coeditor of The ALAN Review. While we often had independent tasks, the work with Jackie Bach and Melanie Hundley was rewarding, grounding, and helped me frame how I thought critically about Young Adult Literature through my work with them and reading the work of other scholars in the field.

Skip forward in my academic career.
 
After several years at Louisiana State University, we hired a new Assistant Professor of Social Studies education.
 
Enter Dr. Paul Binford.
 
Paul and I began working together on several department projects. Primarily we each had a responsibility to communicate with our corresponding subject departments, teaching subject specific methods classes to undergraduates, and working with a yearly cohort of graduates students in a fifth year teacher certification program. We began discussing where our pedagogical concerns overlapped and whether or not there were avenues of collaboration. Paul introduced me to historical simulations and a teaching technique called visual discovery. Both concepts belong in an ELA classroom. I know some ELA teachers are doing some form of simulation in terms of court room simulation with To Kill a Mockingbird or something similar. Even though I thought I often incorporated visuals into my teaching and writing prompts, nothing I had planned or discovered on my own lead me to the richness of Visual Discovery. I have been thinking about it ever since and trying in my own limited way to usher novice English teachers into using this strategy.

Dr. Binford and I have presented at Kennesaw State University at the KSU Conference on Literature for Children and Young Adults about how to bridge these curricula silos. We have published together and with Dr. Getchen Rumohr-Voskuil. We have been fortunate to present with Laurie Halse Anderson and then with Rich and Sandra Neil Wallace. You can find out about latest collaboration with Gretchen here. The title of the article in the Middle Grades Review is Crossing Selma's Bridge: Integrating Visual Discovery Strategy and Young Adult Literature to Promote Dialogue and Understanding. We hope you share it with both pre-service and inservice Social Studies and English Language Arts teachers.
 
This coming fall we will be present at 2018 NCTE Annual Convention in Houston, TX.
 
Our session title is: Crossing Selma’s Bridge with Visual Discovery Strategy and Young Adult Literature: Allowing Voices from the Past to Echo in the Present
 
The Panelist will include: Laurie Halse Anderson, Steven Bickmore, Paul Binford, Brendan Kiely, Luke Rumohr, Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil, Rich Wallace, and Sandra Neil Wallace.  
 
We will be focusing on Anderson’s Seeds of America series, Wallace and Wallace’s Blood Brother, and Kiely and Reynolds’ All American Boys.
 
We hope you join us.

​I first met Dr. Steve Bickmore during the “campus visit” phase of the interview process at Louisiana State University.  As you can imagine mind my head was spinning, but one of my distinct recollections from that experience was that I would enjoy working with this guy.  After arriving on campus in the fall of 2015, Steve served as my informal mentor, and he kindly inducted me into the professional world of higher education.  I would also be remiss if not also acknowledging a mentor that both Steve and I shared—Dr. Jacqueline (or “Jackie”) Bach.  Jackie regularly touched base as I transitioned to LSU, and she had a keen knack for alerting me to various deadlines, issues, and opportunities associated with the College of Education.  Jackie also included me on several writing projects not only because I could make a meaningful contribution, but because she was looking ahead to my tenure needs.  
 
Both Steve and I made the transition to higher education in mid-career, so--needless to say--it was a high stakes decision.  The great thing about Steve was that he was approachable, self-effacing, and an open-book about the tenure and research process.  My first year he spent countless hours (yes, countless!) answering my questions and responding to my requests for advice.  Through this mentoring relationship and a common hobby--golf (the frustrations, vagaries, and all too few skilled shots on the links), we forged a friendship and began recognizing opportunities for cross-curricular collaboration.

“Arctic Exploration 1818 to 1909:  Fact or Myth,” is a pre-reading activity, in a game format! Using a slide presentation, the teacher projects a series of statements, augmented with images, about this period of exploration.  Then, each student must decide whether he/she believes each statement on the “question slide” is a fact or myth?  Each student records their “fact or myth?” decision on a record sheet.  This is shortly followed by the “answer slide” with the correct answer—“Fact!” or “Myth!” along with some additional historical information related to that slide’s topic.  If the student correctly deduced the answer, they place a check-mark on their record sheet.  Regardless, all students use this record sheet to note the historical information provided.  For example, here is a two-slide combination on one of the “fact or myth?” topics from this activity:

Mode of Travel

While a large majority of the Arctic expeditions were ship based, there were four expeditions during this period conducted by balloon.
Fact or Myth?
 
Answer Slide:
​
Fact!
There were 4 balloon-based, 25 land-based, and 63 ship-based Arctic explorations.
In essence, this pre-reading activity is a presentation, using guided notes (the record sheet), with a game overlay.  It takes about 30 minutes to complete and your students will love it!  More importantly, they will be reading Bound by Ice in historical context. 

Thanks for following the blog. Until next week.

This blog will also be co-posted on Dr. Binford's blog for Social Studies educations--Ring of Truth.

​The TBR List: If you are a reader, you probably have a TBR (to be read) pile or two in your house. Students need some sort of record-keeping system for remembering books they’ve heard about that they might want to read. The last couple pages of our class notebook contain the TBR list. Any time we are talking about books in some way, that page is open and ready to record our reading intentions. When students ask me for a recommendation, my first question is always, “What’s on your TBR list?” The systematic use of a TBR list to track interesting titles helps students learn to have a reading plan. While there are terrific apps or sites to use like Goodreads, and I do use it as well, the trusty old notebook is my standby.  Updating this list is a routine I emphasize strongly throughout the year. Sometimes, I have kids pair up and compare TBR lists, talking about similarities and differences and adding titles. Take a look at the following student TBR lists to see what a couple 8th grade students are interested in reading. Check marks and crossout indicate books the student has read.

Buzzing: I first learned about this simple strategy in Matt Copeland’s book Socratic Circles, though the original source of the activity comes from Stephen Brookfield and Stephen Preskill’s Discussion as a Way of Teaching.  This strategy can be used as an icebreaker before more formal discussions, as a sharing tool following a notebook response, or any time you want kids to get up and move around the room while talking to multiple partners. Mondays after independent reading time is an opportune time to start the week by sharing what kids are reading. You can give them verbal prompts to meet specific learning targets, you can have them talk from a list of prompts prepared in advance, or you can let the conversations flow naturally about whatever book they are currently reading or just finished. Copeland recommends that topics be “open-ended and allow students to think critically and speak persuasively about the material” (42).  Example topics I’ve used before are:

• why I chose the book or how it found me
• my favorite moment in the book so far
• what is keeping  me reading/ holding my interest
• who should read it next and why

 We usually change partners three or four times at one minute intervals. Then they record any books they heard about that they want to read on their TBR List.

Book Discovery Box: This strategy evolved after a book pass session. You can read more about the Book Pass strategy (sometimes called speed-dating) in one of the most useful books I own: Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles by Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke.  I discovered that about ten or so books, depending on size, fit nicely in the lid of a copy paper box.  After we finished our book pass, a student asked if we could leave the book boxes on the tables and switch them around every couple of days. The closer the students' proximity is to books, the more likely they will read, so I readily agreed. Pretty soon, I started planting books I thought students would like in the box at their tables for them to discover. Often other students would say, “Hey, I think this book is here for you.  Put it on your TBR!” And conversation ensued. Students would wander around to other book boxes in the room when they arrived and talk about books until the bell.  I loved that they started realizing what others like to read and taking ownership of finding books for others' TBR lists as well as their own.

​Bio: Jenny Cameron Paulsen is an instructional technology coach, former English teacher, and future social studies teacher at Holmes Junior High in Cedar Falls. She is Past-President & NCTE Liaison for the Iowa Council of Teachers of English and a state representative for ALAN. When she doesn’t have her nose firmly pressed into a book, you might want to check her pulse and breathing! Her passions are history & genealogy. She loves working with discussion techniques and censorship issues in the classroom.  You can find her fleeting and occasional thoughts about teaching, learning, and YA at http://2020teachervision.blogspot.com or on Twitter @jennypaulsen555.

​Atwell, Nancie. In the Middle: a Lifetime of Learning about Writing, Reading, and Adolescents. Heinemann, 2015.

Atwell, Nancie. Reading in the Middle Workshop Essentials. DVD. Heinemann, 2011.

Brookfield, Stephen D., and Stephen Preskill. Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms. Wiley, 2012.

Copeland, Matt. Socratic Circles: Fostering Critical and Creative Thinking in Middle and High School. Stenhouse Publishers, 2005.

Daniels, Harvey, and Nancy Steineke. Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles. Heinemann, 2004.

Kittle, Penny. Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers. Heinemann, 2013.

Neuman, Susan B. “The Importance of a Classroom Library.” Retrieved 7 Apr 2018.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/paperbacks/downloads/library.pdf

This is not a recent story. These three summers were in 1970, 1971, and after a one summer break working in an air conditioned retail store in 1972, we went back in 1973. Maybe it was as a final reminder to try hard when we entered college in August of 1973. In essence, America doesn’t need a wall. We need a better understanding of the difficulty and often of the monotony of blue collar labor, within our country and beyond. We need to understand why people come here for economic opportunity. Do they really take a host of jobs from American workers? Perhaps they are fleeing from oppressive and dangerous situations. Perhaps employers are willing to hire these workers because they will work for less money, do not ask questions, and do not complain about the conditions. Or, they do hire them because no one else shows up to take the job? In reality, there are a host of reasons people might come here. Including, the idea that perhaps many middle class and upper class Americans are interested in the drugs that have enriched cartels and paved avenues of drug trafficking. Would the cartels exist without an American appetite for drugs?
 
Below Briana Asmus introduces us to several YA novels that might offer the opportunity for a vicarious experience with immigrant realities.​

All three texts provide ways for students and teachers to conceptualize what it means for young people to cross, an event that’s not rooted in choice, but in survival. While there are plenty of common elements (la migra, dehydration, death, loss) each narrative provides readers with a face, and maybe not the face we expected to see going in. 

Note: Since submitting this post to Dr. Bickmore, President Trump has announced his motion to send thousands of troops to “secure” the U.S./Mexico Border. It’s important to note that according to the Department of Homeland Security, border crossing arrests are at a 46-year low, while arrests on the interior for non-violent immigrants (whose only offence was being undocumented) have increased over forty percent (see this article for references). ICE has conducted several sweeps in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I teach. K-12 teachers tell me stories of kids “disappearing,” and some schools are creating safety plans in case of an ICE visit. I have started inviting immigration lawyers to be guest speakers in my seminars. The border is now everywhere.
​

 Briana Asmus is Assistant Professor and Director for ESL and Bilingual Programs at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, MI. She can be contacted at bma004@aquinas.edu. 

Over the last 15 years I have been introduced to many people who know a great deal about young adult literature. When I was first introduced to Lesley Roessing, I was amazed at many books she knew and how current was with new releases. I also marvel at her ability to quickly group books around a theme, social issue, or a genre.  This week, Lesley helps Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday begin to celebrate Poetry Month. Before you read what she has to offer you might revisit her earlier posts. (Hiding in Plain Sight: A Different Diversity, The New Nancy Drew: Strong Girls in YA Literature, and Books to Begin Conversations about Bullying" ) In addition, during this month I hope you follow both Jason Reynolds and Sarah Donovan. Jason is write a poem a day during the month. Sarah is doing the same on her blog and is posting a verse novel on Facebook. It will be interesting to see where Sarah and Lesley overlap in their suggestions.

Lesley, thank you once again for all of the hard work and the great advice that is contained in this post. This will be a great resource for every ELA class that is trying to promote poetry during April and beyond. Please share widely with every English teacher you know.

​I walk into the classroom. Fourteen boys are already there, spread out around the room, some sitting on chairs at tables, some sprawled on big pillows on the floor, and two lying across a low counter, reading. Three boys are sitting in a group, books in hand, discussing whether a character has died. “No,” says one of the boys, “see here, what it really says is …” “Oh,” exclaims the first boy, “I missed that sentence. That makes more sense.” They all nod and go back to their notes and their discussion of the novel.
 
I had been invited by the principal of a middle school to facilitate book clubs with fifteen 6th, 7th, and 8th grade boys—all designated as “reluctant readers,” students who can read but choose not to do so. This activity, held for an hour every Thursday, was completely voluntary on the part of the boys. It was not a class; participants would not receive a grade. They were not missing a class to be there since book club reading and meetings were held during an end-of-day study-type period. Why they volunteered for the project, being a guest at the school I do not know—maybe the snacks or the promise of an activity at the end of a successful semester.
 
I have always felt that book clubs are the most effective way to engage reluctant readers in reading and reading more deeply since readers have some choice in what they are reading, they are reading to have the opportunity to talk with their peers, and they are reading more deeply to come to meetings with something to discuss. But primary to success, especially for reluctant readers, is giving them books they will read and find they want to read. The books I suggested for the school’s purchase for these particular students were House Arrest and Rhyme Schemer by K.A. Holt and The Crossover and Booked by Kwame Alexander. Meeting one day a week and having a short time for discussion and, more importantly, time to read, all the boys—students who admitted to never before finishing a book—read at least two, and most read three, complete novels by mid-April. And this reading and responding to bring reading notes to their meetings was in addition to their schoolwork.

Why did I suggest books that happened to be verse novels? I find that verse novels entice “reluctant” readers because the words are less dense on the page. One adolescent who first read and finished House Arrest announced, “I just read a 300-page book! Of course, it really wasn’t that long because the words didn’t cover the whole page, but I just read my first 300-page book!” Also, once they get over the shock that they are reading poetry, readers fall into the rhythm, and the words flow for them.
 
ELL students may find verse novels easier to read for the same reasons—less dense text and shorter lines. Proficient readers find verse novels more lyrical and appreciate the artistry and the effectiveness of the line breaks.

Verse novels are perfect for whole-class, book club, or individual reading to celebrate poetry during National Poetry Month. The novels will lead to critical discussions about the relative effectiveness of poetic devices, such as rhyme and rhythm, line and stanza breaks, word choice, figurative language, and the employment of different poetic formats and styles. Verse novels share the power of words and lead to discussions about words and diction. These books offer a variety of reading levels, interest levels, and genres, such as historical fiction, sports, romance, fantasy, and memoir, as well as nonfiction. And many of these novels serve to make classroom libraries more diverse while generating important and empathetic classroom conversations—a win-win.

Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy and One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies; and Saving Red by Sonya Sones
Although I have listed novels alphabetically by author’s last names, I need to begin with the author who introduced me to verse novels with her wonderful memoir, Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. I first met Sonya Sones when she talked about how she came to write about that topic and in verse and heard her read some of the poems, Through free verse the author captures the highs and lows of her thirteenth year from “My Sister’s Christmas Eve Breakdown” to her fantasy of coming “To the Rescue” to the heartbreak of her “February 15th” birthday spent in the hospital visiting her sister to the joy of spending “Memorial Day” alone with Father to playing scrabble “In the Visiting Room” after the situation and their adaption to it has become somewhat “BETTER.” When I read selected poems aloud to my students, I wished they could see the line breaks—I refer to Sones as the Master of Line Breaks—and would pause a microsecond shorter than a comma. After my students tattered our three copies of Stop Pretending, I purchased two copies of One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies and had to wait in line until June to snag a copy to read myself. 

​I was thrilled when Saving Red, a story of homelessness and mental illness, was published in 2016. In this novel Molly meets Red when she is counting her town’s homeless population. She becomes intrigued with Red who suffers from metal illness and is determined to help her return to her home. Through friendship Molly, who suffers from her own trauma, and Red help each other. This was a large novel that I did not want to end.

​Booked and The Crossover by Kwame Alexander
It is difficult to believe that anyone has not heard of Kwame’s Alexander’s The Crossover, the story of twin basketball players who behave like any adolescent brothers and then face a family trauma together. This verse novel has captivated reluctant readers, especially male, since its publication. Booked, is a the story of soccer, friendship, bullying, impressing girls, and the power of words. Twelve-year-old Nick has his own family problems to deal with and is mentored by one of YA literature’s most memorable characters, the rapping school librarian.

​Audacity by Melanie Crowder (historical fiction)
I usually choose books about more contemporary issues but am noticing the same issues appear throughout history, wearing different masks. Unfortunately oppression, intolerance, and treatment of refugees have not ended, and we still need people unafraid to stand for their own rights and those of others. Audacity relates the true story of Clara Lemlich, a Russian Jewish immigrant with dreams of an education who sacrifices everything to fight for better working conditions for women in the factories of Manhattan's Lower East Side in the early 1900's. Lyrically related in verse, the use of parallelism and the purposeful placement of the words is as effective as the words themselves. The novel includes the history behind the story and a glossary of terms, a wonderful "text" for a social studies class. Readers not only learns the story of Clara Lemlich but experience the trials of the factory workers in NYC’s garment district and the obstacles Clara surmounted as she fought to organize the women to fight for their rights.
 
An Uninterrupted View of the Sky by Melanie Crowder (historical fiction)
This novel takes place in Bolivia at the beginning of the 21st century and reveals how the United States’ role in the passage and enforcement of a law that violated the rights of citizens, especially the poor and indigenous peoples, led to innocent families living in prisons for years, hoping for the reform that has been slowly occurring. “Our lives are stretching out before us, unplanned and unpredictable” (p. 277). Readers meet Francisco and his little sister Pilar and Francisco’s classmate and new friend Soledad, who become a part Bolivia’s prison children population. As they struggle to survive the violence of prison life and the streets and loss of family, they realize that education can help them make a change. The readers learns about Francisco and Papa through their poetry.

House Arrest by K.A. Holt
What happens when a good kid does a bad thing for a good reason? This question hooks readers every time, as does this novel which is one reason why this is one of my top favorite MG novels and one of my very top recommendation for reluctant readers—this moral question and these characters. Timothy steals a wallet to help with his baby brother’s medical expenses; he is arrested and put on house arrest for a year. This novel is the journal he keeps for his probation officer and his court-appointed counselor. As Timothy tries to help his overworked mother, keep his brother safe, and find the solution to Levi’s medical problems, the reader falls in love with him as well as the cast of characters involved in his life. As medically-fragile Levi safety is the rationale for all decisions made by Timothy, he again, at the end,  becomes a victim of what-happens-when-a-good-kid-does-a-bad-thing-for-a-good-reason.

Knockout by K.A. Holt
A sequel to House Arrest, Levi is now in 7th grade and trying to make his own life and find the self who is no longer a victim of illness and an overprotective family. Despite a loving mother, big brother, and a good friend, Levi is more self-centered than Timothy was, but he feels he needs to be able to become his own independent person—which he does in a new passion for boxing. He finally convinces his mother and the now 24-year-old Timothy to let him have his chance as he learns more about Timothy's sacrifices and the true motives of the father-who-left. Through his indomitable spirit, he wins over the reader. Knock Out is advertised as a companion novel, rather than a sequel, to House Arrest, but since I already have the background from the first novel, I cannot evaluate how effective it would be to read it alone or first. It probably work well if students were paired to read the two novels (or half the class read each).
 
Rhyme Schemer by K.A. Holt
Kevin is a bully—bullied by his family—and in a school with a Zero Tolerance policy he cannot be caught again. Therefore, two things happen: Students who he bullied now bully him, and Kevin bullies kids through blackout poetry; he tears pages out of the classics from the library and posts his poetry. The librarian discerns his talent and helps him gain self-respect. This novel will engage reluctant readers through its topic, length, and format and will lead to discussions on a variety of issues relevant to the lives of middle-school boys: middle school, bullying, family relationships, peer relationships, and the roles of educators and administrators.

Up From the Sea by Leza Lowitz
“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.”

The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary by Laura Shovan
Emerson Elementary is closing at the end of the year. As readers live through that last year with the eighteen fifth graders and experience their changing peer and family relationships through their poems, they learn who is for and who is against the upcoming change. Each student has his or her unique poetry style and voice, and readers truly experience the diversity of poetry and one lovable class whose poems move the year along.
 
Red Butterfly by A.L. Sonnichsen
Another well-written novel which I devoured in a day (with the help of a box of tissues), Red Butterfly relates the story of Kara, an abandoned baby of Tianjin, who was raised by an American woman (Mama) who gave up everything—husband, daughter, grandsons—to illegally stay in China to raise her. After Kara finds she was never legally adopted and has no government identity and Mama is deported, Kara is returned to the orphanage and is adopted by another American family as Mama is too old to adopt under the rules. However, Kara learns that one can have many families, and there is room in people's heart for one more child.

​A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman
This novel is a poetic and inspiring story of adolescent resilience. Veda is a young Indian dancer who, after winning a dance contest, is in an accident and loses her leg below the knee. But she never loses her will to dance and refuses to settle for less than relearning the complicated classical bharatanatyam dance form. As she begins again with the help of Govinda, a young teacher and friend, she learns the meaning of dance.
 
And last is a novel that is not yet published but includes some of the most effective use of poetry to relate the story of one of its characters, Breakout by Kate Messner
Breakout is the story of Wolf Creek and three weeks in the life of its citizens. As students finish school, write letters for the time capsule for the future citizens of Wolf Creek, and plan for Field Day, two prisoners escape, and for the next three weeks the life of the town is “different.” Police and reporters invade the town; fear is in control. Seventh-grader Nora, as a time capsule reporter, notices that life is more complex—or maybe she is becoming aware of the complexities. Nora writes at the end of the summer, “…sometimes you need to hear a lot of points of view to get the whole story.” (And that’s what this novel provides—lots of points of view revealed through letters, recorded conversations, text messages, news articles, the school’s morning announcements, and student petitions. 

​In one of the most effective portrayals of the power of poetry, the newest resident and seventh-grader, Elidee begins writing poems inspired by her favorite poets: Nikki Giovanni, Nikki Grimes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Paul Laurence, Jacqueline Woodson, and finally Lin-Manuel Miranda’s lyrics from Hamilton, my favorite being the student council vice president’s rap battle with the principal, based on “Cabinet Battle #1.”
In this frequently-humorous novel there are serious lessons to be learned: Elidee finds her voice, Lizzie learns about forgiveness; and Nora contemplates the complications of life which includes racism that she never realized existed in her small town.

Novels such as those reviewed above and those additionally recommended on the Reference List will generate important and productive conversations that adolescents need to have and share truths that they need to consider. These stories provide not only mirrors to those readers who may see themselves reflected in these books, but windows into those readers may see as different, generating empathy and understanding. Even more significantly, these novels may serve as maps, guiding adolescents to make effective decisions and give them ways to work through conflicts and challenges, as well as maps showing them where they may become lost. Novels can help readers gain knowledge of themselves and empathy for others, and verse novels are novels they will read and not only gain a sense of story but an appreciation of the power of words to share stories.

Lesley Roessing taught middle school for 20 years before becoming the Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project and Senior Lecturer in the College of Education of Georgia Southern University (formerly Armstrong State University) in Savannah, Georgia, where she works with K-12 teachers and frequently facilitates lessons in classrooms. Lesley has published four professional books for educators: The Write to Read: Response Journals that Increase Comprehension; Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed—The Sentences They Saved; No More “Us” and “Them”: Classroom Lessons & Activities to Promote Peer Respect; and Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically and Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core, and is a columnist for AMLE (Association of Middle Level Education) Magazine. Lesley can be contacted at lesleyroessing@gmail.com

This week's guest contributors is Alan Brown. Alan is a leader in Sports Literacy. What is sport's literacy? Well, there might be some who trouble the term. That's ok, let's get people thinking. A good place to start is with Alan's book, coedited with Luke Rodesiler entitled Developing Contemporary Literacies through Sports. The book was reviewed in the blog by Dr Dawan Coombs and can be found here.  Alan has also written about this topic in the early days of Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday blog and his contribution can be found here. All of us know adolescents who would rather do than read. Maybe some of us were those kids at one time in our life. Alan helps us consider how we might reach some of these kids through literature. Thanks Alan.

The Paisley Sports Literacy Program is a weekly after-school club for eighth grade boys with an interest in sports. The program meets for an hour and a half each week at Paisley IB Magnet School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and is intended to support youth through academic, social, and community engagement. The group is sponsored by Bailey Allman, an eighth grade English teacher at Paisley and a graduate of Wake Forest.
 
The primary goals of the Paisley Sports Literacy Program are
 

• to support youth through academic, social, and community engagement,
• to empower students who are interested in sports to read and write for enjoyment,
• to explore social issues that affect the lives of adolescents and young adults through culturally-relevant literature,
• to improve literacy skills and practices that support learning across content areas and promote college and career readiness.

 
Our program is grounded in sociocultural theory in that students develop literacy skills while engaging in activities related to their personal, everyday interests. This consideration is important since the eleventh and twelfth NCTE/IRA standards tell us that students should become active members of a variety of literacy communities while using language to accomplish their own purposes.
 
Our motto is simple: sports talk, free snacks, good books.
 
Our daily agenda consists of accountable talk, a think-write-pair-share activity, and a young adult novel, all for making text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections. As you might imagine, what gets students in the door is the sports talk and the free snacks. The fact that they are willing to stick around for the good books is an added benefit. Some days we play basketball after our meeting, which helps with recruitment and motivation.

We also provide unique opportunities for our students, from social events, including attending Wake Forest football and basketball games, to academic and cultural events, including a recent event on the historical legacies of Dick Gregory and Muhammad Ali, to opportunities to share meals with students’ role models, including our etiquette dinner hosted by members of the Wake Forest football team. By the end of the spring semester, we hope to take our students to visit at least one local elementary school, so they can begin to transition from the role of mentees to the role of mentors.
 
Since starting the sports literacy program, we have seen an increase in students’ willingness to participate in class activities as well as improvements in school attendance, benchmark scores, and academic grades, not to mention a decrease in office referrals for many of our students.
 
Yet, one of our biggest challenges remains students’ perceived identities as readers. In 2016, I wrote an article for SIGNAL Journal called “Young Adult [Sports] Literature: Looking Back and Moving Forward.” In that article, I included a quote from a 2016 CNN article about fantasy baseball by sport administration researcher Brendan Dwyer, who suggested: “Sports in general has been a space for men to communicate…and now fantasy sports is an enhanced version of that….I like to equate it to the male version of a book club.”
 
Obviously, this quote is problematic because it implies book clubs are primarily for women, not to mention that sports are primarily for men. Alternatively, we believe in helping our young men see themselves as readers with something important to contribute to literary conversations. We have attempted to counter the notion of reading as a feminine activity by demonstrating to our students the powerful, and relatable, messages found in young adult literature.
 

​Last year, we held a 50th anniversary celebration for Robert Lipsyte’s (1967) classic young adult novel The Contender. Mr. Lipsyte came to Winston-Salem to join the festivities, and his publishers were so impressed that they will soon be releasing a 50th anniversary edition of the book, including a new foreword that includes his thanks to our Paisley students “for keeping alive the spirit of the kid coming up, the contender.”

Last semester, our students spent time reading Tears of a Tiger by Sharon Draper, and we are currently reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie at a time when the author has become a focal point in the news media for sexual harassment against women. The book teaches many lessons, but we are now using Alexie’s personal story as a teaching tool to show our eighth-grade boys the importance of treating all people, and particularly their female counterparts, with dignity and respect. We also want to demonstrate how people’s words and actions can have severe consequences not only for the accused but also, and most importantly, for the victims, whose voices are too often marginalized in such conversations.
 
Ultimately, we have chosen to enter Alexie’s text as part of our after-school sports literacy program because the protagonist, Junior, is a high school basketball player around the same age as our students. Nevertheless, sports are merely the hook to get students interested in the reading. During our conversations, students will also be asked to dig deeper into various social issues, including poverty, racism, homophobia, and disability. 

Through young adult literature, we can engage students in important conversations about the intersections of sport and society through the lens of critical literacy. In our edited book, Developing Contemporary Literacies through Sports: A Guide for the English Classroom, Luke Rodesiler and I have tried to showcase the many ways English teachers can use sports to interrogate the social culture of sports in America.
 
Sports, like schools, are often said to serve as a mirror to the issues we see in the world around us. Young adult literature, then, can be an entry point into these conversations. Some of my favorite books containing the backdrop of sports include Boy21 by Matthew Quick, Slam! by Walter Dean Myers, The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen, and Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt De La Peña. Chris Crutcher, who has also written many outstanding sports-themed novels, will be the keynote speaker for our annual NCTE session entitled “The Intersection of Literacy, Sport, Culture, and Society” in November at the NCTE Annual Convention.

Even books not commonly considered to focus on sports, including The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt, All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, and The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, are rife with connections to sports that allow teachers to explore the text through different contexts and/or critical approaches, similar to Jennifer Rossuck’s exploration of “The Games People Play: The Great Gatsby and the Golden Age of Sports” from our edited book.
 
Just as we have done in our sports literacy program, I hope more English teachers will consider engaging their students in critical conversations about the pros and cons of our societal emphasis on sports. Even if you do not know much about sports yourself, rest assured that young adult literature, not to mention your students’ own experiences, has the potential to serve as a useful guide.

Afterward, maybe you will consider joining your students for a pick-up basketball game. On this day, I jumped in a game of three-on-three. Once again, it was Johnny who stole the show, as he drained a three-pointer from the top of the key for the win. I am quite sure Wendell will hear about it next Thursday afternoon, or, what is more likely, for the rest of time.

Brown, A. (2016). Young adult [sports] literature: Looking back and moving forward. SIGNAL Journal, 34(2), 42-50.
 
Brown, A., & Rodesiler, L (Eds.). (2016). Developing Contemporary Literacies through Sports: A Guide for the English Classroom. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
 
Kounang, N. (2016). The time-sucking, dopamine-boosting science of fantasy baseball. CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/18/health/fantasy-sports-psychology/index.html
 
McIntyre, S., & Brown, A. (2016). Dare to be different: Celebrating difference and redefining disability in Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The ALAN Review, 44(1), 79-85.

A few weeks ago a new round of book awards were announced. You can find the announcements of the 2018 Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) Book and Media Award Winners at this link. This organization is a division of The American Library Association (ALA). This organization hosts a number of book awards for children and adolescents. On March 7, 2018 Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday hosted a blog post about the ALA Book Awards. Today, Melanie Koss provides us an insider view of working as a member (and chair) of the 2017 Michael L. Printz Award Committee. 

    It’s early Monday morning, the Michael L. Printz Award committee is gathered bright and early, all wearing smiles and matching baseball t-shirts. They’re ready for their group photo, but more importantly, they’re ready for the world to hear their winner and honor books announced at the American Library Association (ALA) Youth Media Award announcements, the Oscars of the children’s literature world. They’ve worked hard all year and this announcement is the culmination of their efforts. But who are the people behind the award, and how do they make their decisions?

It all starts over a year before, when committee members are elected and appointed, and the chair is determined. Committee members are librarians and educators across America. They come from different places, span different ages, and all have different backgrounds. Introductions are made. Initial phone calls are had. A group Google Hangout takes place. The committee gets to know one another and plans are made. The excitement and fear is palpable, but the committee members are ready to go!

First, it sounds silly, but we each identified a place to store the books. We had to prepare for anywhere between 400-700 books and to come up with a system for organizing those books. Look at your bookshelves. Count out 400-700 books, and picture receiving all of those books in the space of one year and keeping them organized. Personally, I cleared out all of the bookshelves in my home office and prepared to organize my books alphabetically with a color-coded system. I had an intake area for new books received, a to-read section holding books I was responsible for reading, a NO section (pink sticker), a MAYBE section (yellow sticker), and a YES section (green sticker).
​
Next, finding the books. Yes, many publishers choose to send committee members books they believe have literary merit to make sure that the committee sees them. But we couldn’t sit back and wait for the books to come to us. We actively searched bookstores and publisher catalogs, asked friends for recommendations, and kept an eye and ear out for any likely titles. The Printz Award targets books from ages 12-18, and the guidelines are that the book must be published in America in English for the first time. An eligible title might have originally come out in another country or another language in a previous calendar year, but it was eligible for the Printz only when it was first published in the U.S. We had to find those books!

Next, books received were entered into a database and books were assigned to committee members. Every title was assigned a reader, who determined if the book was a yes, no, or maybe. Any maybe book was assigned a second reader. Any book that received 3+ starred reviews was automatically assigned a second reader. If a book received two maybes or a maybe and a no, a third reader was assigned. What do yes, no, and maybe mean? A no is a book that is deemed not to have the literary merit as required by the Printz. That does not mean the book is not a quality book or one that will have a great readership, but that it doesn’t meet the guidelines the committee established using their rubric of literary elements. A maybe means the read thinks the book has potential but has to ponder it for a bit or would like to discuss it with others. A yes means a book was officially nominated.

Nominations. Any committee member can read and nominate any title, regardless of whether or not they were the assigned reader. If a book is nominated, every committee member must read it and it must be on the table for deliberation.

We met in person twice over the course of the year and had several virtual meetings and conversations. Each month we had an official Google Hangout, we had a private Facebook group where we posted thoughts on titles read and any questions we had, and emails were exchanged. We first met in person at the ALA Annual Conference and had practice deliberations. We selected eleven books that we wished to discuss. The selected books were chosen for many different reasons, including books at each end of the age spectrum, books with obvious flaws, books with cultural components that must be verified, and books we thought were strong contenders. During closed-door meetings, we discussed each book in turn, debating its merits. A book marketed as young adult (YA) by publishers was easy. The tricky part were books designated ages 10-14 or grades 5+. We didn’t want to leave out books for twelve-year-olds and we recognized how carefully we had to consider each title. Through these practice deliberations, we determined our strategy for our official deliberations.
​
Prior to ALA Midwinter, the second time we met in person and the conference at which the winners were determined, we held straw polls to get a sense of the books people were feeling very strongly about. Books were read and reread, notes were compiled, rubrics were filled out, and thoughts were gathered. Finally, it was time to enter the deliberation room and make our decisions. ​

This was serious business! Although we all came into the room with our favorites, we also agreed to come in with open minds and be prepared to be persuaded and to persuade others. Our motto was “Trust the Process.” Every book nominated was discussed and much chocolate was consumed. Around and around the room we went, with every committee member sharing their thoughts about each book. First, all nominated books were discussed and an informal vote was held. Any book with fewer than five votes was eliminated from contention and the process started again with all remaining books. However, ever committee member had one veto, which they could use to save one book during every informal vote. The it was up to them to convince the rest of us of the book’s merits.

Eventually, after many hours of debate, the pool was small enough that we were ready to take a paper ballot to choose our winner. The Printz policies and procedures guide has specific voting guidelines. We vote for our top three choices, and each is assigned a point value. A book must receive five first place votes and earn at least five more points than the second-place title. Discussion and balloting continues until a winner is chosen. Much rejoicing is had! But our work was not yet done. We had to decide, as a committee, if we wished to select any honor books. We could select up to four honor books, and any book nominated was eligible to receive an honor medal. Every book was back on the table! Books we might have eliminated as not having the qualities to be our official winner might have the merit to win an honor. The process began again. A straw vote was conducted of all nominated titles. Any title receiving no votes was removed from contention. Then, a formal, weighted paper ballot was conducted, and the honor books were decided upon based on the result of this ballot. We had four honors, and looking across our titles we were thrilled to see we had a mix of genres, cultures, and genders represented in our winning titles and authors. Not intentional on our parts, but exciting to see nonetheless.
​
Our work was not yet done, but the next part was fun part. We got to put the stickers on the winning books! We all cheered as I placed the shiny gold sticker on our winning title, March: Book Three. The cheers continued as I placed a shiny silver sticker on our honor books, Asking for It, The Passion of Dolssa, Scythe, and The Sun is Also a Star. Finally, with the help of committee members, I filled out the forms and wrote annotations for our winners. It was time to sleep and celebrate.

​On Sunday afternoon, the day before the awards were officially announced, we got to call the winners and let them know the grand news. We gathered again behind a closed door and cheered each and every winner, when they answered the phone that is. It took quite a few tries to reach some of our winners, but we were determined. With smiles on our faces, and mouths zipped shut, we reentered the world, waiting patiently for Monday morning when the awards were announced. When we heard the gasps and cheers from the conference attendees filling the large room, we knew we had succeeded in a job well done.

​Once again Georgia McBride has helped me gain access to the voice of another author. Her company, Georgia McBride Media Group, has a cast of interesting authors. Georgia has been a good friend of Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday blog and I have happily host blog by some of the authors she publishes. You can find previous post by Jennifer Bardsley here and by Chris Lebetter here. This week Georgia has connected me with Justin Joschko who will have his book released in May. Hopefully, this post will help create a buzz.

​We’ve always been a little obsessed with the end of the world.
 
From Ragnarok to Revelations, many of our early myths and narratives feature detailed ruminations on the apocalypse, how it will occur, and what will happen to the poor beleaguered souls forced to endure it.
 
That obsession hasn’t gone away—a quick glance over the movies and novels of the last fifty years offers a smorgasbord of potential Armageddons, from natural disasters to alien invasion to species-ending plagues—but it has shifted. From their origins as mythic or religious projections of the future fate of our souls, stories of the apocalypse have become more focused on the calamity’s earthly aftermath. Rather than serve as the climax, the apocalyptic event acts as the prelude (think The Stand) or backstory, happening perhaps decades or centuries before the story began (think The Chrysalids). The apocalyptic story became, in effect, the post-apocalyptic story.
 
My novel, Yellow Locust, is in many ways a work of post-apocalyptic fiction. Set in the barren plains of a starved and dying continent, it portents a bleak and hardscrabble future for its protagonists, Selena and Simon Flood, who must travel through the wastes to the west coast, where the last bastion of civilization remains. However, as I wrote, I found myself drawing on another tradition: the dystopia. 

While fleshing out their backstory, I discovered (or decided, though in honesty it felt more like the former) that Selena and Simon are fleeing New Canaan, a tyrannical state that has conquered the eastern seaboard and threatens to overrun the entire continent. The more I thought and wrote about New Canaan, the more parallels I drew, not with post-apocalyptic stories, but with stories of dystopian societies, where the protagonists struggled against a mighty and repressive government. Books like The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451

In Yellow Locust, despotism takes a number of forms. It looms from the book’s outset in the distant menace of New Canaan—a regime that, while situated hundreds of miles to the east, never feels as far off as Selena and Simon would like. It also takes a kinder face in the nameless Mayor of Fallowfield, the seemingly benevolent overseer of a bucolic oasis amidst the poisoned plains. Unlike his New Canaanite counterparts, The Mayor adopts a friendly, almost paternal tone to Selena and Simon, playing on their insecurities and setting one against the other. If New Canaan takes inspiration from the brutal repression of Orwell’s Oceania, then Fallowfield draws more from the false utopia of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where conditioning and narcotics render the populous tame and malleable. 

​Post-Apocalypse and Dystopia
 
As I juggled these two genres, I started to realise that, far from being incompatible, they present something of a shared vision, albeit one from different vantage points of time and place. After all, it’s in the wake of environmental disaster that Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead rises to enslave the titular handmaids in The Handmaid’s Tale, while the second half of Stephen King’s The Stand involves Randall Flagg’s efforts to build a despotic regime in Nevada. Tyranny proceeds from chaos, and the greater the chaos, the crueler the tyranny. Nazi Germany couldn’t have formed without the poverty and rage that preceded it, just like Randall Flagg couldn’t build his empire until Captain Trips swiped his terrible sickle through America.
 
The essential message of both genres seems to be this: if enough humans remain alive to form a society, then a society will eventually form.  As a species, we’re drawn together by the innate magnetism of our common evolution, our simian urge for companionship and hierarchy. In this, we undergo a sort of inverted entropy, a progression from chaos into order. Whether a novel is classified as post-apocalyptic or dystopian depends, in many cases, where along this process we join the narrative. In Yellow Locust’s case, we meet our heroes squarely in the middle, with a dystopian coast threatening to swallow the ruins of a post-apocalyptic heartland.

​Big Brother, Little Brother
 
It’s perhaps not surprising that that post-apocalyptic and dystopian themes appear prominently in YA literature. Many of the genre’s biggest sellers have taken place in worlds ravaged by war, famine, or environmental destruction (The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner are all good examples). The state of the world presented in these books varies, but the governments that arise from them are never just or democratic ones. Indeed, even the Harry Potter series flirts with dystopia in its final books, when Voldemort seizes power and Hogwarts becomes a re-education center, with death eaters doing their best impressions of gestapo agents.

​Why does the premise of dystopia resonate with young readers? I haven’t been a young reader in quite a while, but I can remember well enough to venture a guess. Adolescence is a time when many of us begin to develop a broader view of the world outside our family homes. We start our first jobs, find our first relationships, and get our first glimpse of adulthood cresting the horizon. This transition creates a lot of tension, as the rules imposed on us in childhood begin to chafe. It’s no surprise then that so many young adults can sympathise with teenage protagonists battling against a totalitarian regime. Comparing your boss to Voldemort or Randall Flagg might be a little histrionic, but those feeling of being misunderstood and unappreciated make the struggles of Katniss Everdeen or Harry Potter all the more relatable.
 
But kids aren’t the only ones reading post-apocalyptic or dystopian fiction. It would be naïve—and patronizing—to assume that their interest in these themes stems from nothing more than adolescent angst. We should remember that we’re living in an era of Fake News, where trust in the government is virtually non-existent, where lies from a head of state are not only accepted but actually celebrated as a valid political tactic, where tribalism has half a nation seeing the other half as less than human.  
 
Will interest in these genres fade? I imagine it’ll ebb and flow between the mainstream and quieter tributaries, but I don’t suspect it’ll ever vanish altogether. We all fear death in one way or another, and the apocalyptic story is a tale of death writ large—the extinguishing not of a person, but of a people. And the dystopia presents an even grimmer image. One where death, so long feared, becomes almost desirable, in that it represents something lost and precious: freedom.
 
We’ll keep telling ourselves such stories until we evict these fears from our hearts. And unfortunately, I don’t’ see that happening any time soon.

Once again, Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday is focusing on the work of students in a Young Adult Literature course. (Remember, if your students are doing something interesting, I want to hear about it.) This time, Mary Warner shares how her students discuss YA novels that have been reproduced as films. Certainly, there are famous examples from Heidi to The Outsiders. Many of us have books that we would like to see as movies and some of us love books that we wish Hollywood would have left alone. For me it was Disney’s The Sword in the Stone. The movie is taken from the first section of T. H. White’s tetralogy compiled in the single volume entitled The Once and Future King. The animated movie is an even more romanticized version of the King Arthur legend. Some how I found the book before the movie and it was my first narrative introduction to this legend. The movie was very different from the book—and less satisfying. I was more taken with the book and since the fourth grade I have been reading versions of this legend in verse and narrative ever since. I am sure we will continue to engage in  "the book is better than the film" vs "no, the film is better than the book" debate for years to come.

​In this post, Mary offers us six examples of how her students have compared a YA novel to its transition to film. This is Mary’s third post in the blog. In her first post, Discovering (Rediscovering) Karen Hesse’s Witness and Its Multi-genre Potential, she also shows us how she helps students see robust potential for YA as a creative tool in the classroom. In the second post, “Making Their Voices Heard: Students in YA Literature Courses Articulate ‘Why YA?’”, she shares how her students frame various rationales for incorporating YA into their curricula.
Thanks Mary

​In the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San José State University, the YA Literature course is required for those in the Prep for Teaching concentration; the course as an upper division election increasingly attracts majors from Creative Writing, Literature, and Professional/Technical Writing.  In an effort to design assignments more appropriate to these majors, I created the Book to Film project.  Obviously, in the increasingly visual and media world of teens, the project is apt for future teachers as well.  The Book to Film project builds on the class study of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, which includes the film version directed by Jessica Sharzer.  The Sustained Silent Writing that opens the class session on Speak asks “which scene(s) from book for you, seems essential to be in the film.  We also discuss the aspects of film that can contribute to or challenge the transition from book to film.  

​For the actual assignment, I provide the students with a list of YA novels that have been made into films.  They are to select a book (it could be the same as the selection for their Book Talk if a film version is available) from a list of Book to Film options; read the novel and view the film version; then write a 3-5 page-paper analyzing the film version’s presentation regarding consistency with the novel.  What follows are analyses of 6 books to film written by Miriam Malca, Ryan Madison, Steven Le, Shelby Escott, Stevey Beall, and Taylor von Kugelgen, YA literature students of Fall 2017.  

The Holocaust has been a delicate and divisive topic since its end in 1945. From media coverage to historical documentation, the terrors of the Holocaust have captivated the minds of countless people. Novels and films about the Holocaust have been created in an attempt to explain or understand the atrocities committed during this time, with varying degrees of success. In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, John Boyne attempts to tell this story through the eyes of a young boy, in a unique yet unsuccessful attempt at approaching this topic from a different perspective. Mark Herman is better able to portray this story through the visual medium of his film. The most marked difference between Boyne’s book and Herman’s film is the level of contrast: contrasts between the adults’ realities and the child’s naivety is necessary in order to grasp the true gravity of this story.   
The book is told from a third person limited point of view that heavily favors the main character; the story is told through the eyes of Bruno, the nine-year-old son of a Nazi military official. Boyne uses child-like language when referring to certain elements of the story – “The Fury” rather than Führer, “Out-With” rather than Auschwitz, and so on – in order to illustrate Bruno’s naivety and innocence with regards to the conflicts raging around him (2, 24 this and all other quotations in this paper are taken from The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne). Telling this story through the eyes of a child softens the details, adding a more human aspect to the harsh realities of the Holocaust. However, in the novel, this is not done successfully: by limiting the point of view to that of Bruno and only Bruno, Boyne softens reality too much, resulting in a novel that glosses over important details, and a story that misses the mark in terms of impact. Bruno’s narration is too unreliable, a detail that director, Mark Herman corrects in his film adaptation. In the film version of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Bruno’s naivety and innocence are contrasted by the stark imagery of Nazi Germany: the film opens on a public square filled with Nazi flags as Bruno and his friends run and play, literally showing the convergence of adult reality and childhood innocence (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 00:01:00 – 00:01:40).
The contrasts provided in the film take the simple, one-dimensional characters of the book and add detail and dimension to them. Boyne’s treatments of Bruno and his sister, Gretel, are overly simplistic. In attempting to illustrate the degree of innocence and naivety in these characters Boyne portrays them as slow, almost stupid, and more immature than they should be, considering their ages. As previously mentioned, nine-year-old Bruno has trouble with Nazi concepts that would be common in his life, such as the phrase “Heil, Hitler” and the Nazi rhetoric relating to Jewish people (54, 182). Likewise, Gretel is shown to be quite simple, particularly in their conversation about their move to the countryside: she defines “the foreseeable future” as meaning “weeks from now…Perhaps as long as three” (15). At twelve -year - old, Gretel should understand complex concepts more deeply, as she does in the film.  Gretel is shown as very one-dimensional in the book, with Bruno simply referring to her as “a Hopeless Case” (3). The film shows Gretel’s transformation from a little girl into a young woman, not only through her discarding of her old dolls in favor of Nazi propaganda posters, but in her reactions to Bruno and her parents, as well as her interactions with Lieutenant Kotler (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 00:37:00).
Similarly, in the book, Bruno’s impression – and therefore the only impression conveyed – of his mother is that of a woman who takes frequent “afternoon naps” and drinks many “medicinal sherries” (150, 167). In the film, Bruno’s mother, Elsa, is a more well-developed character, who struggles with the inhumanity that her husband’s job requires, causing her to feel depressed and to become physically gaunter as the film progresses (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas). Elsa is unhappy living near Auschwitz and instigates an argument with her husband, expressing her distress and depression. In the book, Bruno overhears snippets of an argument between his parents that he does not understand; in the film, the entire argument is shown, with Bruno entering the room and discovering his crying mother and angry father (186-187) (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 00:49:10 – 00:50:10). Bruno is distraught and confused, appropriately highlighting his innocence through this contrast, displaying the extent of the disagreement.
The visual contrasts made throughout Herman’s film provide information that the book does not. The stark differences between Bruno and his family, and the Jewish inmates that work in their house – such as their waiter, Pavel – illustrate the important differences between Jews and non-Jews in Nazi Germany in a way that is inadequately emphasized in the novel (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 00:15:17). In the film, Bruno sees a propaganda clip highlighting the happy lifestyle of Jews within the concentration camps (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 01:01:55 – 01:03:54). In this scene, Bruno’s father and the other SS officers laugh and applaud the film, while Bruno looks confused as he attempts to reconcile the differences between what he sees in the clip with what he sees in real life. Once inside the camp, Bruno cannot help but compare the images in the propaganda clip to the harsh realities that he experiences (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 01:20:31 – 01:22:11). This visual contrast between the propaganda clip and the reality of the camp makes a greater impact on the viewers and on Bruno himself. In the book, Bruno compares the empty, dull camp with the vibrant cafés and public spaces of Berlin, noticing the differences between lifestyles rather than highlighting the dangerous lies of Nazi propaganda (207-208).
​
The effective use of contrast in the film is not limited to the visual, but also encompasses the verbal. The contrast in dialogue between the children and the parents is a means of emphasizing Bruno’s innocence while still providing all of the necessary information. In the film, the ideas that Bruno has about the camps and the people in them are clarified by his parents’ own discussions (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 00:16:24 – 00:18:17). In the novel, the dialogue is limited to Bruno’s inner and outer monologue, his conversations with Shmuel – the equally innocent Jewish boy with whom Bruno connects – and the snippets of adult conversations that do not always make sense (26, 30, 52-54). The contrasts between Bruno’s conversations with other children like Gretel or Shmuel and the conversations between the adult characters builds an understanding of events and brings a sense of clarity to the film that is severely lacking in the novel.

Contrasts serve as a means of highlighting important aspects of the story and increasing the impact of the events that take place. This is particularly evident in the different endings of the film and the novel, illustrating the importance of contrast in creating an ending that challenges and captivates an audience long after the end of the piece. Boyne’s ending is anti-climactic: the nineteenth chapter ends with Bruno and Shmuel about to die in the gas chamber, then concludes with a long-winded epilogue about how Bruno is never found, how Elsa and Gretel return to Berlin while their father remains in Auschwitz, only to finally discover, one year after his actual death, how Bruno was killed (212-216). The ending of the film is much more satisfying. Scenes of Bruno entering the camp, walking around with Shmuel, and entering the gas chamber are contrasted with scenes of Bruno’s family realizing that he is missing and frantically searching for him; his death is punctuated by a long, silent shot of the gas chamber’s thick, metal door (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 01:19:51 – 01:28:03). The film concludes with Bruno’s father realizing too late that Bruno has died in the gas chambers, his mother and sister crying in absolute anguish, and one final shot of the gas chamber doors as the camera pans out to show the rows and rows of discarded striped uniforms belonging to all of the murdered inmates (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 01:29:03 – 01:30:16). The contrasts between the innocent scenes of Bruno trying to help Shmuel find his father and the frantic search scenes elevate the importance of Bruno’s death. These two sets of scenes culminate at the same point: the gas chamber doors, illustrating the final, tragic meeting place of Bruno’s innocence and his reality. Therefore, the convergence of adult reality and childhood innocence in the first scene of the film is mirrored in the last scene. 
 
The contrasts that Herman brings to Boyne’s story are vital in the development of the main characters and in the presentation of the plot. Bruno’s confusion and frustration build as his naivety comes into contact with the stark reality of the Holocaust, emphasizing the tragedy of his untimely death and allowing a full exposé of the horrors of the Nazi regime. The contrasts used in the film create a more impactful ending than that of the book, resulting in a story that resonates more strongly.
Works Cited
Boyne, John. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: A Fable. Random House Group Ltd., 2006.
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Dir. Mark Herman. Miramax, 2008. Film.  

 
The doctor was twisting something at the back of Ender’s head. Suddenly a pain stabbed through him like a needle from his neck to his groin. . . The doctor was trembling; his voice shook as he spoke, “They leave these things in the kids for three years, what do they expect? We could have switched him off, do you realize that? We could have unplugged his brain for all time. (3-4)

In a way, this quote from the first pages of the book gives all the information any person needs. It says that Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game is not a happy story. There is pain, risk, loss of control, and a society that has lost the ability to choose safer options. More than anything else, though, is the sudden realization that the adults have just as little control as the youth do. The book is set in a future of military design, as humanity’s survival is deemed under threat from a second alien invasion. The book goes over frustration in many forms, in a way that young adults and above can understand and learn from. It is a fantastic book that calls for confronting hard truths. But as great as the book may be, its movie version falls short. In a way, this is nothing new and happens to most great works. What usually happens is that the theme is cut out in favor of capitalizing on the more enticing points, such as space battle training, the typical romance trope, a character stripped of everything good about the person he is, and sprinkled with a memorable cast. Ender’s Game, the movie, is no different, and it shows its every mistake from the very beginning.

Rather than focusing on Ender as he is being prepped by the doctor to take out the observation device in his neck, the movie focuses on the battle for Earth, as alien ships fly in the sky and fighter pilots desperately defend their homes. It’s eye-catching, full of action, and represents absolutely nothing about what the book is about. Instead of conveying that the main character almost dies in the first scene, outside of anyone’s control, this scene and the book as a whole are treated like an action sci-fi film. This very scene, where the device in pulled out and Ender leaves the room with a sore neck in the next shot, is left out of the film. All of the substance is taken away, and there is nothing else left besides surface. Yes, the book is a science fiction story, but it wouldn’t be so successful if it didn’t have something else inside of it.
Almost every teenager feels frustration, whether it be because of family, loss, or from having choices taken away from them. Choice is something that is routinely taken from Ender as he is manipulated by the two figures observing him in the book. Colonel Graff and Major Anderson repeatedly discuss their observation of Ender at the beginning of every chapter, as they discuss their various strategies and eventually argue over the ramifications of their manipulations. In the movie, these two are set at odds and eventually the Major quits because of the Colonel’s uncaring behavior towards Ender. In the book, these two are almost equals, both drenched in the mire of their schemes, knowing they are doing terrible things and still pushing forward. They are making hard choices that the protagonist is hopeless to stop. They are the cause of all of Ender’s trials, forcing him into one altercation after another, where he ends up causing the deaths of two other boys.

Another thing that the movie elides is that both of the young boys who Ender defends himself from die. The first is brushed aside, while Bonzo is placed in a comma. The movie doesn’t allow people to die, as if it forgets that the conclusion of the movie ends in the death of an entire race, which turns out to not have been their enemy after all. This is just another example of where the movie doesn’t explore all the ramifications.

Family is an extremely important concept, as it drives Ender’s progress further than any other force in the book. The movie shows the older sister, Valentine, as a simple shoulder to cry on. She talks to Ender with love and calms him down. Peter, the older brother and the eldest, is just mean and antagonistic. However, both of these aspects are brought down to their most crude forms. Valentine is actually a genius in terms of emotions and psychological analysis. She knows exactly what to say to people to make them feel happy or crushed. This is why she is such a pillar of support to Ender and why she was called to convince him, after his reclusion on the lake, to go to commander school. As Ender flat-out gives up, pushed to the breaking point, Valentine says exactly what he needs to hear to get him back up. Then there’s Peter, who can’t be better explained than with his introduction. As he “plays” with Ender in a mock fight, he gets him to the ground and says, “‘I could kill you like this’ Peter whispered. ‘Just press and press until you’re dead’” (12). This is cruelty and violence wrapped into one, which makes it all the more understandable when Ender says he’s afraid of becoming like Peter.

The actors chosen in the movie also diminish much of the book’s plot. The famous Harrison Ford is playing as Colonel Graff, while Major Anderson is played by a woman named Viola Davis. The decision behind these cast choices represents another problem in most adaptations. Graff, in the book, loves Ender dearly, despite how hard he pushes him. He’s grown with the boy and yet he forces himself to break him, mold him, all while loving him. It’s similar to Ender’s philosophy toward his enemies, where the moment he defeats them, destroys them, he loves them and understands them on a fundamental level. Anderson is analytical, a man who sees the way Ender’s mind is forming and understands that they are doing terrible things to him. He disagrees with Graff because he doesn’t think Ender can make it, while Graff trusts the boy. The movie changes Graff into being the overly strict sergeant with only the drive to do what’s necessary. Anderson is played by a woman and is made into the maternal, caring figure who tries to fight for human rights. There’s no reason to have done this, when the original characters are so much more captivating in all their flaws and talents. They both know that they are doing horrible things and do what they know they will regret. Then there is Bonzo’s character, played by Moisés Aires. This destroys any semblance I had of a suspension of disbelief. I’ve grown up with this actor on the Disney channel as the funny side character, so when I see him try to act serious, trying to branch out, he only seems out of place. They should have re-cast for Bonzo because that character is extremely integral to Ender’s development, and it can be jarring to see an actor play a role he/she is unused to.
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The book and the movie are different enough that they almost tell two different stories. Incredibly important details are left out, like Valentine and Peter taking over the world’s government while Ender is training, or the court case against Colonel Graff for the murder of two youths, and most importantly the time dilation. The movie goes through its story in the span of months, while the book takes years to finish its story. The stakes are so much higher in the book because of how Ender feels and just how his situation has backed him into a corner. The movie guts all of the important themes in the book, like impossible decisions with no right answer, death and murder, and a family that drives Ender to his highest and lowest points. The movie is suddenly left with a basic sci-fi story, with no underlying theme to take away. The last scene in the book says it all, as Ender finds and cares for the last surviving queen of the alien race he exterminates, nominates himself as the speaker for the dead. After all his frustration and so many betrayals, Ender finds his purpose in righting the wrongs of his actions. The movie leaves with a cliff hanger after he finds the egg. Ender is still just a child, so his promise to protect his charge is idealistic at best and doesn’t seem to have the weight of his position behind it. The movie is a shell of what is a fantastical journey of discovery and struggle with a life that is not in Ender’s control, much like the journey from youth to adulthood. It is, after all, a piece of young adult literature.

Lois Lowry’s The Giver tells the intriguing story of Jonas, a twelve-year-old boy who lives in a colorless commune that finds peace in “Sameness,” and then discovers difference when he inherits memories of a distance past from “The Giver.” The novel explores many themes, such as the divisive nature of love opposed to the unifying nature of apathy, the value of freedom versus peace, and overcoming isolation. Phillip Noyce’s film adaptation of the novel captures literal visual elements well enough, such as through faithful usage of black and white in its interpretation of Lois Lowry’s dystopian “Community,” but fails to actually stay true to the original novel’s exploration of the aforementioned themes. The film makes many deviations from the novel, and though there will always be differences in the adaptations of stories between mediums, the film of The Giver goes beyond just superficial changes and loses much of its original meaning in the transition. The Giver’s film adaptation is not a complete failure, but its many additions and omissions from the original novel create a confused story that fails to stay focused on Jonas’ personal journey.
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An immediately noticeable change to The Giver in its film adaptation is the character of Jonas and his classmates being sixteen years of age rather than being twelve years old. This is not a superficial change and significantly changes Jonas’ character and his journey into adolescence. In the novel, in addition to the isolation Jonas suffers as “The Receiver,” he must also deal with the growing pains of adolescence. For example, in the novel, Jonas experiences an erotic dream about Fiona due to the onset of puberty, “feelings that his mother called Stirrings” (Lowry 36), and takes pills in order to get rid of his sexual and romantic desires. The film touches upon the surface of this subject in the scene where Jonas and Fiona sled together and are reminded “that it is impolite to touch Community members outside your family unit” (Noyce), but then uses the relationship between Jonas and Fiona to create a romantic subplot instead, failing to capture the confusion and isolation that Jonas suffers in the novel when trying to understand his feelings. Noyce instead chooses to provide a clear answer about the nature of Jonas’ feelings for Fiona and the value of these feelings by creating a romantic relationship between the two characters.

Ambiguity about traditionally positive features of humanity, such as love and family, is maintained throughout the novel. The first memory Jonas is given in both the novel and the film is the memory of sledding, a very positive memory, but the film does not include the scene in which Jonas receives his first negative memory, a sledding accident where “He fell with his leg twisted under him, and could hear the crack of bone” (Lowry 104). The very first joy that Jonas experiences in the thrill of sledding also comes with the possibility of pain or even death should an accident occur, and this theme of choice allowing for both happiness and suffering recurs throughout the novel, especially when Jonas and The Giver decide to give the Community back its memories, choosing freedom over the compulsive peace that the Community enforces. In the film this ambiguity is briefly mentioned, but is not deeply explored; Jonas accidentally receives memories of war, as opposed to the novel where he receives them to help The Giver who asks Jonas to “‘take some of the pain’” (Lowry 113), and decides that the joys he sees in memories of the past are not worth the horrors of war and whatever else mankind may be capable of given the opportunity. This moment of hesitation is quickly ended minutes later in the film when Jonas witnesses a baby undergoing “Release,”and decides that the murder of war is still present as “Release.” While the novel considers the possible consequences of Jonas and The Giver’s quest to bring freedom of choice back to the Community, the film presents freedom as the ultimate good and characterizes the fear of the dangers of freedom as irrational.
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Not content to just simplify important themes that are present in the novel, the film adaptation of The Giver also makes an effort to unnecessarily complicate the narrative. Lois Lowry focuses on Jonas’ personal coming-of-age struggles as The Receiver and the isolation he suffers from his friends and family forces Jonas to rely on his own strength throughout the novel. Noyce confuses the narrative by introducing a romantic subplot between Jonas and Fiona where Fiona struggles with her feelings and a sudden reintroduction of Asher at the climax of the film where Asher places his faith in Jonas. These various subplots only take away from screen-time that could have been spent examining the difficult decisions that Jonas and The Giver must make, and in fact the novel does originally spend much of its time dealing with the issue of whether or not rebelling against the Community is the right thing to do. The film adaptation changes the climax of the story from a contemplative and thematic journey in which Jonas and Gabriel must find the strength to free humanity to a Hollywood action sequence that does little to inspire even the cheap thrills it goes for, much less provide a thought provoking ending for the audience.

The Giver is not an entirely awful movie, and at times the film’s visual elements help portray the atmosphere and aesthetic of The Community in a way that words alone cannot: the use of color as Jonas and the Community reclaim their perception of it takes advantage of film as a visual medium and the sanitized appearance of the Community is reasonably well done. Still, the film’s attempt at creating a sense of foreboding surveillance did not quite live up to the oppressive atmosphere of the novel, which is disappointing as there are other dystopian films such as Minority Report provide excellent examples of how to achieve such an atmosphere. Ultimately, even with some strengths in the visual direction of the film, Noyce fails to understand what makes The Giver such an engaging novel. Changes from the novel that may seem innocuous at first, from Jonas’ age to the additional roles given to Fiona and Asher in the plot, all pile up as the film progresses and the final product is a distilled, shallow summary of the ideas Lois Lowry presents in her novel.

Works Cited
Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Noyce, Phillip, director. The Giver. The Weinstein Company, 2014.

Four children enter into the world of Narnia through the back of a wardrobe, the experiences of each differing from character to character, culminating in four individual stories being told within a single plot. As a novel, C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is told through a third person perspective, encapsulating the thoughts and actions of each character, yet with limitations pertaining to whose point of view the account is experienced from in any given moment. In transitioning this story from page to film, director Andrew Adamson employs the opportunities that the new medium affords him, representing the original plot from different perspectives in order to give the audience more of the story than is achievable within the traditionally written medium. In doing so, Adamson also creates additional scenes which serve to enhance individual character development.  These deviate from the original plot but serve to contribute to the overall story as opposed to detracting from it.  

​The first supplementary scene that Adamson adds takes place in the very beginning of the movie, depicting the Pevensies’ flight from the war-torn city of London. In this scene, Peter and Edmund Pevensie are immediately pitted against one another, setting up the premise for Edmund’s ultimate betrayal of his siblings to the White Witch later on in the novel. Furthermore, the scene sets the tone for the beginning of the story, beginning with danger, suspense, and realism, which serves to contrast with the introduction to the land of Narnia, which is full of color, life, and fantasy. These elements that separate Narnia from reality are enhanced by the dark tone of the cinematic prologue. The train ride from the city into the country pushes the separation between the manmade construction of war and the fantastic and natural world of Narnia in a move that reflects the Romantic period’s preference for nature over industry.

In passing through the closet, the Pevensies part ways as Edmund seeks out the White Witch and the rest of the siblings continue to seek out Aslan. In the original novel, this progression is treated with brevity which could have been reflected in the film with a montage or something similar. Adamson, though, chooses this opportunity to begin developing Peter’s character by introducing the Witch’s wolf early on in order to foreshadow their later confrontation. To do this, Adamson gives the wolf more individual agency as well as a sense of importance by giving him a name, Maugrim. By creating a scene to facilitate Peter and Maugrim’s first confrontation, Adamson creates a subplot between the two, emphasized by their repartee and Peter’s initial failure to participate in the battle, choosing instead to break the ice and escape, leaving the wolves alive and creating potential for a rematch. Because Peter cannot bring himself to fight in this first encounter, his victory over Maugrim later on by the river feels that much more triumphant in comparison.

Before Peter’s rematch, though, is yet another added scene between Susan and Lucy Pevensie. In the book, Lewis writes, “‘Meanwhile, let the feast be prepared. Ladies, take these daughters of Eve to the pavilion and minister to them,’” a quote spoken by Aslan and the only indication of what the two sisters do while Aslan speaks to Peter concerning his future as high king of Narnia (125, This and all other quotes featured in this work are taken from C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe). Adamson, however, takes advantage of this small phrase and the following scene where Peter first bloodies his sword to build a scene in which the sisters’ relationship is explored. By creating tension between the older and younger sisters, Adamson gives their characters more depth as compared to the relatively flat characters in the book. Although this scene does not appear in the novel, it is described in the original plot within the novelization and so is not totally divergent from Lewis’ writing, but takes advantage of the third person point of view in that Adamson adds the account at the river as told from Susan and Lucy’s perspective. Additionally, by depicting the sisters as bickering and with an imperfect relationship, there is less of a need for the suspension of disbelief because that realistic element within the magical world grounds the characters just enough to make them believable as well as interesting.

A final scene which Adamson adds to the film adaptation is that of Peter and Edmund’s charge into battle against the White Witch’s forces, a pivotal moment in the movie which is not depicted or even necessary in the book. Lewis, in the original novel, focusses his attention on the revival of the statues in the Witch’s home, following Susan, Lucy, and Aslan after his triumphant resurrection at the stone table. Meanwhile, Peter and Edmund begin the battle for Narnia, but what they are thinking or feeling is lost to the limited third person point of view. The moment the reader encounters the battle is in media res, as it is written, “There stood Peter and Edmund and all the rest of Aslan’s army fighting desperately against the crowd of horrible creatures whom she had seen last night; only now, in the light of day, they looked even stranger and more evil and more deformed” (173). Adamson remedies this in his iteration, depicting Peter and Edmund on the edge of battle, coming to terms with what they are about to do, which displays their growing maturity as individuals. For Peter, who cannot bring himself to raise his sword against another, this role of general in Aslan’s army illustrates that he has proved himself and has earned his title, which is indicated in his soldier’s loyalty and trust in his leadership. For Edmund, his willingness to follow his brother’s lead and defer to his advanced experience shows that he has learned humility and to place his trust on others instead of relying on himself.

While C. S. Lewis chose what scenes to depict and what had to be sacrificed in the name of story and plot, Adamson picks up where Lewis leaves off, filling in the gaps and telling the untold stories of the Pevensie siblings. The transition from book to film usually results in cut scenes and missing moments, making The Chronicles of Narnia film adaptation a welcome exception from the norm. Because Adamson takes scenes only mentioned in the book, utilizing them to expand on character development, his creative divergences from the original maintain a sense of accuracy while increasing the amount of individual character development. In this way, Adamson’s film can be considered more of a companion piece than an alternative retelling of the original.

Works Cited
Lewis, C. S. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. New York: Scholastic, 1995.
Adamson, Andrew, Ann Peacock, Georgie Henley, Skandar Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, and C S. Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia. Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 2006.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky is a story about love, loss, relationships, self-discovery, and compassion. The novel is written in the format of a series of letters written by a young boy named Charlie to an anonymous person. Charlie begins each letter “Dear friend,” and chooses to keep his identity a secret. The letters describe instances and experiences from his first year in high school, with periodic asides about his early childhood. Early in the book it is revealed that Charlie’s best friend, Michael kills himself the year before. Charlie’s journey through his freshman year is a rollercoaster of emotion and experience, where he finds himself both confined and liberated by his relationships. At the end of the series of letters, it becomes clear that Charlie has been spending time in a mental institution for trying to kill himself after remembering how he was molested as a child by his aunt. The story centers around Charlie and his group of friends, exploring elements of each of their lives and how the relate to one another. Charlie’s story comes to a resolve when he learns how to find happiness within his friendships and his family and to live a life that isn’t consumed by his past. Chbosky’s film adaptation of The Perks of Being a Wallflower serves as a parallel to the book, bringing certain “lost scenes” in the book to life on screen. The movie and book support each other and create a more enriching experience of the narrative, that neither one is able to deliver separately.

The film adaptation of Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower is actually written and directed by Chbosky himself. This is a significant detail because all of the creative choices made in the movie that differ from the book are conscious decisions that Chbosky makes in order to develop the movie alongside the written narrative. The movie opens up with narrations from Charlie’s letters introducing his new school and a few of the central characters from the story. The movie only mentions Michael and Charlie’s relationship with him once, in a conversation Charlie has with Sam. I find this to be the most interesting part about the film version because in the book, Michael’s story seems to contribute to much of the central plot line. However, Chbosky does this to make the story as a whole easier to follow through the movie. The book contains multiple plot lines that are revealed in pieces through a stream-of-consciousness writing style that Charlie uses in his letters. In doing this, Chbosky establishes Charlie’s state of mind and presents the idea that he has a hard time communicating his thoughts and feelings. For the film version, Chbosky chooses to focus mainly on the central plot line of the story, Charlie’s struggle through high school, revealing the hard-hitting details toward the end in a more organized fashion. This change in deliverance allows the movie to unfold in a more dramatic way that wouldn’t work as well on paper.

Charlie’s stream of consciousness writing style is crucial to understanding him as a character. In the movie, this way of thinking is only presented once, when he is high and talking to Patrick at a party. Throughout the rest of the movie, Charlie’s character is understood through his nervous or reserved body language, and his quiet nature. The use of narration in the movie serves a different purpose than what might be expected. Naturally, the film version relies on narration only to deliver of Charlie’s thoughts or feelings that are expressed through his letters in the book. However, the narrations included in the film also serve the purpose of revealing details about the other characters that Charlie describes through experiences in his letters in the book. For example, in one of his letters, Charlie mentions that he thinks Mary Elizabeth’s haircut is something she will regret in the future; in the movie, Chbosky chooses to have Charlie say this directly to her at a party. Alternately, information that Charlie communicates about his friends in his letters is depicted as full scenes in the movie. These lost scenes that are written about in the book come to light in the movie to give the viewer a more complete understanding of the chronological order of things. The film version utilizes Charlie’s revealed experimentation with drugs to compose scenes that communicate the honesty that Charlie reveals in his letters in the book.

The movie version changes certain details about some of the characters like Mr. Anderson. In the book, Mr. Anderson has a girlfriend and dreams of writing plays to be performed on Broadway. In the movie, Mr. Anderson is married and is a successful writer who has already written plays that have been shown in New York. Chbosky decides to make Mr. Anderson a character who can be seen as more steady and reliable in the movie. The book offers the impression that Charlie relies on Mr. Anderson a lot for an unspoken kind of reassurance. The more conventional depiction of him in the movie gives the same impression without having to make Charlie over-explain his role. Mr. Anderson’s character is also important because he delivers the famously quoted line, “we accept the love we think we deserve.”

The truth about Charlie’s relationship with his aunt Helen isn’t revealed until the very end of the book; similarly, the film version doesn’t reveal the full story until the end either. However, the film version provides flashbacks throughout the movie that coincide with related scenes. The flashbacks of Aunt Helen develop during the movie but don’t reveal all of the necessary details. The flashbacks serve the purpose of mirroring the visions Charlie experiences and contribute to the developing theme of Charlie’s mental health in the story. The guilt Charlie feels for Aunt Helen’s death is as a result of his secret hatred for her because of what she did to him. Holidays are a difficult time for Charlie because they remind him of his aunt Helen. The movie depicts Charlie’s discomfort during holiday scenes to reveal the internal conflict he faces from his relationship with Aunt Helen.

One of the most crucial scenes in The Perks of Being a Wallflower is the tunnel scene. In this scene Charlie feels the most connected to his friends and to himself. Chbosky honors this scene by depicting it purely in the film. The film version ends with a similar tunnel scene, in which Charlie is standing outside the truck. This scene provides a full circle effect of the story in which Charlie goes from feeling happy to externalizing his happiness.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is largely a story about empathy and growth. Charlie grows through the letters he writes and comes to the conclusion that he wants to be happy at the end of the book. The film version provides an important line that isn’t heard in the book. Through one of the narrations, Charlie says, “I would hate for Sam to judge me based on what I used to be like.” This quote is indicative of the growth Charlie experiences throughout the story. The movie serves as a parallel to the book, focusing on different scenes, and depicting them in different creative lights. The movie and book function together to deliver a complete understanding of the whole of the plot and message that Chbosky wanted to communicate. 

​Released a mere ten months after Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries hit the shelves, the 2001 film of the same name came snapping at the heels of a bestseller that would continue on to see seventeen direct sequels over fifteen years. Starring Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews, the film shares the same basic premise as its source material: the life of high school student Mia is changed overnight when she discovers that she is the sole heir to the throne of the country of Genovia – but the similarities end there. In addition to numerous aesthetic changes, simplification of plot devices, and further character development, the film focuses almost entirely on Mia’s new royal responsibilities, thereby turning a story about self-acceptance into a more conventional story about facing one’s fears.

As if to signal that The Princess Diaries the film is its own, independent entity from The Princess Diaries the book, the filmmakers made a number of surface-level, aesthetic details during the adaptation process. Most characters’ names are changed: Mia Thermopolis Renaldo becomes Mia Thermopolis Renaldi, Lana Weinberger becomes Lana Thomas, and Boris the violin-playing Russian exchange student becomes Jeremiah the pink-haired stage magician. Other characters like Tina Hakim Baba, who is a great comfort to Mia during her falling-out with Lilly, are written out completely. Mia is aged up to her mid-teens, and the setting is relocated from New York City to San Francisco. She is given new hobbies, choir and rock-climbing, and is saving up money to have her antique car restored. As she is older, she is preparing for many “firsts”: her first car, her first romantic kiss. These “firsts” are more mature than book Mia’s “firsts,” which are generally more chaste and juvenile (for example, her first dance.) Similarly, instead of the school-sanctioned Cultural Diversity Dance, the film has Mia attending a beach party, sponsored by radio DJs and with relatively less adult supervision. Mia in the film has more agency, more independence, and is treated more like an adult than her book counterpart, who is in the midst of transitioning from preteen to teenager and not feeling very independent at all.

In order to clarify the themes of the story and tighten the plot to something more conventional for a coming-of-age comedy, many aspects of the narrative are rearranged and simplified in the film adaptation. In the novel, Mia is a typical awkward teenager, worried about her lack of assertiveness and passing her algebra class. These are largely internal struggles, easily conveyed through the diary format of the book, but trickier to depict in a more visual medium. While many films based on first person texts (Speak, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) utilize voiceover narration in order to maintain a level of intimacy with the narrator’s thoughts, the filmmakers of The Princess Diaries choose a third-person format. Much like streamers tied to air vents to show that air is blowing through, Mia’s insecurities are changed so that they can be understood with a glance; she is given a phobia of public speaking and public scrutiny so intense that she becomes physically ill. Fear of performing in front of one’s classmates, either in class or in sports, is something to which many teenagers can relate, with the added benefit of visual cues. It is also tied neatly into the dramatic structure of the film, as Mia’s final challenge of the film is to give a speech at a diplomatic function. She conquers her fear of public speaking in tandem with conquering her fear of royal responsibility, and so her two conflicts are developed and resolved together.
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Unlike the novel, which leaves several subplots unresolved for further books, the film leaves no loose ends. This is most evident in its treatment of Mia’s grandmother, Clarisse. Clarisse in the novel, called Grandmere by Mia, is stubborn and domineering and just a little bit terrorizing, and though she momentarily sides with Mia in the Cultural Diversity Dance debate, she is never redeemed. She is not quite a villain, but she does possess antagonistic qualities. Film Clarisse is a much more positive character to begin with, and she is given her own developmental arc as a character. Like her book counterpart, she struggles to understand her granddaughter, but unlike her book counterpart, she makes a concentrated effort to establish a better relationship, and in the end, has learned how to be a good grandmother to Mia rather than simply her queen. This brings an expected sense of catharsis to her character that the source material lacks. Similarly, while Clarisse is moved out of the antagonist range, the true antagonists – Josh, Lana, the “popular kids” – are more clearly defined as villains. Lana in particular is a manipulative, malicious, vindictive character in the film, so much so that in the ice cream scene – the only full scene that comes straight from the novel – even the adults around them seem to believe that Lana deserves it. In the novel, Mia is punished for her actions, and Lana never does much more than hurl thinly veiled insults.

The most fundamental difference between the novel and the film lies in the added emphasis and focus on Mia’s new role of princess. The novel can be described as a slice-of-life coming-of-age tale with a princess in it; the film is a princess tale with a modern spin. Part of this shift comes from the immediacy of Mia’s rule, in that she is not Philippe’s heir, but Clarisse’s in the film. Philippe has passed away from the cancer that in the novel renders him incapable of producing legitimate issue, leaving the grieving Queen of Genovia in desperate need of a new heir. Rather than the illegitimate child of the crown prince, she is the legitimate heir (as her parents are divorced) and next in line for the throne. This increases the stakes considerably, and so she not only loses control of her future career, or what college she will attend, or where she will live – she faces a great deal of responsibility in her near future. Large scenes are added where she must navigate diplomatic events, complete with a “scheming noble family attempting to usurp the throne” subplot. The narrative resources are reallocated to the princess plot, and even the conflicts in Mia’s San Francisco life are connected. As Mia is older in the film, about to get her driver’s license, her story involves a newfound sense of freedom and mobility. And with that freedom comes the freedom to choose, which is another thing that book-Mia lacks. She cannot choose to be a princess, just as she cannot choose who her mother dates or how big her feet are. Cabot’s story is about a girl learning to accept and find the good in that which she cannot control. In the film, Mia has nothing but choices, and with those choices come ramifications. Book-Mia denies the new developments in her life and tries to keep them secret in an attempt to keep things as they are, and as a result, she has a falling out with Lilly. Film-Mia’s communication problem is a non-issue, and when it looks like her keeping it a secret will strain her relationship with her best friend, she immediately tells Lilly the truth. As such, their fight comes from Mia’s choice to go to the beach party with Josh over going on a date with Michael and being on Lilly’s show. She learns very quickly of the ramifications of her choices and of the responsibility she now has to others. In the end, she is presented with two more choices: to accept or forfeit her title, and to face the consequences of her choice head-on or to run away. The “moral” of the film is that fear is also a choice, as Mia chooses to stop running away and face her future responsibilities as princess with courage.

The film adaptation of The Princess Diaries takes many liberties when translating the source material to the big screen, mainly because the filmmakers seem to have set out to tell a fundamentally different story. Though on the surface, both deal with Mia’s struggles to come to terms with a complete upheaval of identity and future, they differ in scope of that struggle. For Mia in the book, this means self-acceptance; in the film, this means accepting responsibility and the power of choice. The film also conventionalizes the source material to be more accessible within the context of its genre and medium, such as consolidating characters, dividing them into clearer roles, and adjusting aspects of Mia’s life to be more relatable to an older teenage audience. It is more of an homage to the source material than it is a direct adaptation, offering a new spin and interpretation to a cultural phenomenon of the time.

The Summit on the Research and Teaching of YA Literature is coming to Vegas and it is going to be fun and informative. One of the emerging scholars coming to Las Vegas is S. R. Toliver. She is doing great work and becoming a leading voice on speculative YA fiction. You can follow her blog at www.diversefutures.net. Even more interesting, Stephanie just had an opinion piece on HuffPost on Saturday, March 10, 2018. You can find the article here of the image below is an active link. Stephanie graciously agreed to add to the information she wrote on Saturday—the HuffPost has a word count for opinions! So, first, click on the link and read her piece and, then, second, read how she expands the issue in this blog post. Oh! And there will be spoiler alerts. It is up to you to decide if you will see the movie before or after.
 
In either case, drop to the bottom of the blog and click the summit image and register for the summit or click here if you can’t wait. Stephanie will be here to discuss speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, and diverse literature. Stay tuned for more spotlights on other presenters.

​In 1995, the HBO series, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, changed everything for me. This animated television series reimagined classic fairy tales by bending the traditional conceptions of fairy tale characters to include those from different cultures. I observed Rumplestiltskin told through a Caribbean and Jamaican lens. I watched the Rapunzel story recast in beautiful New Orleans. I saw Beauty and the Beast transposed from the castles of France to the lands of Africa. It was the first time that I was able to see myself in the stories that I had grown to love. For many Black girls, Ava Duvernay’s reimagining of A Wrinkle in Time may be the moment that changes the way they relate to stories.

​In Madeleine L'Engle's original novel, race is not highlighted although many of the characters are described as white. Specifically, although the three celestial beings (Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which) are left to interpretation, Meg turns white with fury when people make fun of her brother. Charles Wallace is described as a precocious 5-year-old with blond hair and white cheeks. Calvin O'Keefe is stated to have orange hair and freckles that stand out brilliantly against his white face. Additionally, Mr. Murry is described as bearded, thin, and white, and Mrs. Murry has creamy skin that turns white with fear early in the novel. 

​In Duvernay’s recent adaptation, though, various characters are reshaped to represent a perspective that was missing (or ignored) in the original text. This change does not detract from the story. Instead, more layers are added to general themes of the novel, such as embracing individuality, acknowledging and accepting faults, maintaining hope in dark times, and embracing the love of a support system. Thus, rereading the book with Meg as a Black girl creates a space for all students to see a Black Girl in a non-traditional role where she saves the world from evil and leads other characters to safety instead of existing as background fodder to further the plot of the story. This is important for many reasons, but I’ll highlight three. 

​1. Meg represents resistance to sameness and conformity.
 
When Meg and her crew finally come into contact with the human-like inhabitants of Camazotz and their ruler, IT, their sense of individuality and purpose is challenged. On the planet, IT has created a world where people have "given up" their individuality, and they are physically punished for having individual desires and wants. He tells the children that Camazotz is a place with one mind (his), where there is no war, unhappiness, or confusion because people are no longer separate, individual people. His argument is that difference has been replaced by complete sameness, so his world is more peaceful than Earth. Meg, however, shows that maintaining individuality is essential to survival.
 
In the real world, various people from both sides of the political fence agree with IT, believing that if we could all just be the same and become one with the melting pot, then all the world's problems would be over. This results in leniency towards colorblindness, which is counterproductive, and towards assimilation, which erases and destroys people's histories. From this logic, Black girls are consistently told that they should try to be the same as or better than their white peers. If not, they may be punished, just like people in Camazotz (ask Dejerria Becton, Niya Kenny, and Shakara). To ensure conformity, Black girls are named Sarah instead of Quvenzhané for fear of being ostracized and misnamed by their teachers. They are told to speak properly, to dress in certain ways, and to wear their hair in certain styles (literally, Black girls are constantly suspended for their hair). They are told to be less angry, less emotional, and less loud. They are told to diminish all traits that don't mirror dominant norms to ensure that their individuality is minimized and their existence is easier to digest.
 
SO - How can we validate our Black girls’ individuality? How do consistently uplift them and attend to their needs?

​2. Meg is an example of what could happen if we loved Black girls.
 
By the end of the novel, Meg is tired. Particularly, when she is told that she is the only one who can save her brother from IT, she feels as though the weight of the task will be too great. She doesn't believe that she will be able to defeat the darkness, save her brother, or save herself. However, her three guardians give her a gift that the oppressor doesn't have - love. Anger helped her to save her father, but love will help her to save herself. She had the love of her family, and she had the love of her friends, but most importantly, she had her love for them and her love for herself. Thus, Meg was never alone because the love enabled her to fight against the darkness and ultimately win.
 
Black girls in society are constantly told they are not worthy of love. This may or may not be outwardly said, but societal actions are loud enough. As previously mentioned, everything about them, from their hair to their skin to their speech is positioned as lacking. They experience persistent media representations of themselves that tell them they are unintelligent, angry, greedy, lascivious, and ghetto. They also see #BlackGirlMagic and positive representations, but, of course, those voices are often silenced or villainized in popular discourse. However, compassion from others, for others, and for the self is important to help Black girls thrive against the oppressive forces that wish to steal their joy and take their magic and power. They need love in order to fight against the outer and inner forces that consistently work to beat them down so they can ultimately win in a society hell-bent on their failure.
 
SO - What could happen if we truly loved our Black girls? What would that look like?

3. Meg is an example of the power of hope.
 
No matter what life circumstance or villainous entity came her way, Meg maintained hope. For example, her father had been missing for years, but she still believed that he was out there trying to come back to her. She had never heard of the three Mrs. other than the random early encounters with Charles Wallace, yet she follows them through the universe because she believed that they could take her to her father. In fact, her father tells her that he almost gives in to IT, but it was Meg’s rescue effort that returned his hope and faith. Basically, with each event, Meg had to maintain hope in order to survive.
 
Hope is what keeps many people going when things go wrong. It is the underlying motivational tool that helps people to keep working toward their objectives even when the attainment of the goal seems out of reach. It is the inherent motivational system that inspires us to see the myriad possibilities for change in the world. Many Black girls are in constant search of hope. They look to see themselves in sports, film, toys, novels, and so many other spaces. When you’re constantly erased, those representations provide hope that future existence is possible. They suggest that Black girls will not only endure, but that they will also thrive in whatever future endeavor they wish to pursue. Like Meg, Black girls need hope in order to survive.
 
SO - What can we do to assist Black girls in building and maintaining hope in a world that tells them they can’t win?

​A wrinkle enables people to make connections between two disconnected spaces, bending the structure of space and time to ensure an expedient journey to a new place. Meg must travel through wrinkles to save the world, but she does it with the help of her friends, her family, and the three guardians; she is never alone. Our Black girls are like Meg. They are fighting to find themselves in a world of darkness that consistently tries to take over their existence and erase their personhoods. However, we can be like the Mrs., helping our Black girls reach their goals, valuing their individuality, ensuring they are loved, and fostering their belief in change. With us as their accomplices in this fight to prove that they matter, they will never be alone.
 
Ava Duvernay’s reimagining of A Wrinkle in Time is important because she inscribed racial difference into a story that was written without Black girls in mind, but it can’t stop there. It is our job to help foster this moment and turn it into a movement where our Black Girls consistently see the validation and love of their Black girlhood. More than likely, they are already in this fight, battling through fanfiction, memes, and Black girl joy, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t ask them if they need some assistance. So, I ask, not what can we do, but what will we do to ensure that the moment survives? 

S.R. Toliver is a second-year doctoral student at The University of Georgia. Her current research is based in the critical tradition, analyzing representations of and responses to people of color in speculative fiction. Her research interests include young adult speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, and Black girl literacies. When she’s not working on her research or classwork, she is reading speculative fiction and writing about it on her blog, www.diversefutures.net.
She can be reached at: srtoliver@uga.edu

The Summit is coming! There will be more information coming, a conference hotel, a outline of the program, presenter spotlights, features on the authors, great restaurants near the university, and a ton of Vegas shows to go see. Don't wait, bookmark this link and check back often!

A couple of weeks ago on Feb. 8, 2018 the UNLV COE and the Gayle A. Zeiter Center hosted a Children's and Young Adult Literature Conference. You can read more about our visit with Javaka Steptoe and Vogue Robinson. As part of the conference their were several breakout sessions. One of those sessions was put together by student groups in one of Denise Davila's classes. They had been assigned to explore and study various awards for Children's and Young Adult Literature. The projects they produced were wonderful and informative. A large portion of these awards are given through the American Library Association (ALA). Many of these student groups agreed to share their PowerPoints. I believe being aware of the various awards is the fastest way to keep up to speed with trends in the fields of Children's and and Young Adult Literature. Let's face it, we can't read everything. We can, however, trust the work of our colleagues. By being aware of the results, we can add to our reading list. Another move would be to explain the awards to our students at every level. If our students browse the awards they will very likely find books that represent they various interests and their backgrounds. The awards represent various ethnic and racial groups and a variety of genres.

I had hoped to run this earlier, but the tragic events in Parkland occurred and I felt obligated to cover that event, at least briefly. Then the blog had a few other posts that were scheduled to appear.   

Get ready, there is a lot of information below that you might want to download and use in your classroom to help students find the right book for them. Oh! If your students are doing cool things, I would love to hear about them.

In addition, I have added my own PowerPoints from  presentations that I that I had prepared for the Nevada Reading Week conference that was "held" in Reno last Friday and Saturday. The snow was beautiful, but most of the presentations had to be cancelled. Ellen Flocker will be one of my heroes forever. I applaud her efforts, her cheerfulness, and the loyalty she inspires in the face of disappointment. I had planned two presentations: 1.) a survey of the most recent awards with a focus on YA literature and my list covers some of the awards not listed by the student in the work below--i.e. the Printz, Obris, and the National Book Award. 2.) An overview of African American authors that will be covered in a three book series that Dr. Shanetia Clark and I have under contract with Rowman and Littlefield.

Not much narrative in either one, but they should put you on the right track for a number of books that should be on your "to read" list. For example, many of you will know Julius Lester, but have you read To Be a Slave, a Newbery Honor Book, with illustrations by Tom Feelings to boot? If not, I recommend you find this classic text from 1968 as soon as you can. If is a frank discussion of slavery that Lester pieces together from slave narratives and his commentary. His primary source of information is from the Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938. This project was another idea of John Lomax, the advisor on Folklore and Folkways for the FWP. Lester also used two other sources: Lay My Burden Down a Folk History of Slavery by B. A. Botkin and The Negro in Virginia by the Virginia Writer's Project. It was amazing to me how informative the book was even with the perspective of 50 years having gone by since the publication. Now, much more of the original research has been organized and made available from the original 2,300 interviews and over 500 photographers at the Library of Congress

This group includes, Kimberly Crossley, Sabrina Harrison, Minza Shahzad
We did well working together and learned a lot about the Amelia Bloomer Award.

Amelia Bloomer Awards feminist books that show women solving problems, while gaining personal power, and empowering young readers. They celebrate girls and women as an equal participant. These books help explain gender issues of the past and present. A book with a strong female character that does not demonstrate that an inequality exists may not be a feminist book. Strong female characters may be spunky, brave, courageous, intelligent, resourceful, and independent–some titles may not appear to be feminist.

The Dolly Gray Award group consists of:  Faith G, Megan W, Rhonda H, and Aaron C. The provide a list of the awards with annotations in the file below as well as a PowerPoint.

Cierra Ritter wrote her groups explanation.
​1. The award that my group presented on is called the Giverny Book Award, but is known for being a science trade book award. The Giverny Award is an annual children’s science picture book award that was established in 1998 by Dr. Jim Wandersee and Dr. Elisabeth E. Schussler. At the time both Wandersee and Schussler were associated with the 15º Laboratory at Louisiana State University. The 15º Laboratory website was the only source that was helpful for my group because there is truthfully not an abundant amount of information when it comes to this award. The main goal of the Giverny award is to praise an author and illustrator for making a connection between art and science while presenting a visual capture, visual explanations, and visual exemplification of a view of our world. Lastly, nineteen authors and illustrators have been awarded the Giverny Book Award.
​2. http://www.15degreelab.com/givernyawarddescription.html

3. The following image is of two children viewing my groups presentation at the Zeiter Conference on Thursday evening. (Elise Salsbury is the group member pictured in this photo.)
 
4. Christine Churches, Riley Lauria, Cierra Ritter, & Elise Salsbury

The Tomás Rivera Book Award was created in 1995 to honor authors and illustrators that create works that depict the Mexican American experience. Since its creation, the award has been given to thirty works of literature. The award was created to honor Tomás Rivera, a prominent Mexican American author, and alumnus of Texas State University, where the award finds its roots. 
There are several websites that cover this award:
Official website of the award: http://www.education.txstate.edu/ci/riverabookaward/
These two (click here and here) also over additional information

As mentioned in the introduction, I had two presentations to give at Reno. They are PowerPoints in the true sense. They do not have a lot of words, but they do point to YA book awards in the first African American Authors of YA literature who will be addressed in the three books series. I hope you they spur you on to further reading.