I love meeting teachers who are using YA literature in their classrooms. This week's guest contributor is Katie Sluiter. She teaches middle school in Wyoming, Michigan. Katie is wonderful. Her classroom is an inspiration and a model for others who want to surround their students with books. A colleague, Gretchen Rumoht-Voskuil, introduced us when I was looking for participants in another study. Katie has been a great addition to that project. I look forward to chatting with her in person at the NCTE conference this November. I am sure you will enjoy Katie's discussion of her transition from high school to middle school.

Teaching middle school is a YA Lit lover’s dream.  When I made the transition from high school to middle school three years ago, I traded The Great Gastby and The Scarlet Letter  for a curriculum of exclusively YA Literature: Hero by S.L Rottman, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and a stack of historical YA fiction for literature circles. All middle school students were also required to read at least one independent reading book per quarter.

My move to the middle school had impeccable timing. During my final year at the high school, I discovered Penny Kittle and her ideas for Reading Workshops. The seed of an idea had been planted: how could I provide my students with choice rather than dictate everything they read? When the idea first hit me, I thought I would be dealing with a curriculum for high school seniors. As the fates would have it, as I began to amass books for a classroom library, I was re-assigned to the middle school--eighth grade English--the perfect environment for growing readers.

I teach in a Title 1 district which means there isn’t exactly a surplus of funds for things like stocking teachers’ classroom libraries. If I wanted to grow my collection of books, I had to take matters into my own hands.

First I shared my dream of a classroom library on my blog and social media channels. Someone suggested making a wishlist on Amazon, so that is where I started. What I learned about people is that they want to help kids read; they want to give the gift of the written word. Boxes started arriving to my house daily. Most were Amazon boxes, but some people shipped me all their gently used books because they loved the idea of a new generation of readers getting their hands on them. My sorry excuse of a 104-title library quickly grew to over three hundred.

A close friend and colleague strongly urged me to apply for Penny Kittle’s Book Love Foundation Grant. Ten applicants received 500 books for their classroom library, and while I was not one of those ten, I was a runner-up. I received $500 to purchase books for my already started library. Since then I have hit up thrift stores, garage sales, bookstore sales, and hustled to get some donorschoose.org projects for books funded.

If you walk in my classroom today, you will see a large 800+ title library along the back wall. Those books have been very thoughtfully and intentionally chosen. Books range in topic and difficulty level, but all of them are there because they are high interest for teen readers. I want students to find books they truly want to read since each is expected to read four books during the school year. While it’s not the ten-book goal that Donalyn Miller set for her middle schoolers, four is a far cry from the zero many of my students have read in their life. Some of my students stick to the required four, but many read far above and beyond.

Additionally, we read three YA books together as a class each school year. These are pre-chosen for me and required of all the 8th grade English teachers’ curricula, but I try to make it a positive experience for my students; I use books as read alouds. Studies show that students need not only to have time to read on their own, but also to hear what good reading sounds like. I also use these books as a way to model and teach reading, thinking, and response strategies that students can use with their own independently chosen books.

My favorite thing about teaching middle school is that every day I am surrounded by books and reading. My students silently read books of their choice, I read aloud our required texts, and we talk and write about books. In the fourteen years that I have been teaching, I have never seen such an enthusiasm for reading as I do here in middle school. While I still have students who are self-proclaimed non-readers, they are few and far between. The majority of my students are eager and excited to read and talk about their books. I believe centering our junior high curriculum around YA literature has gone a long way to making this happen.

Katie Sluiter currently teaches at Wyoming Junior High School in Wyoming, Michigan. She has taught middle school, high school, and community college English and Composition classes and has her Masters Degree in Teaching English from Western Michigan University. She advocates for best practices in the ELA classroom as a contributing writer to The Educator's Room. She has presented at multiple MCTE conferences and will be on two panels at the upcoming NCTE conference in Atlanta. Her blog, Sluiter Nation, chronicles her life as a mother and teacher. She lives in Zeeland, Michigan with her family. You can contact her at katiesluiter@gmail.com. 

​This week’s guest contributor is Dr. Binford. Dr. Binford and I have been working together for several years on cross-curriculum uses of young adult literature. He is Social Studies educator at Mississippi State University. He has also contributed to the blog once before when he discussed the cross-curriculum uses of Mississippi Trail, 1955. You can find his previous posting here. This week he discusses Out of the Dust, a book that has found a great deal of success in the Young Adult community. Dr. Binford’s post is a great companion to a previous post by Mary Warner.  

Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, is a highly acclaimed historical novel told in sparse free form verse.  The story, narrated by Billie Joe—a thirteen-year-old “redheaded, freckle-faced, narrow-hipped girl with a . . . hunger for playing fierce piano” (3), is an intimate recounting of her family’s experiences during the Dirty Thirties (editorial interruption: this was a new term for me. As a result, I did a quick search and found three books that might be worth reviewing. See the gallery below), specifically the years 1934 and 1935.  The story is conveyed through Billie Joe’s diary entries, which are not unlike the characters and the setting—visceral and rawboned.  

The literary value of this novel has been widely recognized through its Newbery Medal and, among other ways, by a survey of ALAN members, who selected it as one of the best young adult novels of the 1990s.  Additionally, this story’s context can also address Common Core State Standards, such as “Reading Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies” (Grades 6-8 Students):  “Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts."

The most convenient and compelling connections between English Language Arts (ELA) and the social studies are to be found in the novel’s setting.  From a literary standpoint, setting has been described as having three major components:  social environment, place, and time, which parallel the social studies disciplines of sociology, geography, and history.  How can the ELA teacher draw from geography, for example, or, better yet, connect with the geography teacher, in order to enrich their students’ understanding of the setting, an integral part of this story?
​
The first step is to unearth the geographical references embedded in this novel.  The story is set in the Oklahoma Panhandle.  In pre-settlement days, this 35-mile wide and 210-mile long swath in the Southern Plains was known as “No Man’s Land,” suggestive of both its political and geographic isolation.  Belatedly, at the dawn of the twentieth century--and only after all the other desirable tracts of land had been chosen, settlers finally laid claim to half sections of this grassland on the western edge of Oklahoma.  The state’s name, itself, is an ironic combination of two Choctaw words--okla meaning “people” and humma meaning “red”—suggestive of a people perpetually dislocated by waves of settlement.  

If you can imagine Oklahoma being shaped roughly like a clinched fist with the index finger extended, Cimarron County, the location of Billie Joe’s family farm, is at the very tip of that finger.  The county is bordered by New Mexico to the west, Texas to the south, Colorado to the north, and, nearby, Kansas to the northeast.  Not surprisingly, the story includes over a dozen actual place locations across this multi-state region (see Out of the Dust:  Social Studies Connections Table in the file below).

The second step is to understand the weather phenomenon, which casts a looming presence in the story (see also Social Studies Connection Table).  Figuring most prominently, dust storms were common on the Great Plains during this period, but the U.S. government identified Cimarron County as “the geographic heart of the dust-lashed land” (Egan, 153).  The “dusters” or “black blizzards,” as the storms were often called, provide several revealing and poignant moments in the novel.  One such instance is Billie Joe’s perilous journey home in the midst of a duster, which metaphorically represents her search for an emotional connection with her father:

Brown earth rained down
from sky.
I could not catch my breath
the way the dust pressed on my chest
and wouldn’t stop.
The dirt blew down so thick
it scratched my eyes
and stung my tender skin,
it plugged my nose and filled inside my mouth. (143-144)

In 1934, there were 56 dusters including 14 in April, one of which lasted for twelve hours.  Most of the storms that year were of the severest variety with visibility less than one quarter of a mile. 

In spite of concerted efforts, the dust particles that filled the air with each black blizzard also soon inhabited every nook and cranny including peoples’ lungs.  These particles were extremely fine (63 microns) roughly one fourth the size of the period at the end of this sentence.  As Timothy Egan has described it in The Worst Hard Times:

​"The windows of houses were covered with wet sheets and blankets, the doors taped, the walls cracks stuffed with rags and newspapers.  Men avoided shaking hands with each other because the electricity was so great it could knock a person down (153)."

Even with Vaseline on their noses and respiratory masks on their faces, the citizens of Cimarron County and the rest of the Dust Bowl (i.e., parts of Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma) “inhaled grit”.  As the dust builds up in the lungs, it tears the air sacs and weakens the body’s resistance.  Symptoms included coughing jags, body aches, shortness of breath, and nausea.  Similar, but more rapid than prolonged exposure to coal dust, some of those suffering from “dust pneumonia,” particularly children, infants, and the elderly, did not survive (Egan, 153 & 173).
​

What is less evident in the novel is the human and environmental interaction that propagated these storms.  For the first three decades of the twentieth century, 5.2 million acres of the Great Plains went under plow.  The “Great Plow-up,” as it has become known, occurred as wheat prices spiked due to bread shortages during and in the aftermath of the Great War.  At its peak, wheat farming on the Great Plains became an object of speculative investment.  Eventually, wheat surpluses resulted and prices plummeted from $2.00 to 40¢ a bushel.  When the Stock Market crashed in October of 1929, wheat prices dropped even further and many farms were abandoned or foreclosed upon leaving the soil exposed (reminiscent of Billie Joe’s vulnerability with the passing of her mother) no longer protected by the native grasslands.  Concurrently, years of abundant rain in the late 1920s were immediately followed by an extended drought in the early Thirties.  Over tillage, lack of soil management, severe drought conditions, and high winds led to the catastrophic erosion that produced the Dust Bowl.

How might an ELA teacher (or a geography teacher working in a complementary role) maximize the learning of Out of the Dust by teaching both the novel’s geography and its setting? 
Let me offer a few suggestions.  Just as student begin reading Out of the Dust, you might introduce the broader geographical context using the Visual Discovery strategy to increase student interest in the book.  Visual Discovery, a five-step strategy outlined by the Teachers’ Curriculum Institute, is both flexible and impactful. 

Step One:  Use powerful images (with layers of meaning) to teach key concepts, such as the one below (www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/) of three children leaving their home, with lunch and books in hand, for school.  In addition, the Library of Congress offers a plethora of images from the Dust Bowl (www.loc.gov/photos/?q=dust%20bowl) including images from Cimarron County, Oklahoma.  





Step Two:  project the selected photograph on a large screen arranging the desks in parliamentary seating, so students are facing each other—in order to facilitate discussion—with a wide aisle in the center leading to the image. 

Step Three:  ask carefully sequenced and spiraling questions that lead to discovery:

Gathering Evidence:  What do you see in this image?  Identify key details from this photograph (e.g. three children, their clothing and attire, items they are carrying, the building they are standing next to, the lack of vegetation and the dusty haze in the background).
Interpreting the Evidence:  Where was this photograph taken?  When was this photograph taken?  What is their relationship?  Where are these children going? (For each question, have students provide at least two pieces of evidence to support their interpretation)
Making Hypotheses:  Why are these children wearing scarves and goggles on their way to school?  (Have students provide at least two pieces of evidence to support their hypotheses.)

I love the excitement and activity surrounding the National Book Award. It makes me feel great when I have read some of the books off of the longlist. I feel validated when I know a majority of the authors. It is even more exciting when I am introduced to new names that I haven't encountered. My reading list is more focused between now and October 13th when the five finalist will be announced. I know that a good friend and colleague Sharon Kane shares my enthusiasm. She and I have been working on a project surrounding the National Book Award for some time. More details to come soon, but if you want a hint, you can check out her earlier blog post here. In another month, I will join an intense group of people who refocus on the finalist for a month. The big announcement will be held Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016 as I am traveling to Atlanta for the NCTE annual conference and the ALAN Workshop. One of the current nominees, Jason Reynolds will be at the Workshop. Others have been in the past, Kwame Alexander, Kate DiCamillo, Meg Medina, and Nicola Yoon. I have probably missed some who have attended in the past; it isn't an intentional slight, just a gap in my aging memory, but hope to see the others in future years. We are truly in a golden age of young adult literature. We see greater diversity among authors, topics, genre, and range, and this list demonstrates that trend. I hope you join me as I dive into these books. 

Kwame Alexander, “Booked”
There are many teachers and students who are aware of Kwame now who didn't know anything about him before his novel, Crossover won the 2015 Newbery Medal. I am forever in debt to Bryan Ripley Crandall for his recommendation that I get to know more about this wonderful author before he hit the big time. I did, I was thrilled, and, as a result, Kwame was invited to be a keynote speaker at the YA conference I held in June 2015 at LSU. Booked is a wonderful book. Your students will love it.

​Kate DiCamillo, “Raymie Nightingale”
I have been following Kate DiCamillo's works for a long time. I think I first discovered Kate's books long before I became a professor focusing on YA literature. It was when one of my daughters was reading Because of Winn-Dixie. I am quite sure that those of us who teach YA have a favorite DiCamillo novel: The Tiger Rising, Flora and Ulysses, or maybe The Tale of Desperaux. It doesn't matter, DiCamillo is a lovely writer. One of my regrets from last spring is that she was in Las Vegas doing a public reading, and I had a meeting that I just couldn't avoid. Dang. I hope there is a next time.

John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell, “March: Book Three”
I have been watching this series unfold. Given the turmoil currently surrounding the conversations and actions of equity and race throughout the country and the world, it seems timely and important to remember past sacrifices. This long list was announced the morning after I spend much of the night finishing another brilliant book, Blood Brother, by Rich and Sandra Neil Wallace, their book would make a great companion to this series. We need to keep reading and talking about these events, least we forget, least we forget.

Grace Lin, “When the Sea Turned to Silver”
Grace Lin is an author who has not been on my radar. This is one of the great reasons I love the announcement of the long list. It gives me an opportunity to widen my gaze and include authors that have slipped by unnoticed in my limited sphere. Happily, I find that she has several more novels (Year of the Dog, The Year of the Rat, Dumpling Days, and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon) that need my attention. It is wonderful to find more books that are both windows and mirrors.

Anna-Marie McLemore, “When the Moon Was Ours”
Here is another author who is new for me. I opened her website and was captured right away with the phrase: "Most of what I write could be called magical realism." Okay, Anna-Marie, you have me. I love YA that channels Allende, Marquez Cortazar, Morrison, and Faulkner, among other authors. Her novels, The Weight of Feathers and When the Moon was Ours are on my reading list.

Meg Medina, “Burn Baby Burn”
Now, back to a novelist that I read and admire a great deal. I owe her a great debt. Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick your Ass is one of the finest books I have read over the last couple of years. I was one of the early readers of Burn Baby Burn and excited to find that she can do great books back to back. In addition, she has several children's books as well. She is a wonderful person and is concerned about her readers and the larger community of Latino/a writers. I absolutely love that she strives to have her books released in Spanish as well. Read her books as fast as you can get your hands on them.

Sara Pennypacker and Jon Klassen (Illustrator), “Pax”
Sara is an author whose books (primarily the Clementine series) are on my radar, but I tend to be a young adult advocate who drifts to the upper end of YA fiction. I gravitate to books that might be considered inheritors of The Cather in the Rye or realistic novels with issue that are often challenging for teachers to tackle in the classroom. It is important to remember that beauty and truth can be direct and simple. Thanks, Sara and Jon, we need books that remind us that Keats is right; "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Jason Reynolds, “Ghost”
I am one the people in the world who listens carefully when Jacqueline Woodson says something; especially If I ask her a direct question and she answers it.  In early 2014, when I was arranging for her to attend a conference, we lamented the passing of Walter Dean Myers and discussed YA literature. The question I asked was: Who is the emerging African America male writer of YA fiction that I should know and should be writing about? Her answer, without hesitation, Jason Reynolds. I have been reading his books since that conversation and have written about Jason's work in several blog posts. Find the first one here.  If you don't believe me, please listen to the sage wisdom of Jaqueline Woodson and start reading his books.

​Caren Stelson, “Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story”
I love how frequently nonfiction appears on the longlist and the final five of this award. I do not know this author, but I am anxious to add to the list of books I love, Blood Brother, Bomb, Most Dangerous, and Symphony for the City of the Dead. I am glad that I have been adding more and more nonfiction to my resource YA bank. Again a story that reminds us that our actions have consequences; least we forget.

Nicola Yoon, “The Sun Is Also a Star”
I met Nicola Yoon, briefly at the ALAN workshop. She won't remember; hundreds of people wanted her attention as a result of the introduction to her book Everything, Everything. For me, her novel was one of the great revelations of the workshop. It is so exciting to see that her sophomore effort is reaping such great rewards. I look forward to marking this one off the list.

Last October 3.7 million people visited Las Vegas. A few of them were authors who attended the Vegas Valley Book Festival (VVBF). This year October promises to bring in even more visitors. The weather promises to be fantastic, the economy is on the rise, the final Presidential Debate will at UNLV, and the VVBF will host a variety of authors. The festival hosts authors in many genres and at many interests levels including children's and young adult literature. If you are going to be in Las Vegas on Saturday, October 15, 2016, you should really put a few hours at the VVBF on your list of must attend events. (If any news group covering the Presidential Debate on October 19, 2016, needs a local color news story, why wouldn't you investigate this event? Contact me and I will be your host.) This week, using blurbs from the VVBF webpage, I will briefly introduce the 9 YA authors: Amy Rose Capetta, Chris Crutcher, Nathan Hale, Amy Ignatow, Cori McCarthy, Kory Merrit, Mary Penney, Eliot Schrefer and Adam Silvera. Some of these authors I know quite well and several a new to me. I look forward to a five week crash course of reading to ready for there visit. Are you sure you don't what to visit Las Vegas? 

Amy Rose Capetta is the author of a YA sci-fi duet published by HMH. Her first book, Entangled, is a punk rock space opera about Cade, a guitarist who finds out she’s connected on the subatomic level with a boy who’s galaxies away and in terrible danger. The second book, Unmade, follows Cade and her crew into a showdown with the Unmakers, who are hunting the last traces of the human race as Cade desperately seeks a place they can call home. Amy Rose’s third YA novel, coming out from Candlewick in 2017, is Kiss/Kill, a mystery set in the high-stakes New York theater world, where 18-year-old Zara Evans wins her dream role and the love of a brilliant young female lighting designer, only to find their happiness tested by a series of mysterious deaths in the theater. Amy Rose holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, as well as a theater degree from UC Santa Cruz. In addition to writing novels, she edits them and works with writers to develop their ideas through Yellow Bird Editors. She is also the co-founder of Rainbow Boxes, a charitable initiative which raised money to send a box of LGBTQIA YA books to a shelter or library in every state in the U.S. Amy Rose lives in Michigan. Her loves are baking, photography, science, and Shakespeare. If you’re trying to find her, just look for the girl with the shaved head and the camera. For more information you can find her author Facebook page here.

Chris Crutcher For the past 30 year, author Chris Crutcher has specialized in realistic fiction inspired by his previous work as an educator and as a child and family therapist, specializing in abuse and neglect. Each of his 12 novels, two short story collections and his autobiography touch on the power of triumph and tragedy as we come of age.

“I think the value of books like mine,” he said, “is their ability to bring dark subjects into the open where they are not so dark, where they can be talked about and considered by teens and adults alike.”

Because they don’t shy away from the gritty realities of life, Crutcher’s novels are often challenged or banned across the nation – an action he battles unapologetically. His support for the First Amendment has garnered a number of national awards including the NCTE’s Intellectual Freedom Award and an honor from the National Coalition Against Censorship. The ALA also awarded him the Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award.

Crutcher makes his home in Spokane, Washington where he continues to work as the Spokane Child Protection Team leader, as he has for more than three decades. He enjoys his family, swimming and speaking at schools and festivals around the world. For more about his work, visit www.chriscrutcher.com. If Chris Crutcher is new to you and you need a place to start, my personal favorite is Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes.

Nathan Hale is the #1 New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of the Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series, which includes One Dead Spy; Donner Dinner Party; Treaties, Trenches, Mud and Blood; Big Bad Ironclad!; and The Underground Abductor, one of which earned a place on the Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List. He also illustrated the graphic novel Rapunzel’s Revenge, which was a TODAY show “Al’s Book Club for Kids” selection, an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book, and a YALSA Great Graphic Novel for Teens, as well as the recipient of three starred reviews. Nathan lives in Provo, Utah. Nathan's books are a lot of fun and reluctant readers will find a welcome friend as they are reintroduced to reading, graphic novels, and American history.
www.hazardoustales.com

Amy Ignatow is the author/illustrator of the acclaimed series The Popularity Papers. Amy’s latest series, THE MiGHTY ODDS is the first installment in a new series about a diverse crew of middle school kids who develop very limited superhero powers after a strange accident and manage to become unlikely friends on the adventure of a lifetime.
She is a graduate of Moore College of Art and Design and lives in Philadelphia with her husband and their children. Amy represents a new find for me and I am anxious to explore her books.

Cori McCarthy studied screenwriting and poetry before earning an MFA in Writing For Children & Young Adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of four YA novels. Kirkus called her debut science fiction novel, The Color of Rain (Running Press, 2013), “…an elegantly written and emotionally cathartic page-turner.” Her second novel, Breaking Sky (Sourcebooks, 2015), earned starred reviews from School Library Journal and Bulletin For the Center of Children’s Books and is in development to become a movie at Sony Pictures. Her third novel, You Were Here (Sourcebooks, 2016), is a mixed format contemporary story told through prose, word art poetry, and graphic novel chapters. You Were Here earned starred reviews from Bulletin For the Center of Children’s Books and Voices of Young Adult. Her fourth novel, Now A Major Motion Picture is forthcoming from Sourcebooks Fire in 2017. The story is about a girl who gets caught up in the film adaptation of her grandmother’s famed high fantasy trilogy. Cori is the cofounder of Rainbow Boxes, a charitable initiative that raised over $15,000 last year to send LGBTQIA fiction to community libraries and support shelters. From a military family, Cori lived a little bit of everywhere before she landed in the Midwest. In her spare time, she edits books for Yellow Bird Editors, plays guitar, writes poetry, and wrangles her four-year-old son Maverick.
Reading the information about Cori in this blurb and on her webpage, made me wonderful where I have been for the last few years. Here novels fit right in to the group of books and other I tend to gravitate towards. I can’t wait to dive right in.

Kory Merritt is another one of those individual who just amazing me. How does someone manage to teach and publish at the same time?  This author, illustrator, and teacher is indeed a lucky find. Kory Merritt started cartooning and illustrating while attending SUNY Brockport. He is the winner of a John Locher Memorial Award for Cartooning for his weekly comic strip Brockport Chronicled; the creator of the online comic, Lost Side of Suburbia; and co-creator of Poptropica comics and illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Poptropica graphic novel series. His first book is The Dreadful Fate of Jonathan York. Merritt teaches art for K–6 in Hammondsport, New York.

Mary Penny thinks eleven-year-olds ought to be given special medals for surviving one of the toughest years of childhood. She feels certain she ate her body weight in peanut M&M’s that year just to cope. She says that when she was eleven-and-a-half, she began shape-shifting from a reasonable-looking child to an awkward creature with arms, legs, ears, and teeth all pointing in different directions. She wants you all to know that awkward stage passes eventually and very cool things happen next. Just hang on!She is a US Army veteran and has recently retired from a career at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Mary lives in Santa Barbara with her four-legged children who love to sleep, play practical jokes, and throw up hairballs. Mary loves to swim (badly), practice yoga (stiffly), and walk (into lots of things). Despite all that, she is deeply grateful for all her Irish good luck, and especially for being able to write novels for kids. 

Clearly, Mary gets it. Any one who is willing to acknowledge and write about the awkwardness of early adolescents deserves our attention. http://marypenney.com/ELEVEN_AND_HOLDING.html

Eliot Schrefer is the author of Threatened, a 2014 National Book Award finalist in Young People’s Literature, and Endangered (2012), also a National Book Award Finalist. He is also the author of The Deadly Sister, The School for Dangerous Girls, Glamorous Disasters, and The New Kid. Schrefer is a contributor to The Huffington Post and has been profiled in Newsweek and New York magazine among other publications. He lives in New York City. Visit him online at http://www.eliotschrefer.com/ and on Twitter @EliotSchrefer.

About this new book, RESCUED
Two-time National Book Award finalist Eliot Schrefer captivates readers with Rescued, the first of his Great Ape books to be set in the United States. In Rescued, John’s father travels extensively for work, often far from their suburban home. After one such trip, he brings John an exotic pet: an adorable baby orangutan. John and the playful ape (named Raja) quickly become inseparable. But as Raja ages, he gets stronger, less cuddly, and the family relegates him to a backyard shed. When John’s parents separate, his father sells the ape to a shady roadside zoo owner. John won’t let his pal live in horrible captivity and plans to smuggle the orangutan back to Indonesia. But can John rescue Raja or will their journey lead them both into even more danger?

Adam Silvera was born and raised in the Bronx. He has worked in the publishing industry as a children’s bookseller, marketing assistant at a literary development company, and book reviewer of children’s and young adult novels. His debut novel, More Happy Than Not, received multiple starred reviews and is a New York Times bestseller, and Adam was selected as a Publishers Weekly Flying Start. He writes full-time in New York City and is tall for no reason.

For the second time, Crag Hill will be our guest contributor.  Crag is a great friend and we continue to work together on several projects when we get the chance. Currently, Crag and I, along with Leilya Pitre are the editors of the emerging young adult journal--Study and Scrutiny. If you haven't visited that website, please do. The first issue of the second volume is waiting for your approval.  

​Crag has done significant work as an editor of two books. The first book was The Critical Merits of Young Adult Literature. I was one of the reviewers of the book for the publisher and was thrilled to write the forward. The second book is released today! It represents Crag deep interest in teaching and studying Comics. The title is Teaching Comics Through Multiple Lenses. This week, Crag discusses an assignment he uses with his pre-service students in a YA course. If you would like to read Crag's first posting just click here. 

I would love to know of a research study that explores the attitudes pre-service teachers have about young adult (YA) literature before and after taking a YA literature course. Even more so, I would be interested in how these attitudes have shifted, if at all, in the last 15 years. Had I a research mindset when I was first enlisted to teach YA literature in 2000 at Washington State University, my research questions would have been: What attitudes do pre-service teachers have concerning YA literature? What experiences with YA literature have pre-service teachers had in class and out of class? Had I a research mindset then (if that was possible adjuncting this YA literature class on top of full-time high school teaching, starting a doctoral program, as well as being a father of two young children), I would have started collecting data for this kind of research study.

Below is the assignment, a reading autobiography, I have given at the start of my YA literature classes for over a dozen years (I do not have copies of syllabi for all the YA courses I have taught, so I cannot say when I first assigned this). I have not been fortunate to teach this course every semester, but over a two-year span I generally have taught it three times. Average class size has been approximately 25, so every year on average I taught 37.5 students. Over that dozen years, then, I have taught approximately 450 students. To have 450 reading autobiographies now would be a robust data set to analyze.

Alas. But I can summarize what I have been reporting back to my students after reading their autobiographies, the patterns that are so deep they are inescapable ruts. English majors tend to start school as avid readers, reading with family and independently through elementary school. Perhaps half continue in this vein into middle school, growing into and with a community of peer readers, while the other half scale back on their reading because of the pressures of extracurricular activities (e.g. sports). 

Most, however, hit a wall in high school. Extracurricular activities increase, but the number of assigned books also increases. The work—and an overwhelmingly number of students report it as work—makes reading onerous (Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide). Independent reading precipitously declines. That pattern continues—and intensifies—as these students, against all odds, decide to become English majors and read many more assigned books in college English classes. Too many have reported that they cannot remember the last time they read a book of their own choosing. And they have forgotten that reading can be a pleasurably activity​.

When I first started teaching the YA literature course the resistance was palpable. My students were English majors who went from reading chapter books and/or series to reading the classics, The Babysitter’s Club to Jane Eyre. YA literature was never an option. I remember in the first week of class a student asking pointedly, “Why are we reading kid books in a college English class?” But then the students who read the Harry Potter series growing up arrived. The resistance became non-existent. Now my students come with extensive experience reading YA literature in and out of class (Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, The Hunger Games, Divergent, and many, many titles and authors I have not heard of). So rather than skipping over YA literature, they have read it alongside the classics they love.

As a way to help you get to know your students as readers (or non-readers), I offer the assignment below for both high school and pre-service classes. I offer it, too, to those who would like to research the changing of reader’s attitudes over time. I contend that if we can document when/where/how readers turn toward or against reading, we can more strategically implement the ways to turn more readers toward rather than against reading that Terri Lesene, Donna Miller, Penny Kittle, and so many others have been proposing. For me, I want to start with pre-service teachers who have been changed as readers (or who have been renewed at the very least) changing the readers (or non-readers) they encounter as teachers.

 Reading is breathing for some; for others it’s a chore. For the majority of us, reading falls somewhere between those two poles. By way of introducing yourself to the class, to provide me with a background of your reading, write an autobiography of yourself as a reader (see below for an example). Write about your reading experiences; highlight significant books, ones that influenced you or taught you or nudged you in a new direction, that opened up not only the world of reading but the whole shebang; focus on one stage in your reading life, e.g. elementary school; write a survey of your reading from the time you started reading through last semester; or answer one or two or all of the following questions: What do you know about young adult literature? What young adult authors do you know? In what ways has the field of young adult literature shaped you as a reader? Who are you as a reader?

 All papers will be read in small groups. Together, they will give us a portrait of the class as readers as we begin our exploration of young adult literature.

I’ve been a reader as long as I can remember, a memory that recalls watching JFK’s flag-draped caisson crawling toward Arlington Cemetery on the boxy black and white television crowding the living room. Actually, I can’t remember how I learned to read, or when (or if one ever stops learning to read). It seems as if I always have been reading, an act as organic as walking, as vital as breathing.

My earliest memories of reading consist of those times I volunteered to read aloud in class. Maybe this was in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grade, I can’t pinpoint it. I took this classroom exhibition as a moment to seize the English language – I have always robustly loved the sounds of words - to project it through my voice toward my peers. To embody language. Or maybe I was just a show off.
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I read the funnies, comic books, the sports page, the backs of baseball, basketball, and football cards, and I read biographies of athletes I wanted to emulate – Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Bart Starr, Jerry Kramer, Gale Sayers, or short novels about the sports I played such as The Catcher with the Glass Arm by Matt Christopher. These show what kind of reader I was – looking through print to measure and extend my world, to entertain me but also to point me toward something beyond myself, seeking ways to better myself. Reading to know.

As a young adult, reading – and then writing – saved my life. Pushed off center by things I am finally beginning to understand, reading – and writing – anchored me. I read widely, wildly perhaps, voraciously – over fifty books in the year after I barely graduated from high school – poetry by Ginsberg, Sexton, Richard Hugo, Frost, Robert Bly, Wallace Stevens, novels and short stories by Kerouac, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner, plays by Eugene O’ Neill, and criticism on poets such as Lord Alfred Tennyson and Ezra Pound (way above my head!). I read on my job at Mirror Aluminum (manufacturer of cooking pans) when I could steal five or ten minutes; I read off the job, often skipping parties or other social events to read. The words on the page made more sense than my life. Then the practice of making meaning from these stories helped me make sense of my own story. 
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It hurts to say reading drove a wedge between me my peers, from my friends, but what I was learning about the world and myself always felt right. Eventually, reading led me to a way to make a life, to make a living, to living a life, vocation and avocation hand in hand. After ten years of working jobs I came to despise, the obvious overwhelmed me: I had to find some way to do everyday – to get paid for – what I did everyday, what I had to do everyday – read, think, read, imagine, think, read, and imagine. Teaching rose to the top of a short list of possible jobs (editor, literary agent, journalist) because I also realized I didn’t just want to work with texts; I wanted to work intimately with readers and writers of texts; I want to be a positive trigger for how readers responded to texts.

My first blush with young adult literature was in 1988 (when the Gipper was President). I’d now been a reading snob for years – reading must be profound or it was a profound waste of time. The young adult lit course I took at San Francisco State, however, blew the doors and shutters off my snobbery. I will always remember standing up in Muni wishing the streetcar would slow down so that I could read more from Dragonwings or Captives of Time or Tuck Everlasting (still some of my favorite novels). I had no idea that literature could be so simple – written for adolescent readers – yet so resonant, so profound. And I had no idea that heroin addiction or other controversial topics – could be a topic for a young adult novel. A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich is as profound as it gets.
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Not only was the course an eye-opener for me as a reader – or an eye-blurrer, reading a book a week on top of my other classes – but that course did more to prepare me to work with young readers than any other class I took as a pre-service teacher: it gave me rich resources to draw from at the beginning of my teaching career, a list of books that my students found both challenging and rewarding (even as they struggled with the other reading – Shakespeare, Oedipus Rex, Toni Morrison’s Sula – that I was required to assign). 

Teaching high school English for 18 years (most recently for twelve years at Moscow High School in Idaho) reinforced those findings. Many high school readers crave the intellect and the emotive – Ayn Rand’s Anthem, George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five.  Yet for every self-motivated reader of utopian novels, there are ten readers who would rather do any thing with their time but sit down and crack a book. Knowing Meg Wolitzer’s Belzhar, escaping genocide with three children in Like Water on Stone by Dana Walrath, inhabiting the segregated south of the past of Stella By Starlight by Sharon Draper, I have some other stories I can suggest. If one book sparks these readers’ interests, then there’s hope for a fire.

When I was asked to design and teach the young adult lit course at Washington State University in 2000 (shoot, that was already more than a 15 years ago?), I was ecstatic. I had been away from young adult literature for a few years, my reading focused on poetry and adult fiction and non-fiction, and I quickly found out I had missed much, including the Harry Potter rage (I caught the fever the summer the fourth book came out). But I also found out that what I was missing could be easily made up by a summer of reading into the wee hours of the morning. Blurry eyed again!
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Young adult literature is thriving. I can’t wait to meet new friends – many works that you will introduce me to – and to re-acquaint myself with the old. As a teacher, and now it comes down to that, I aim to facilitate. I want to provide students with the opportunities to learn as I have learned, through reading, what they do not think they want to learn.

Beginning on August 12th Mother Nature began to come down hard on Southern Louisiana. I watched the news reports carefully. I spent seven years working at Louisiana State University.  We have a daughter who still lives in the New Orleans area and we worried about her and her husband’s family. I also worried about the host of students I taught who are still teaching in Louisiana. I was rocked by all the pictures and video clips posted on Facebook.
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I began to wonder, “How bad can this get?” In reality, pretty bad.  A larger than expected rainstorm dumped about “7.1 trillion gallons of water or enough to fill Lake Pontchartrain about four times. Hurrican Katrina, by comparison, dumped about 2.3 trillion gallons of rainwater in the state (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Louisiana_floods). 

I know I can’t do everything, but I can do something.

In this blog, I will try to recount how I began to think about one small part of this disaster—What is it like for a teacher to lose books?

One of the students, Sarah Batty, from my first year as an English Educator at Louisiana State University posted a picture that pushed it to the personal. She lost a annotated copy of To Kill a Mockingbird that had been passed down through three generations of teachers.

As I gazed at the picture, I immediately thought of books that I would miss if they were gone. I haven't taught high school for 8 years, but I still have books that I found in college. There is an argument that I don't need them anymore, but as Lear shouted "Oh, reason not the need". Lear laments the loss of his servants when he realizes that their lack of presence by his side, to do his bidding, indicates a tremendous loss of identity and purpose. For many English teachers books have been our servants, our missionaries, our inspiration, our solace and our friends. I try to understand the loss that Sara felt as she held a sodden book with annotations smeared through the pages of her lost book. ​

Sarah’s loss, which has now become symbolic (for me at least) of the loss of books by hundreds, if not thousands of teachers, throughout southern Louisiana, those I know and those I don’t, caused me to turn and stare at the books on my shelves. I have consciously kept quite a few books that serve as important markers in my graduation from college through my journey of thirty five years teaching English at almost every level from grade 9 through PhD students.
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A few books that standout are: Pudd’nhead Wilson, Cane, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Cry, the Beloved Country, Moby Dick, The Sound and the Fury, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Little Dorrit, Bleak House, Theodore Roethke’s Straw for the Fire, The Power and the Glory, I am the Cheese, Crime and Punishment, and Wide Sargasso Sea. Each book holds special memory of my own learning or teaching experience. Both my thinking and my teaching expanded as I thought deeply about these texts and worked through them with my students.

 Pudd’head Wilson
As senior college student, I took a graduate seminar on Mark Twain from Dr. Richard Cracroft at BYU. His class was one of the most  experiences as an English major. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I could have original ideas about a piece of literature. While reading Pudd'nhead Wilson, I had an idea for paper. In reality, I struggled to write--still do--critically about literature. (This isn't just me being modest, there are still many of my extended family members and colleagues who can verify this account.) I didn't spell well and my hand writing was horrible. We had to type papers back then on a typewriter. Do some of you need a picture of one of these beasts? Sitting in the library, I had an idea while reading the book. I was unprepared for big ideas, no paper, no notebook, just a pen. I began writing what became, after several hand written version, a 20 page paper. I turned it in to Dr. Cracroft, who was a notable Twain scholar and received a good grade. It wasn't perfect, but it let me know that I could do the work; that I could read through a text and put together ideas. i taught the book a couple of times instead of Huck Finn and it was always on my shelf. When I need a boost of confidence, it was always there and still is. If it were gone, I would surely miss it.

Cry, the Beloved Country and Their Eyes Were Watching God
Both of these books weren't on my radar until a teacher discussed them with me. I never actually took a class from Steven Walker while I was at BYU, but he was always extremely generous with students. Some how I found out he had done work on Cry the Beloved Country and I became interested. The book was amazing and became one of the staples in my Sophomore Curriculum during the 1980's. My students generally knew next to nothing about South Africa or Apartheid. We did cross-curriculum work before I knew what to call it. My students read articles about Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress, The Boar War, Diamond Mining, and Ghandi, all before de Klerk began discussing negotiations in 1990. Some of my best teaching experiences occurred in those classes where we learned together about the racist practices in South African and how they might inform events and practices in the U.S. during the 1980s. During that period there were protests on college campuses about how their university endowments were invested in South America. In 1985, we listened to Sun City recorded by Artist United Against Apartheid. 

I first saw the title of Their Eyes Were Watching God on the list of options for the open question on the Advanced Placement Literature exam.  The following summer, I was at a NEH Summer Seminar at Auburn University and several of us began talking about which books we were using. One of the  attendees highly recommended Zora Neale Hurston's wonderful book. I continued to teach this book every year in my AP course until I left to do graduate work. My eyes were opened and I tried hard to make this book part of every students' consciousness. 

If either one of these books disappeared from my shelves I would be distraught. They represent moments when I began to think differently and my teaching changed. 

Bleak House.
For many years, I taught a Dickens' novel in a serial format. Every other Tuesday was Dickens' day. As a kid, I struggled with long 19th century novels. They were too long, too slow, too something. I struggled the first time I had to teach A Tale of Two Cities; furthermore, I am sure that my students struggled. I wasn't as committed as I should have been. I had a hard time sharing Dickens' greatness, because I didn't quite get it myself. While reading through an English Journal I saw an application for NEH Summer Seminar about reading and teaching serialized Victorian novels directed by Dr. Michael Lund at Longwood College. 

The experience change my teaching life. I taught a new Victorian novel every year for about 15 years, generally one I had never read before. Yes, and students do read long books if we read with them. One week I would quiz them and two weeks later they would quiz me. This practice lead to a sabbatical funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and Readers Digest. Every year nearly a third of my students wrote on the current Dickens' novel on the AP Literature exam. (How do you not know a book well that you have lived with for nine months?) I point to Bleak House because, not only is it fantastic, but I taught the novel the year my oldest daughter was a student in my AP class. The book sits on my shelf as a reminder of this wonder pedagogical practice that changed my relationship with my students, Reading and discovering a novel with them throughout a school year was both challenging and rejuvenating. Many of them were better readers and writers than I was, I only kept them at bay due to my experience and the craftiness of old age. Having my daughter in the class added to the experience in immeasurable ways and Bleak House remains on the shelf as a marker. I don't think I could make it any clearer that losing this book would be like misplacing 15 years of teaching memories.

How can I help?
I am quite sure that teachers like Sarah are making memories with books. So, what can I do? I get more than my share of books. I belong to ALAN and I attend the annual Workshop, I preview books in my role as an academic and scholar of young adult literature. I try to promote and discuss the scholarship, teaching, and advocacy of this literature in this blog, during conferences, school visits, and in my courses. I read as many as I can and when I am done I pass them on to teachers, students, and other academics. I immediately realized I could help Sarah. When she is ready and has settled into her classroom, I can send her several boxes of books. She can shelf the books that are appropriate for her students and pass the rest on to her colleagues.
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I know that the local school districts will take donations, but I always worry about how that will trickle down to books on teachers’ shelves. Will they be given money for books that students might choose to read?  Unfortunately, I see institutions replacing books with anthologies, scripted curricula, and other mind numbing texts instead of novels and books for classrooms and libraries. By giving some books to Sarah, I know there is a good chance that a kid will wander over to her bookcase and take a book home that might interest them and lead them to new horizons.  At our house, we feel compelled to help. We will give generically to our church and directly to LSU colleagues who have lost their homes, but a box of books to a teacher when they are ready for them would mean a great deal to me if I were in her place. Below is a closer look at what Sarah found when she visited her classroom.

How can you help?
I hope that others want to help. Last week in the blog, I mentioned that I would be helping in a small way. I also offered to keep a list of people who would like to help and then, when the time is right, match them with one of my former students, their colleagues, or their schools.
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Of course, you can help anyway you would like. I am going to suggest a couple. 1.) Start collecting books that you have on your shelves and storing books that you can ship. I might even suggest you find a partner who might not have books, but you might be able to help you with shipping costs. 2. Maybe students in your YA literature classes might want to do a joint venture. Remember, this doesn’t have to be done this week or within the next month. The inhabitants of the area will be cleaning homes and schools for quite a few weeks. 3.) If you are in a school that does a charity drive during the holidays, you might consider encouraging them to sponsor a school in one of devastated districts. You could raise the money and sent up an amazon account with each English teacher in the school. They could then buy gently used books that are appropriate for their students. I am not sure how this would work; but, again, we have time. 4.) A group of teachers could collectively visit thrift stores and buy up gentle used YA books and other titles. Then, when they are ready you can send them the books. 5.) If you are an author and have a classroom set of books you can share them with some of these teachers. Those teachers can share the books and create groups of books that students can use in literature circle assignments.

Final Thoughts for the Week
There are probably several others ways we can help individual teachers restock their classroom libraries. I will continue to build the list of people who would like to donate books and prepare to match them we teachers in need.
Please take some time to listen to the news or read some evaluations about the level of loss. The people of Baton Rouge and the rest of southern Louisiana are great folks. It won’t take you long to see how engaged they are in helping each other clear out debris, cut out sheet rock, dry out the support lumber, and prepare to rebuild. Nothing I can do here will do justice to the pain or the loss. I can, however, help one teacher. I can help other individuals connect with a teacher. Hopefully, I can be helpful in connecting larger efforts.   Thanks for listening.

Please take a moment to like this post on Facebook. It is also helpful if you share the post on Facebook or mention it on twitter. (I know that many of you have much larger networks than I do, so thank you in advance.)

Next week, we will be back to talking about developing a syllabus and preparing to share and teach this wonderful literature.

There a large  number of approaches to develop and conduct a young adult literature course.  Some professors focus on historical coverage, others on theoretical lenses, some focus on contemporary choices, others focus on pedagogy, and the list can go on. While we share an interest in Young Adult literature, we think about it in different ways. Guest contributors have offered various insights. To see what has happened in the past click on the Contributors Page.

In  fact, our guest this week has posted before. This time, Jon Ostenson briefly explains his course and then describes a series of assignments that usher students in to discussion of Disciplinary Discourse using their experience as English and English Teaching majors. I will hand it over to Jon.

​I, Jon, teach a semester-length course on adolescent (or YA) literature that is designed for English majors (as an elective course) and for English teaching majors (as a required course). Students read from a list of titles during the semester, half of which I choose from amongst more recent YA titles and a couple of classics (like The Outsiders and The Chocolate War) and the other half of which students select on their own. This reading accomplishes one of the major objectives I have for the course, which is that students have a broad exposure to current and significant titles in the field.
 
A second objective for the course is that students become familiar with issues and discussions in the field of adolescent literature and that they feel comfortable themselves engaging in the broader discourse in our field. This is perhaps a lot of ask of undergraduates, many of whom have been consuming a steady diet of canonical literature typical to the English major. But my students are up to the task, I think, and I have found an important way to scaffold their exposure to these disciplinary discussions and to give them a chance at entering the discussion themselves.

We do this in my course through a keyword study project. I was first inspired to create a project like this at an NCTE conference where I attended a session on keyword studies in culture and other literary fields. This session described the history of keyword studies, which traces its origins to work by Raymond Williams, who published an early study of key terms in his 1976 book, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. The study of keywords has since been embraced in numerous fields of cultural and literary studies. In keyword studies, the primary goal is to identify the recurring terms that are used in the discourse of a discipline and set out to describe those in a way that helps shed light on the meaning of the word in a specific context, but most importantly on the underlying reasoning behind the use of these words in the discipline. These definitions are not necessarily (no pun intended) definitive, as the meanings of the words are at times the subject of intense debate and struggle. A link to the newest edition can be found here.

​In my course, after sharing some brief background on keyword studies, I explain to my students that we will be using this approach to better understand the scholarly field of adolescent literature. Before we identify the terms they’ll define, we read some examples from Raymond Williams’ work; I like to use his essay on the term “literature” as it discusses a concept familiar to my students but one whose meaning they come to see upon reading the definition as being far from certain or simple. I have also used examples from the fine collection Keywords for Children’s Literature (edited by Philip Nel and Lissa Paul); one I like to use is the essay on “literacy,” which is a concept of particular interest to me and to the teaching majors who are enrolled in the course.
 
As we read, we look to understand not just the content of these essays but to also identify the genre expectations for these texts. We examine how authors seek to define the word while at the same time describing subtle differences that may emerge in how the word is used in certain contexts or by certain groups within a discipline. It is important that students understand how these essays help lay bare the debates and struggles within the discipline around the term. We also identify how the writers of these essays use specific examples (of literary texts or of scholarly writings) to help shed further light on the term’s use.

With a clear sense of the expectations of the assignment, we move next to choosing terms to define. I have collected a set of terms that I feel are commonly used in the field, and we look at that list and brainstorm other possible terms that might be worth defining. Students then choose a term that they want to investigate and write an essay for; they can do this either in groups or alone (most choose to do this in groups, which I encourage for the sake of allowing them to research more broadly and to have peers with whom they can exchange ideas about the term).
 
In the process of defining their term and then writing an essay about it, I encourage students to first look to traditional dictionary definitions for the word and then to consider the etymology and history of the word. This may prove helpful to students when the term (“romance” for example) has been in use for a long time and perhaps is only just recently being used in the context of adolescent literature studies. However, I caution students that these words are often used in specific and sometimes unique ways when we’re talking about adolescent literature and that their essays should reflect this.
 
To further explore their word, they look through scholarly journals (e.g., The ALAN Review, The Lion and the Unicorn, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, SIGNAL Journal) for articles that are related to their term in order to get a sense for how the term is used in context in the scholarly field. And they select three young adult novels to read (as part of their elective reading) that have a meaningful connection to their term and can be used in their essay to support their thinking and discussion of the term.

In the three semesters that I have been using this project in my class, I have been pleased with the results. The essays provide an important synthesis of students’ thinking and research about the keyword and its importance in the study of adolescent literature. The keyword project helps my students come to understand at least one aspect of the field in more depth, and I am gratified to see them making references to and connections with their keywords study during class discussions. In fact, if I know that a book we’re studying together (like Neal Shusterman’s Unwind) has a connection to a keyword studied by my students (like “dystopia”), I’ll often encourage the authors of that essay to share what light their research sheds on our discussion of the book. It’s become clear to me that this project helps students understand the scholarly discussion around adolescent literature and it has enriched our class discussions of the literature in noticeable ways.

I invite you to see the results of this work by browsing the students’ essays at a web site I’ve created to house them (yalitkw.jonostenson.com). (Please recognize, though, that I’ve recently moved earlier content to this new site and not all of the essays have been updated in terms of formatting and citations yet.) If you’d like more details about the project, you can see the assignment description on our course web site (jonostenson.com/yalit/assignments/keyword-study/).

Thanks Jon

Over the next couple of weeks we will be talking about developing and teaching YA courses, censorship and book approval, and we will be hearing from a couple of authors. If you liked this post, please share it with your colleagues and friends as well as teachers and librarians in your area.

Occasionally, when I am avoiding work or the final touches on an article, I check Facebook or my email just one more time. Last April I checked the UNLV Today email and was introduced to a UNLV College of Education alumnus that has a children’s book series. I found out that a graduate from our college, Marquin Parks, has been teaching in Michigan. Like many other teachers he wanted to find books that might speak more directly to his students. He also made the happy mistake of establishing a pact with this students; if they read quietly for an hour he would write. As a result, he created the Wrinkles Wallace series. First, he wrote Wrinkles Wallace: Knights of Night School and, then, Wrinkles Wallace: Fighters of Foreclosure. I can’t image how hard it would be to write and teach at the same time. Some remarkable writer/teachers have managed to do both. Marquin joins the ranks of Alan Sitomer, Gene Luen Yang, Andrew Smith, Sharon Draper, and I know there are others. Marquin and I exchanged some emails and hopefully we can get him back to UNLV for a speaking engagement. He joins the ranks of two other emerging teacher/writers that I know personally--Paul Greci and Sarah Guillory. Now I have a trio of personal acquaintances that I can send positive thoughts. I hope that in a few years everybody knows more about Marquin’s experience with his students and as a writer. You doesn’t like a writer who list some of his favorite books as Maniac Magee, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, My Side of the Mountain, The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963. I would love to hear him discuss each of these books. 

​For the time being, I will turn it over to Marquin to briefly introduce himself and to talk about how he uses bonus chapters to engage his readers.

 My name is Marquin Parks.  I’m a dad (woot!), a fifth grade teacher (yay!), and the author of the Wrinkles Wallace series (Wrinkles Wallace: Knights of Night School and Wrinkles Wallace: Fighters of Foreclosure) of children’s novels. (My parents are so proud!)
 
Oh, and, well, I have a confession to make… 
 
I write bonus chapters for my books.
 
BONUS CHAPTERS! Bonus chapters?
 
Allow me to tell you more.  For me, a bonus chapter comes to life when a writer (me) continues to write material for a previously released book because a reader continues to want to read and know more about my finished book.  And, in order for me to supply something to meet the demands, I write free bonus chapters and release them on my blog at WrinklesWallace.blogspot.com
 
While there are numerous reasons for me to create these bonus chapters, I will share three with you:

1. Bonus chapters Keep my Readers Involved in the Series Until the Next Book is Released.

In my classroom, I often work with students who stand in limbo while waiting for an author’s next masterpiece to be released. They have looked me in the eyes and asked, “Have you ever had to wait for the next book in a series?” 
 
I would nod and try to give them suggestions for other books they might find interesting. 
 
Then they would ask, “Have you ever wanted the writer to HURRY UP or give you just a little bit more to hold you over until they release another book?”
 
Certainly! Soon after Wrinkles Wallace: Knights of Night School was published, I had readers asking me plenty of questions during author talks.  Sure, a F.A.Q. page on a website, or the usage of social media would serve as a wonderful connector for us to develop our writer/reader relationship, yet many readers wanted to know more about Wrinkles and the crew.  That’s when I realized that I could write a bonus chapter to explain what typical answers, using hashtags, and 140 characters could not.  Why not feed that anticipation for a new book with some bonus chapter snacks and appetizers?
 
By the time the second book in the series, Wrinkles Wallace: Fighters of Foreclosure was released, my readers had six bonus chapters to hold them over and help them get to know more about my characters. Indeed, writing and releasing a timely bonus chapter allowed me to stay connected and relevant to my audience.  Clearly, bonus chapters kept my readers involved in the series until the next book was released.

​2. Bonus Chapters allow me to Dig Deeper into the Book and Reveal More About the Characters and Situations.
 
Ever had any questions you wanted to know about a character or situation in a book and realized that unless you talked to the author, you would never get the answers to those questions? 
 
Not every character in a book has the same significance as the main characters.  There are supporting characters and cameo characters.  In addition, there may be events that a reader will want to know the background story about.  Well, for me, writing a bonus chapter to explain why Fib the Lion chased students out of the hallways and had them scurrying up ropes when the tardy bell rang at school was the answer to questions asked by my readers. While I thought having a lion in charge of motivating students to get to class on time was a simple humorous twist, my readers wanted to know more about him. Who was the lion?  Why was he there?  Why would he want to feast on the femur bone of a fifth grader?  Answering their questions required me to think deeper as a writer and gave me another opportunity to show my creativity.  Not to mention, answering those questions led me to writing even more bonus chapters.

​3. Bonus Chapters are a Free Gift to my Readers for all Their Support.
 
As a writer of a series, I’m trying to step away from the trees to look at the forest. I’m constantly planning three or four books ahead of what I’ve already released to the public. My readers help me to see the beauty of specific trees that were planted inside the pages of books. Releasing the free gift of a bonus chapter shows my readers that I’m listening and that I value their feedback.  By the time a reader has invested their time and money into reading my books, I feel like we have developed a unique relationship. They have supported my movement to promote literacy, and that certainly motivates me to continue giving them as much as I can.
 
Steady,
Marquin Parks

4. BONUS REASON!
 
I would be fibbing if I said I was not afraid of the fact that Fib the Lion might find a way to put his claws on my clavicle and his teeth on my trachea if I stopped writing bonus chapters about him…
BONUS CHAPTER
The Leisure Limousine
 
I was made with the heart of a race car, the mind of a skateboard, and the spirit of an office chair.  I’m tuned for quickness and agility; I’m designed with supreme craftsmanship for comfort.  Please don’t confuse me with a trendy tricycle, interesting inline skates, or a unique unicycle[a1] .
Why?
Well, because I roll as crisp and clean as Lenny’s leisure limousine.  Yeah, I’m Lenny’s wheelchair, and I’m built for this lifestyle.
When I first met Lenny, he walked into a store, paid a fast-talking guy some faster-talking cash for me, and then he did something odd.  Usually when a person doesn’t walk with a cane or one of those walkers, they are buying a wheelchair for someone they care about.  And, they usually walk me out without a passenger sitting in my lap.  Then, I’m placed into the trunk of a car or the back of a SUV, and I am introduced as the lap of luxury for someone who appreciates me for what I do.
 
Not Lenny.  No, Lenny put his wallet back in his pocket, stood in front of me with a huge wooden-tooth smile, turned his back to me, and extended his rear end to sit down. After he sat down, he wiggled his rump to get more comfortable, put his feet on my foot rests, and started turning my wheels to get used to the way I handle business.  Prior to Lenny’s actions, unless it was a kid who was playing around, I’d never seen a person walk in without any issues and decide to sit in a wheelchair.   Yet, Lenny did it, and I was changed forever.
                Before Lenny came into my life, I was a pretty useful wheelchair.  Honestly, I’d get the silver medal and come in second to Santa in an Olympic sitting contest.  In the past, I helped transport a few great people who went through surgeries at the hospital and folks who needed to get to their flight quickly at the airport.  I even provided something to do for a few grandkids who visited their grandparents.  While I wasn’t motorized, I was still helpful, and that worked for me.
                Once Lenny and I partnered up, things changed. I wasn’t just some wheelchair stored in the trunk of a car or in the closet near the front door. No, being cheap on gas and having low mileage worked to my advantage with Lenny.  I’m proud to say that I’m Lenny’s leisure limousine, and it has been amazing!  Well, it was up until the day I thought I was going to die in an accident.
It’s hard for me to even let the events of that day roll[a1]  through my mind. For me, it still hurts, but I think talking about it helps me to heal and push on.  As I share some of the details, try not to cry because seeing you cry, might make me cry.
 
                It was a typical evening. Lenny had me rolling around and we were both having a good time. While Lenny seemed a little more nervous than usual, I actually felt perfectly fine.  That was until I lost a limb when Mr. Quiet threw thunder and lightning in the form of a dodgeball at one of my wheels and damaged it to death. The side-airbags Lenny installed actually went off to protect him, and I just knew the end was near for me.  As I barely rolled off the court, I saw my life flash before my seat cushion.  Even after Wrinkles changed my tire, and Lenny did his first back-flip while sitting in me, when I saw the ambulance in the parking lot, I thought they were there for me.
                To be honest, immediately after surviving the accident, I never thought I’d be able to work again, but Lenny brought me back from the brink of death. Death!  He made sure I had nothing but the best and helped me to have a speedy recovery.
A few days later, instead of throwing me away, Lenny took me to a shop and they repaired me with newer and better parts. I went from a pretty basic wheelchair, to a wheelchair with an alarm that could be programmed to behave like a mechanical bull. I even had cruise control, rear view mirrors, pegs for a passenger to ride, larger rims  and tires that helped us with traction in the snow and on ice, speed that could be used on a racetrack, cornering for those twisty curves, and some top secret stuff under my seat that Lenny and I don’t talk about.
 
                Though I can’t tell you too much because we don’t like to have our business all out in the streets, I can share some current events I’ve been going through. About a week ago, I spent the weekend at Mr. Quiet’s house. You would think Mr. Quiet and I would be fast friends because his name is Sittin’ B. Quiet, and that’s what I allow people to do when I’m around. Instead, I was nervous around him for obvious reasons, but he was so distracted with what was going on with his house that he looked at me with dead presidential pupils or dollar signs in his eyes.  Instantly, Lenny tightened his grip on my arm rests to silently show Mr. Quiet that I was not for sale.
At first, everything was fine. Lenny used me as a spot to park his back pockets and relax. Later, we went for a trip to the gas station and some rude guys were talking smack.  One of them put his hands on me after I was armed with my alarm and I gave him the great gift of an electric shock that put him on the concrete in a hurry.  Then, after Lenny and Wrinkles went into the store, I saw one of my two wheel brothers get stolen by a group of guys. I felt so upset to see it happen because that bike was to Wrinkles what I am to Lenny.
Over the course of that weekend I had a few more things that popped up quicker than one of Lenny’s wheelies, but we were able to handle them without too many issues. Meanwhile, I continue to roll as crisp and clean as Lenny’s leisure limousine.

Thanks Marquin! 

I hope many of you will explore Marquin's books. In addition, if you know some emerging authors, I would love to here about them. Over the next several weeks the guest contributors will talk about developing and teaching a college young adult literature course. I know that many of you are developing courses as you are reading this. I hope you can see YA Wednesday as a useful addition to your YA literature discussions. If you are, I hope you take a bit of time to comment on how you are using this academic blog.

This week Stacy Graber reminds us of the positive literacy experiences that are provided at the YSU English Festival. This is a perfect post as we get ready to plan activities for returning students at every level. Thanks Stacy.

​The English Festival at Youngstown State University is an event arranged primarily around pleasure.  That is, middle and high school students from areas surrounding the university in Ohio and Pennsylvania come together to celebrate the enjoyment of reading and writing through 3 days of participation in games, activities, competitions, and conversations based on notable works of young adult literature (YSU English Festival, 2016).

The rationale for Festival book selection reflects the priority placed on pleasure as evident in the following: “The Committee’s aim in selecting its booklist and in planning all Festival activities is neither to have the students accumulate a particular body of knowledge…nor to have them study the standard classics of English or American literature” (YSU English Festival, 2016).  Rather,

"The aims are to encourage students to read more, thereby improving all of their communication skills; to enhance their interest in reading, thereby building pleasurable and positive associations with reading as an activity; to indicate to students that 'literature' is not merely an academic course but can and should be an integral part of their lives; [and] to introduce students to authors and works of sufficient caliber to lead students to a recognition of and respect for writing of high quality" (YSU English Festival, 2016).   
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This rationale is important and reminds me of the expression of connoisseurship identified by Bourdieu (1984), or the deep sense of understanding and capacity for appreciation that comes from everyday exposure to beautiful things (--like good books).

I think the Festival offers a powerful lesson here that translates profitably to education.  More specifically, in their emphasis on pleasure, it seems that the Festival creators intuited the all-important joy-factor that makes academic work possible.  As a teacher, I hold out hope that school culture is able to transmit some of the rich and seemingly effortless competencies that Bourdieu claims are acquired almost exclusively outside of the classroom, and that immersion in young adult literature contributes to this process. 

So, in planning an Insight Session for this year’s Festival (i.e., a one-hour, informal activity, generated for an audience of 30-35 students, related to one or more of the Festival books) with the relationship between academic skill and enjoyment in mind, I produced an activity that situated students as curriculum designers.  The idea behind the session was to give kids the opportunity to (re)imagine ways of teaching reading and writing through the creation of “dream units” arranged around favorite works of young adult literature. 
​
The tools offered to the kids were intentionally spare because I wanted them to freely invent strategies for developing learning activities and projects based on the Festival books.  So, I compiled a brief list of organizational structures drawn from a fine methods text (Hinchman & Sheridan-Thomas, 2014), and defined a few basic models that could help students shape their ideas (e.g., interdisciplinary units, multimedia units, thematically arranged units, project-based units, research-based units, and activism-based units).  

Likewise, the instructions provided to session participants were lean in the hope that kids would feel free to create content in a way meaningful and logical to them.  For example, they were told that unit plans might contain elements such as a rationale for text selection, discussion questions, learning activities, a description of a writing prompt or project, and a list of related resources (e.g., films, websites, artwork, etc.).  Students were then invited to use or disregard these suggestions, and they embarked on 40 minutes of planning with the understanding that they would share the product of their conversations in the final 15 minutes of the session. 

The Festival booklist for senior high school students in 2016 included the following titles: De la Peña’s I Will Save You (2011) and We Were Here (2010), Quick’s Boy 21 (2013), Sedgwick’s Revolver (2011), Sheinkin’s Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon (2012), Wein’s Rose Under Fire (2014), and Westerfeld’s Leviathan (2010).
Not surprisingly, the majority of the groups selected one of the books written by the immensely popular keynote speaker for 2016, Matt De la Peña.  Students noted that De la Peña’s stories were driven by exciting plotlines that did not sacrifice deeper meaning, and they especially appreciated the complexity of the author’s protagonists and the intensity of the situations presented. 
​
The unit plans proposed by students were predominately interdisciplinary designs arranged around a relationship between ELA and Social Science, with a focus on psychological aspects of individuals, social issues concerning mental health, and sociological dimensions of friendship networks and surrogate families.  For example, one cluster of students responded with particular sophistication, reflective of contemporary theory, in designing a unit around the impact of trauma on young people.  Another group focused on the “mental prisons” afflicting De la Peña’s characters metaphoric of thoughts and beliefs that constrain individuals in everyday life.  Yet another cluster of students explored confessional forms of writing as a vehicle for therapeutic release.  

All students were invested in attempting to establish connections between themes in the literature and pragmatic applications through research and civic involvement.  In other words, students seemed to think of story as a framing mechanism for understanding social issues and addressing public needs.  In their concluding statements on the value of their plans, students appeared to avoid what might be considered more “literary” ways of talking about texts and instead argued the benefits of reading that could be generalized to problem-solution formats of research, writing, and direct action.       

Overall, the session produced an unexpected glimpse of pleasure in reading, not exclusively understood as an expression of enjoyment but as an experience of satisfaction in utilizing young adult literature as a vehicle for effecting real change in people’s lives.  At the same time, the students seemed to appreciate the reversal of roles in the session such that they were asked to design curriculum as opposed to being situated as receivers of information. 

References

Bourdieu, P. (1984).  Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste  (R. Nice, Trans.).  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Hinchman, K.A., & Sheridan-Thomas, H.K. (Eds.).  (2014).  Best practices in adolescent literacy instruction (2nd ed.).  New York, NY: Guilford Press.
 
The YSU English Festival.  (2016).  Retrieved from http://www.ysuenglishfestival.org
 
Stacy Graber is an Assistant Professor of English at Youngstown State University.  Her areas of interest include critical theory, pedagogy, popular culture, and young adult literature.
Please address questions/comments to sgraber@ysu.edu 

Dr. Bickmore adds his two bits.

Attending the YSU English Festival was one of the great experiences of my professional life. The faculty was great, the teachers were fantastic, and the students were wonderful. If you live in the area you should plan on attending next April. The exact dates will be April, 26, 27, 28, 2017. While the final list of books will be announced soon we do know the Guest Lecturers. The Thomas and Carol Gay Guest Lecturer is E. Lockhart and the James A. Houck Guest Lecturer is Gene Luen Yang. 

One more call for Book Chapters

Paula Greathouse asked me to post this blurb about a new edited book on YA Literature. This is a great opportunity.

 Attention all teachers, media specialists, reading specialists, and teacher educators! Do you use young adult literature in your classroom/course or know someone who does? We have already secured a publisher and are now seeking chapters for our upcoming book on the infusion of young adult literature in the content area classroom! Please read the call for abstracts! Contact Paula Greathouse at pgreathouse@tntech.edu with any questions. Thanks!!

Please see a pdf about the call for chapters below.

chapter_call_-_adolescent_lit_as_a_complement_to_the_content_areas.pdf
Download File

If you need a few books to read before the end of the summer, you can't go wrong by consulting this list of finalist!

​This week on Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday we introduce a new feature. Several Young Adult authors have been immensely helpful to respond to inquiries, answer questions, provide the occasional book, and, most importantly, they write wonderful books. The blog has been successful at providing a space for academics, librarians, and teachers. It is time to provide a space for YA authors to chime in. At least once a month, the blog will host YA authors who will be free to talk about their writing process, their newest book, their world view, their favorite authors, books they admire, or anything thing else in the amazing world of YA literature. After some initial inquiries, about 25 authors have agreed to participate. It promises to be an exciting year with some special Friday additions of YA Wednesday. I am pleased to have Brent Hartinger be our first author. I hope you know his work as one of the pioneers of YA LGBT literature. If you don’t, his post will be a great introduction.
In addition, at the end of the post see the link to the new issue of Study and Scrutiny and the call for book chapter for a new book edited by Paula Greathouse, Brooke Eisenbach, and Joan Kaywell. 

Now, take it away Brent:

It's strange to be old enough to have a "perspective," but when it comes LGBT teen lit, I definitely do.
In 1990, I co-founded the world's third gay-straight alliance in my hometown of Tacoma, Washington. Needless to say, it was a struggle.

In 1992, I wrote the first draft of Geography Club, a book very loosely based on that experience. A lot of editors wanted to publish it, but it wasn't until 2003 that Steve Fraser at HarperCollins finally managed to get it out into the world. The book was an unexpected hit, one of the first in an explosion of mainstream LGBT teen books, but it was also pretty controversial, banned and challenged at libraries all across the country.

In August, Simon & Schuster is releasing my twelfth novel, Three Truths and a Lie, a horror/thriller YA novel of psychological suspense. It features two leading gay characters, but the novel has almost nothing to do with the fact that they're gay, and says nothing "about" the LGBT teen experience.

In other words, over the course of my life and my career, I've seen LGBT teen issues go from being a very BIG issue, to becoming well on the way to being a non-issue.

I often wonder what would have happened if Geography Club had been published in 1996 or 1998 (as it almost was). Would it still have been a hit, or would it have tanked? Lots of editors and publishers, even ones who liked it, told me, "There's no market for a book about gay teenagers." Maybe that was true at the time.

Even in 2001, when HarperCollins picked it up, everyone in-house loved it, but no one except my editor expected it to do anything. By the end of the second week of publication, it had already gone into a third printing. It eventually spawned six well-received sequels and went on to be adapted as a feature film (co-starring Scott Bakula).

I'd been working with LGBT teens since 1990, and I knew there was some real energy on LGBT youth issues brewing under the cultural radar. But the book's success caught even me by surprise. (At the time, my author-friends would complain to me how hard it was to get any attention for their books, and I would think to myself, "Really? It doesn't seem that hard to me!" I've since learned that book launches don't usually go that effortlessly!)
​
I tried hard to make Geography Club fun and funny, because I was tired of the "doom and gloom" LGBT books of the past. But it was still a book about the struggles of being a LGBT teenager: how it sucked to be bullied, among other things.

Three Truths and a Lie is a horror novel. Two of the main characters are gay, but they're mostly concerned about staying alive when the locals starts terrorizing them and their friends as they spend the weekend in a remote rainforest. Or could it be one of the four friends who's secretly terrorizing and killing the others?
The only bullying is when a straight friend teases the gay characters with his own nudity while skinny-dipping.
In other words, in Three Truths and a Lie, the gayness is mostly incidental. Better still, the book is being marketed to a mainstream audience.

I think it's fantastic that we live in a time that we can take for granted the fact that heterosexual readers won't be distracted by a gay character, to the point that it interferes with the story.

In terms of LGBT themes in YA, the genre is now so rich and wonderful and varied. And I'm especially thrilled that we're seeing more and more "genre" books -- science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, and all the rest. I've been saying for years that this is clearly the next wave in LGBT YA publishing.
Then there's the question of sex.

I thought the sexual element in Geography Club was pretty tame. But the folks who equate "gay" with "sex" didn't see it that way at all. To them, my books were smut.

I can only imagine what they'd say about The Truths and a Lie, which is pretty explicit in places. You might even call it a psychosexual thriller.

In the book, I'm using sex to explore darker themes, like domination, jealousy, and secret desires, even the connection between sex and death. These themes are right in line with the genre I'm writing in, but they're pretty unusual in YA, even in non-gay books.

But the sex in this book is gay. And it was written for and is being marketed to a mainstream audience! Whenever I think about all the hassles I went through with Geography Club, all the controversies I endured, that sort of takes my breath away.
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Over the last twenty-five years, LGBT YA lit has changed dramatically, just as society has changed. For writers, readers, and actual teenagers, we're all better off.
 
Brent Hartinger's Three Truths and a Lie is available everywhere (after 8/2). Visit Brent online at brenthartinger.com

Study and Scrutiny Vol. 2, No 1

If you haven't run across it yet, the new issue of Study and Scrutiny is published. We hope you check it out (here) and look what the contributing authors have to offer. We have articles from Victor Malo-Juvera, Paula Greathouse and Micke Diccio, and Alice Hayes. We also have an interview by Rodrigo Joseph Rodriquez with Isabel Quintero and a Book Review by Lorena German.

Call for Book Chapters

Paula Greathouse asked me to post this blurb about a new edited book on YA Literature. This is a great opportunity.

 Attention all teachers, media specialists, reading specialists, and teacher educators! Do you use young adult literature in your classroom/course or know someone who does? We have already secured a publisher and are now seeking chapters for our upcoming book on the infusion of young adult literature in the content area classroom! Please read the call for abstracts! Contact Paula Greathouse at pgreathouse@tntech.edu with any questions. Thanks!!

Please see a pdf about the call for chapters below.