Mark Lewis is posting again in December after a busy conference season. It might be the start of a tradition. Last year he posted about Middle Grades Graphic Novels. You can find it here. If you have the time, browse through the contributors page. Mark has been a contributor from the beginning. Mark, thanks once again for helping out.

​At the 2019 NCTE Annual Convention, one of the keynote speakers was George Takei who had just published a memoir about the time his family was confined to internment camps during World War II. He chose to present the story, They Called Us Enemy (2019; written with Justin Eisinger and Steven Scott, and illustrated by Harmony Becker), in graphic novel format because he believed it would be more accessible to younger readers. I don’t usually embrace that argument since reading graphic novels and comics can be just as challenging as engaging with a traditional prose text, if not more challenging for readers unfamiliar with the apparatus included in sequential art that are essential to comprehension (see Brenner, 2011). Yet, there is broad scholarship on the efficacy of graphic novels to engage young readers:

​Takei’s memoir reminds all of us how certain groups have been and continue to be subjugated within U.S. society, which young readers should be exposed to as part of their English language arts and social studies curricula. So, if more youth decide to read Takei’s memoir because it is a graphic novel, then I have to applaud his decision. ​

​Another reason that I enjoyed They Called Us Enemy because it was a memoir, rather than a fictionalized account of Japanese internment, which personalizes a distant story of U.S. history. I believe young readers would also appreciate it for this reason since memoirs evoke a divergent evocative transaction between reader and text than fictional texts (see Yagoda, 2009). A memoir is a particular creative narrative that presents a memory of one’s life. I once taught a course on story and memoir with my doctoral advisor, Bill McGinley, and he explained memoir on the syllabus as the “difference between recollection and autobiography, between truth and honesty, between the past and present. Memoirs are occupied more with emotion than they are with information; they are often less panoramic than autobiographies, but more purposeful than recollections. Most important, they are not really about the past, even if their primary impetus is the act of remembering. The memoir is about how our past selves continue to inform our present selves, who we might become, and what we might be called to do.” Following this definition of memoir, I argue that youth deserve to engage with memoirs to not only learn about the diverse lives of distant others, but also to learn something about themselves. The confusion that young George Takei felt while imprisoned, followed by the indignation he felt as a young adult about what his country did to his family, can inform readers how oppressive acts have ripple effects in peoples’ lives beyond the singular moment. Here are a few other memoirs that might that explore aspects of living and dying that are worthy of consideration to include in an English language arts or social studies curriculum.

​References
Bakis, M. (2012). The graphic novel classroom: Powerful teaching and learning with images. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Cook, M. (2017). Now I “see”: The impact of graphic novels on reading comprehension in high school English classrooms. Literacy Research Instruction, 56, 21-53.
Chun, C. W. (2009). Critical literacies and graphic novels for English-language learners: Teaching Maus. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 53(2), 144-153.
Connors, S. P. (2015). Expanding students’ analytical frameworks through the study of graphic novels. Journal of Children’s Literature, 41(2), 5-15.
Dungo, AJ. (2019). In waves. London, UK: Nobrow.
Findakly, B., & Trondheim, L. (2017). Poppies of Iraq. Montreal, Quebec: Drawn & Quarterly.
Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2004). Using graphic novels, anime, and the Internet in an urban classroom. English Journal, 93(3), 19-25.
Gharib, M. (2019). I was their American dream. New York, NY: Clarkson Potter.
Griffith, P. E. (2010). Graphic novels in the secondary classroom and school libraries. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54, 181-189.
Moeller, R. A. (2011). “Aren’t these boy books?”: High school students’ readings of gender ingraphic novels. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 54(7), 476-484.
Smetana, L. (2010). Graphic novel gurus: Students with learning disabilities enjoying real literature. The California Reader, 44(1), 3-14.
Versaci, R. (2001). How comic books can change the way our students see literature: One teacher’s perspective. English Journal, 91(2), 61-67.
Takei, G., Eisinger, J., Scott, S. (Authors), & Becker, H. (Illustrator). (2019). They called us enemy. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions.
Tatulli, M. (2018). Short & skinny. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.
Thrash, M. (2018). Lost soul, be at peace. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.
Yagoda, B. (2009). Memoirs: A history. New York, NY: Riverhead Books. 

Until next time.

My memory of the 2019 ALAN Workshop is one of gratitude. I am thankful for the help and kindness of publishers who answered an untold number of questions and who supported their authors. I am thankful for the attendance of authors--both those who have been friends of ALAN for long time and those who were willing to risk a visit for the first time. Most importantly, I am thankful for the members of the ALAN family who decided to attend the workshop with us in Baltimore. I know there were many who wanted to be there, but had conflicts. I also know there were many who were there for the first time. In case you didn't catch it at the workshop, if you paid the workshop fee, you are now an ALAN member, a part of the ALAN family. 

I am also grateful for the ALAN executive committee, the ALAN officers, the elected board members, and an untold number of volunteers who help activities to run smoothly. The ALAN booth, the Breakfast and the workshop does work without all of the volunteers. Without question the workshop had a few glitches. Rest assured that as an executive board we are well aware of them and we are working hard to address them and remedy unsatisfactory situations. 

You can all be confident that you are in good hands with Ricki Ginsberg at the helm as President. The other officers, board members, and volunteers continue to amaze me with their knowledge and passion. So, hang on. I am sure that Ricki will usher in another great workshop. It you want to help right this moment, ask a colleague or a friend to join ALAN. We are stronger together.

For today, however, I solicited some memories from ALAN members. From my point of view. I thought the two keynote speakers were amazing and passionate about reaching and helping adolescents. All of the single speakers exceeded my expectations. I loved the people in conversations and those on panels. While I have read a book by most of the authors who attended, I have new books to read and authors who are now on my "do not miss their next book list."  

Take a look at the shared memories.

From Katie Sluiter
​ALAN19 was a little different this year, and I absolutely loved it. This was my fourth time being a part of this conference and the changes were definitely welcome. I was able to chat and interact with many more of the authors at the reception, favorites being those who my own 8th graders love so much: Raina Telgemeier, Mark Oshiro, Amy King, and Nic Stone.

Another highlight for me was the honor of moderating a panel of authors: Zach Smedley, NoNieqa Ramos, and Ismee Williams (I don't have a photo of this, but Noah took some).

The conference was the most stress-free I have experienced yet; I could sit and listen to all of the authors without distraction of people getting up for signings or having to decide between a signing or listening. I'm so glad because maybe I would have missed Randy Ribay, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Jo Knowles.

Mostly, my favorite part was spending time with my sister-friend, Dr. Gretchen Rumohr and her daughters Nola and Marcie. They are my bookish family and it was a treat to get literary with them!

From Jackie Bach
"Here are three authors who books can save a life: Cyndy Etler, Zetta Elliot, and Laurie Halse Anderson. It was my true honor to introduce the last panel at ALAN this year and listen to these three authors speak about their inspirational stories." ​

From Maria Padian
ALAN is a little like Literary Speed Dating. All those short, inspiration and energy-packed presentations from authors leave me fired up and hungry for more! They also prod me to take bigger risks with my own writing and really stretch.

That said: the personal high point of the conference for me was meeting my fellow panelist, Sylvia Zeleny. We were startled at how quickly and deeply we connected, and for me especially it was profound to see that despite the differences in our personal backgrounds and experiences we created characters who yearned for the same things and had much in common.

Thanks for including me this year, Steve. It was an honor to participate … and fun to see you!

Regards from Maria

From Crag Hill
I go to ALAN to spend time with colleagues from afar, talking books and writers and writing, to meet new teachers and scholars of young adult literature, and to encounter writers I had not been familiar with. My highlight comes from the latter: Listening to Randy Ribay speak about teaching literary theory. I didn't expect to hear something like this from the stage: "I believe," Ribay argued, "we can boil some of these [literary] theories down to their core ideas and train learners to apply critical lenses to ANY text." Huzzah! Here's a link to the speech:
https://randyribay.wordpress.com/2019/11/26/critical-lit-theory-as-preparation-for-the-world-2019-alan-workshop-speech/

Until next time.

In this Special Friday edition of Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday, Nancy Johnson explains her focus for the weekend picks for December 2019. She is going to focus on World War II. She explains her focus on this topic and then will make the weekend picks. Below, in slide show, I insert a few titles that I think are important as we guide students to books that focus on this important era in our history. Thanks Nancy.

​It's hard to imagine but 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII.  While it's been over seven decades since this dark period in global history, interest in WWII has not waned. Nor has there been a dwindling of books and stories that illuminate people, places, and events that occurred during these bleak years. 
 
Literature for young people (and adults) that takes place before most of us were even born continues to find dedicated, interested readers. While this isn't new -- WWII novels have found their way into hungry hands for years -- what's become available to today's teens are more books in all genres, not only compelling fiction, but also page-turning nonfiction, as well as graphic and illustrated memoirs. And all of it is impeccably researched.

But, what is it that continues this fascination with WWII? And specifically, what appeals to teens about books set during WWII? As I look at the literature that readers still choose to read, as well as new publications, I'm struck by some common connections. At their very core, we find universal themes relating to justice and injustice, hardship and triumph, the interplay of good and evil, and the discovery of everyday people who risked their lives for friends, neighbors, and sometimes even strangers. People who became heroes, even if we never knew their names. We can also find resonance from a generation that will soon disappear, but not without leaving fingerprints (and perhaps life lessons) that relate to issues today. 
​
​I'm also struck by the myriad questions ignited by WWII literature. How could this happen? What's the role of fear? What compels human beings to hate people who are different? How could they look the other way? Did they really not know what was happening? What allows humans to be complicit? What obliges them to resist? Can people be both good and evil? How do people endure? Survive? Forgive? What might I have done? 
 
And then there are questions that lean into who we are and the world we live right now, questions that force us to think about whether the world is different seventy-five years later -- Could this happen again? -- nudging us to raise questions that require us to wonder if we've created a better, more just world. What would I do if this happened today? Would I stand against evil? Would I advocate for others? Would I risk my life to save another? Have we learned anything?
 
This keen interest in history, particularly WWII stories, relates strongest through connection. When we read these "stories" -- real and fictional -- and identify common, contemporary threads, it's hard not to become deeply affected. We are invited to consider how WWII served to define the world we live in right now. Today's news reveals a political and cultural climate that echoes a time when people acted out of fear, and when there was explicit denial of some people as worthy, as human, as deserving of even basic human rights. Sadly, we don't have to look beyond national news to hear stories of how ordinary people have no control over their fate, to learn about abuse of power, the role of fear to intimidate, corruption and complicity, or to see aspects of government that subjugate "the other." Nor do we have to look very far to see young people taking a stand, exhibiting bravery and resilience, and making decisions on the side of morality. 

Perhaps that's the most dominant reason there is profound fascination in WWII stories. Literature raises questions of moral choice, which is what Antony Beever, English historian and author of several books on the Second World War, claims as the basis of all human drama (https://www.dw.com/en/moral-choice-explains-fascination-with-wwii/a-17881948). 

​And perhaps the appeal of WWII literature to teen readers is revealed in what Monica Hesse, feature writer for The Washington Post and author of three novels for teens set during this time period, believes: “I love that teenagers are openhearted and curious. Not only is this the time of life when they are becoming readers, it’s when they are becoming actors in human society and when they are struggling with what is right and wrong, what is easy and hard, and what kind of person they are going to be”  (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/13/books/14novels-bring-world-war-ii-to-life-for-new-generation.html).

​As another year moves toward the end, this month's YA Wednesday Weekend reads features historical reflection on WWII and invites us to consider not only the human drama, the darkness and despair, of this world war, but also the role of bravery and courage exhibited by everyday people, just like you, me, and your students. 
 
~ Nancy J. Johnson
Professor Emeritus, Children's/Young Adult Literature
Western Washington University

Until next time.

It is a busy time from many of us. Some of us had a busy week at NCTE and ALAN. Then a quick break to visit family for the Thanksgiving break. I hope all of you survived. If you did, and you work at a university,  you realize that you now have a final couple of weeks of classes and grading. I know that I do.

I appreciated Stacy Graber's willingness to produce a blog post. Whenever I need to remind myself to think deeply, I know that I can be inspired by any Stacy has to say. Before reading her current post you might want to check out some of her earlier contributions. They can be easily found by visiting the contributors page. 

​What is the takeaway from this philosophical argument for teachers invested in exploring a range of adolescent literacies in the secondary classroom?  We must understand how graphic texts work so we can conduct technical conversations on par with the traditional, literary ones we are accustomed to facilitating in order to authentically honor diverse forms of communication.  That said, I will propose a short list of exceptional (i.e., beautifully rendered, rich, evocative, etc.) works of YA graphica and offer remarks on how these books work in order to account for the fusion of art and literature.       

Key to the relationship between image and text in Small’s book is the cinematic and literary allusion base he draws from, implicitly and explicitly, to convey the texture of experience.  For example, as mentioned previously, the technique of exposing the seamy underside of midcentury America takes a page out of Lynch’s book, in addition to an homage to Polanski’s (1965) Repulsion found in the warping effects of isolation.  And, in terms of tracing a literary lineage, aside from the direct reference to Holden Caulfield in the narrator’s wish to live without interference among the Eskimos, Home After Dark seemingly owes a debt to Conrad’s (1899-1900) Lord Jim related to the protagonist’s catastrophic failure of nerve.  But the real literary deity presiding over Small’s graphic novel is Joyce Carol Oates in terms of the lurid details of true crime and unflinching portraiture of the darkest impulses in our friends and neighbors.  

​The bildungsroman is ultimately defined by a sense of grotesque initiation transmitted through a series of progressively more disturbing POV shots.  For instance, the world is revealed as vicious in a community’s collective commission of a homophobic hate crime, and diabolical in the grisly remains left by an animal serial killer.  No wonder one of the great chroniclers of childhood, Jack Gantos, praised Small’s capacity for wordlessly rendering the “inchoate chaos of youth.”   

In “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold,” the principal character functions passively as a piece of property until she is hailed on an errand of vengeance by a former wife and victim of the serial killer husband.  Guided by a morbid systematics—in the style of Shelley’s (1818) Frankenstein—the current wife pieces together the dismembered parts of a former wife while assembling clues to the mystery of the past and likely future.  No brothers arrive as saviors in this iteration of the classic tale; rather, the catalyst to change is the seeming transmigration of one wife into another, but the precise object of retribution is unknown.  In “My Friend Janna,” two young girls, guided by boredom and condescension, con the inhabitants of a town ravenous for communion with the dead.  And, as might be expected in a tale blurring ethical and supernatural dimensions, their ruse exacts a cost.  A kind of terrifying force envelopes the tricksters, the mark of an encounter with an incomprehensible source of power, and their bond alters from shared secret to joint curse.
​​
In both of these tales, Carroll uses color for narrative and expressionistic effect.  Meaning, color (e.g., red, blue, green, orange, white, and black) advances the elements of characterization and plot and offers an emotional vocabulary for expressing facets of experience that could not be conveyed as viscerally by realistic methods.  An example of this would be a close-up montage sequence featuring bloody utensils, the reddened lips and teeth of the serial killer husband gnawing a slice of rare meat, and the cherry-ribbon choker worn by the wife—implying her as quarry (Carroll, 2014).  Likewise, instances of aporia posed within the narratives defy logic and impart a sense of anxiety over ever resolving existential conflicts.  Perhaps Carroll is suggesting that we still contend with gender-based struggle and have not moved much closer toward resolution since the time of the Brothers Grimm. 

Peter Kuper, Kafkaesque (2018)
Could Kafka—the shy bureaucrat who invested years working for the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague —ever have imagined that his writing would be at the center of a range of international legal and academic battles?  I am referring not only to the controversy concerning ownership of the cache of materials produced by the writer as delineated by Balint (2018), but also the debates surrounding the impact of translation on our understanding of Kafka’s content and style (e.g., ranging from the Muir to Hofmann translations (Woods, 2014)).

Kuper makes yet another controversial, aesthetic decision in his rendering of Kafka’s story “The Trees,” by representing the speaker as a homeless person and shifting the locus of imagery from forest to city.  Perhaps readers might object to the liberty taken here with the original text, but the visuals are fitting in that they convey the central paradox/riddle of the story: What appears immovable yet may actually come unfixed with ease?  In Kuper’s inky, scratchboard drawings, the inert bodies of the homeless are subject to administrative removal and the tone of this ruthless action reflects the mournful dispossession of all outcasts, which surely reifies Kafka’s vision.
​
In closing, there are many, fine graphic works produced for a young adult audience, and we need to engage in public conversations—like this one—to show our students entry points for interpretation and debate.         

Selected References
​
Balint, B.  (2018).  Kafka’s last trial: The case of a literary legacy.  New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
Carroll, E.  (2014).  Through the woods.  New York, NY: Margaret K. McElderry Books. 
Kuper, P.  (2018).  Kafkaesque: Fourteen stories.  New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
McCloud, S.  (1993).  Understanding comics.  New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Small, D.  (2018).  Home after dark.  New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.
University of Sheffield.  (2017).  In conversation with Dame Marina Warner: On Fairytales [Video file].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKSeHHgzjns
Woods, M.  (2014).  Kafka translated: How translators have shaped our reading of Kafka.  New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic.
 
Biographical Statement: Stacy Graber is an Associate Professor of English at Youngstown State University.  Her areas of interest include critical theory, pedagogy, and popular culture. 

Until next time.

I am back from #NCTE19 and #ALAN19. My tenure of as the President of ALAN is over and I am overwhelmed with gratitude to the members of ALAN, the publishers, and the authors. Thank you! I also owe and incredible debt to my close friends and colleagues. Thank you! (If you were there, you know I lost my voice--still gone, and I am fresh out of offers you can't refuse.

I will recap #ALAN19 more next week. (Don't we all need a Thanksgiving Break?) If you have a short paragraph of one of your favorite moments, please send it to me as I prepare for next week. Adding a photo would help as well.

In brief, I am so thankful that Padma Venkatraman and Andrea Davis Pinkney for providing a foundation for Monday and Tuesday. All of the solo speakers were spectacular. 

Randy Ribay has made his speech public on this webpage. The title is Critical Lit Theory as Preparation for the World. It was an incredible speech. It validated the work I tried to do in the classroom. I thought for a brief moment that I should try it again. However, teachers in Randy's generation are figuring it out and modeling wonderful teaching. I will keep trying to prepare teacher who committed to the students they teach.

His work is fantastic. The novels are superb. I thought that the Patron Saints of Nothing was a fine selection for the short list for the National Book Award.

Check out the fliers for the Summit. We are updating the information soon; including the announcement that Matt de la Pena will be coming as a children's author (Wow! he has that and so much more). We will be have a few more surprise author visits to announce in the near future.

Until next time.

When most of you are reading this I am on the plane to Baltimore for #NCTE19. It is going to be great fun. Just below is a copy of my schedule. Come by. Join in with one of the sessions, sign up to write a blog post, or asking me about the 2020 Summit at UNLV on the Research and Teaching of YA Literature. I am so happy that Chea and Vickie, two graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin. They don't realize how much time they saved me this week by taking this on. Take it away.  

“[P]icture a place far, far less than suburbia and then imagine me, a few more rungs down that ladder living in a trailer rented from Fed-Me-Blueberries May Beth for as long as I’ve been alive. I live in a place that’s only good for leaving, is all that needs to be said about it, and I don’t let myself look back..” --Sadie by Courtney Summers

Sadie’s words reflect a frequent representation of rural people and places, invoking images of trailer-park poverty and the desire to leave it without a second thought. Vickie and I (Chea) are both from rural spaces and identify as out-migrated rural people, and though we recognize its lack of nuance and that its an incomplete rendering, there’s something about Sadie’s words and attitude that feel part of us too - that rings true in our bones. 
 
We left because we felt like we needed to. Because it felt like there was nothing there for us. Because the world felt too small. Because getting out felt like the only way to be successful. But now, working in an urban-focused teacher preparation program, we feel out of place and long to go back. But going back isn’t possible right now for many of the same reasons we chose to leave, so we make do with what we have, visiting home as often as we can.
 
In our lives as rural-identifying teachers and researchers, we’ve wondered about the opportunities (non)rural young people and preservice teachers have to interact with various and nuanced representations of rural identity in young adult literature. We’re also curious about how rural readers seek out or take up those representations because Chea has a hard time remembering reading any books featuring the rural and wanting to, and Vickie never really felt the need to. It’s these questions and experiences that have led us to consider how teachers might approach engaging their students in critical discussions around place in YAL.  

​Scholars have written about how the contextualized experiences of rural places and people are often underrepresented and essentialized, rendering rural places and people into stereotyped “single stories” (See Chimamanda Adichie’s “Danger of a Single Story”). To read more about these ideas, we recommend Dr. Amy Azano’s “The Other Neglected R” and Dr. Sara Webb-Sunderhaus’s “‘Keep the Appalachian, Drop the Redneck’”. Like Alli Behrens and Dr. Rob Petrone, we believe that interacting with representations of the rural and the various and nuanced experiences of the folks who live there are important to the cultivation of the identities and worldviews of students from all geographical backgrounds and classifications (i.e., rural, suburban, and urban). 
 
However, it seems that depictions of the rural in YAL are somewhat hard to come by. A quick Google search for “top urban YA books” turns out several curated lists featuring popular and critically acclaimed YA fiction. However, the search for “top rural YA books” yields far fewer results. Though there are representations of the rural in YAL, there aren’t that many. And those that are available can reflect distorted and stereotyped representations, that - like all texts - should be read critically. 

​In “Reading YAL for Representations of Contemporary Rurality,” it struck us how covers can overtly communicate a book’s connection to the rural, which is often connected to the book’s focus and content. Books featuring images of the rural (whether considered stereotypical or not) tend to situate rurality as integral rather than incidental to the plot. 

Recently reading Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson, we were completely surprised to find that Anderson’s identity as a rural person and experiences in rural spaces are featured in the text. Likewise, listening to her interview on the We Are YA podcast, Chea got super excited at hearing her describe herself as a country girl. (Hearing authors explicitly mention their rurality isn’t a frequent occurrence.) Shout’s cover art doesn’t nod to her “country” identity, nor does any description of the text. These noticings have encouraged us to think about how teachers might incorporate a critical perspective that asks about the place of a novel - especially the rural when it comes up unexpectedly.

Because not all YA books featuring the rural are “rural books,” we’ve chosen to discuss three books in which encountering the rural comes as somewhat of a surprise: Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson; Sadie by Courtney Summers; and Exit Pursued by a Bear. 
 
Laurie Halse Anderson describes Shout as “the story of a girl who lost her voice and wrote herself a new one” (p. 1). Through fiery verse, Anderson explores all the “accidents, serendipities, bloodlines, tidal waves, sunrises, disasters, passport stamps, criminals, cafeterias, nightmares, fever dreams, readers, portents, and whispers” (p. 1) surrounding the rape she survived as a teenager. Much of the book focuses on the rape itself and the process she undertook to heal and advocate for survivors of sexual assault. Part of that story involves her identity as a “country mouse” (p.19). Her inclusion and representation of the rural is nuanced, evoking the complicated positive and negative aspects associated with rural living and identity. The rural is positioned as a place of connection and healing as well as a place that is suffocating and boring. The closeness of community and reliance on one another are at once represented as supportive and stifling. Considering how Anderson both constructs and critiques the rural aspects of her identity can help readers from all geographical walks of life think about and question how place works to position people in society. 

Sadie, judging only by the cover and jacket summary, is a murder mystery that won and Edgar Award. While the driving force behind the plot is Sadie’s quest to find her sister’s killer and bring him to justice, other issues, such as rurality, poverty, drug abuse, and child neglect and sexual abuse, surface in the text. After Sadie also turns up missing, the host of a podcast dedicated to chronicling life in dying rural towns attempts to find her. Sadie’s journey and the search for her, spans both rural and suburban spaces, often leading to juxtapositions of the two. Rurality is often only painted in a negative light, describing Cold Creek as a place only good for leaving with Sadie making mental lists of all the things in the suburbs she can’t bear to allow herself to want. Although on a surface level the two different spaces serve as settings for the story, how Summers describes them through the podcast and Sadie’s eyes implores readers to consider how place might be accurately represented or distorted in those descriptions.

Exit, Pursued by a Bear (discussed recently by Stacia Long) chronicles the story of high school cheerleader Hermione Winters. After being drugged and sexually assaulted at a rural summer cheer camp while her parents were out of country, it is difficult for loved ones to reach her because of the rural location. The rural detective assigned to her case is described as unfamiliar with this kind of case and unsure of herself in interactions with Hermione after the assault. The school Hermione attends is also in a small town which impacts how she decides to seek health care (physical and mental) as she works to survive her assault in the healthiest ways possible. While the central focus of the plot is Hermione’s journey after the sexual assault and the rural setting seems incidental, considering how the issues connected to rurality are presented in the text can help bring students to an even deeper understanding of rural places, communities, and the text as a whole.  

Teachers and readers of these and other YAL texts that feature representations of the rural could consider the following critical questions:

• How is (rural) place functioning in the book?
• How are rural people, space, communities depicted in the text?
• How does it impact your understanding of what rural is?
• How does it impact your understanding of the themes in text?
• What (dis)connections do you share with the characters’ experiences?
• How do these depictions of (rural) places help us think about how society and identities are constructed?
• What can we do with this new knowledge?

We firmly believe in the benefits of critically reading place in rural YAL, and we’d love to hear about the ways you are doing this work in your classrooms. Please reach out to us with your stories and any recommendations for rural YA novels to add to our reading lists and share with our students.  
 
chea.parton@utexas.edu
 
vcgodfrey@utexas.edu
​

Anderson, L. H. (2019). Shout. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
 Azano, A. P. (2014). Rural. The other neglected “R”: Making space for place in school libraries. Knowledge Quest, 43(1), 61-65. 
 Summers, C. (2018). Sadie. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. 
 Webb-Sunderhaus, S. (2016). Keep the Appalachian, drop the redneck”: Tellable student narratives of Appalachian identity. College English, 79(1), 11-33. 

Until next week.

A few weeks ago Melanie and Sarah set me a blog post. It arrived at a perfect time. I had just finished Jason Reynolds newest, Look Both Ways, and I can stop thinking about short stories and short story cycles. 

Many of us who have taught or who teach in ELA classrooms realize how often the short story is used. Classrooms are few of anthologies that are full of great story stories from "The Scarlet Ibis," "The Most Dangerous Game," or "The Gift of the Magi." Teaching stories like these and other can go a long way to teaching or refreshing student understanding of basic literary components--setting, plot, character, symbols, and other components of literature. They are often taught independently or  grouped together by theme. 

From time to time some of the short stories included as "stand-alone" are in reality often part of connected collection or a short story cycle. For example, think about how often Joyce's "Clay," Steinbeck's "Flight," Hemingway's "Soldier's Home." and even more recently O'Brien's "The Things They Carried."  How much richer would the reading experience be if student read the short story in its full context?  Would student benefit from a bigger introduction to the context of Joyce's  Dubliners or of the Salinas valley as depicted in Steinbeck's The Long Valley. 

Chief among these collections of short story cycles, and perhaps, the inspiration for many of these is Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio. There are many things to consider when teaching the short story. What is our instructional goal? What these short stories? Are we using them to introduce students to a specific author? If the latter is the case, should we be considering the short stories of many of today's YA authors--those that stand-alone as independent shorts and those are a deliberate part of short story cycle. 

Below, Melanie and Sarah introduce us to a collection of short stories that focus on technology. Take it away.

Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful by Arwen Elys Dayton began, Dayton says, “with a revelation” (p. 369) she had after reading articles about gene editing, gene manipulation, and new ways to grow human organs.  She thought both about possibilities for curing disease and saving lives and also about the multiple ways in which things could go horribly wrong. The stories in the novel focus on teenagers who experience the wonders and horrors of genetic modifications.  These stories raise questions about what makes us human and who gets to decide what responsibilities we have toward humanity. In addition to raising questions, the stories show what can happen when the focus shifts from saving lives to modifying bodies to make them stronger, smarter, or more attractive.  The stories highlight ethical, moral, and religious issues raised when people begin to use technology to modify, adapt, or change the human body.   

The first story, “Matched Pair,” introduces the twins Evan and Julia, both of whom are dying.  Their parents and doctors have made the choice to save one of them by using the organs from the other.  The question of whether or not Evan will still be human after this is raised by Reverend Tadd who has made a career of preaching against any sort of procedure that alters or changes a body.  He tells Evan that he is doing a selfish thing and asks if Evan wants to be a demon but the question of whether or not Evan should have the procedure is not Evan’s to make because he is young and his parents have made the choice for him. Doctors see him as a medical marvel—a potential miracle.  Tadd and his followers see him as an abomination. The use of religious language around the choices highlight how potentially challenging this kind of situation can be.  At what point does Evan stop being human?  Do the organs that are used to repair him make him more than human? Is Evan still Evan, or is he something—or someone—else now that Julia’s organs have become part of him? Does tinkering with our biology indicate a desire to be more than human, to be godlike? What “tinkering” is okay, and what is dangerous?

Questions around religion and science continue in “St. Ludmilla.”  Medical advances and robotic body parts are used to save Milla’s life; while Milla does not hide that there are changes in her body since her accident, she does not share the extent to which she has been altered.  She and Gabriel have an argument on their first date about modifications.  She asks, “But what’s the difference between a half-real heart and taking antibiotics, or getting a doctor to set a broken bone?” (p. 49). The question becomes one of morality as the teens hear Reverend Tadd condemning the science that allows modifications to happen.  Gabriel replies, “How are they drawing the line?” (p. 49).  What is the moral and ethical line here?  Again, we are prompted to wonder: how much modification becomes too much?  What is the line between saving a life using artificial organs and completely rebuilding a person who was nearly dead?  Are scientists creating medical miracles or are they playing god with lives? 

​Reverend Tadd gets his own story in “The Reverend Mr. Tad Tadd’s Love Story.”  When the Reverend and his family—his wife, son, and daughter—are attacked, the Reverend’s views on modifications flip.  He says that he was wrong, that he “defied the holy design...when I told [Evan] he was turning himself into a demon” (p. 92), and that he should not have opposed modifications.  Elsie—his daughter and the only other survivor—questions his shift in beliefs.  She discovers that the Reverend has made modifications to both of them using body parts, skin, and hair from his wife and son.  They did not need these components to survive. Rather, these parts served as memorials to the dead, parts of them that live on.  Tadd now argues that “evolution is not a side note.  It is not something to be accepted begrudgingly” (p. 93), implying that man should be able to adapt and modify as part of divine design.  Elsie refuses this idea and explains that her father has made them both into monsters, creating a schism that reverberates throughout the next stories. 

What makes us human? What makes us monsters?  Where is the line?  Just because we can do a thing with science, does that mean we should? Science has developed to the point that genetic modifications and alterations can save lives.  Because the technology is available, it can also be used to change and adapt people to make them stronger or faster.  This raises questions about whether genetic modifications should be allowed by choice rather than necessity. Who gets to decide?  As genetic modifications become more prevalent, the world of the novel shifts.  Modifications become money-making tools and issues to go to war over.  Corporations, countries, and scientists argue over whether modifications should happen and whether or not these modifications make someone not human. 

In “Eight Waded,” Alexios has been genetically modified to be extremely smart.  He can see and breathe underwater, talk to animals, and learn at an accelerated rate.  He is, however, physically very different with fins instead of feet and an overly large head, and he cannot connect with other humans the way his parents expect him to.  His mother, disappointed with the results of the genetic modifications, calls him “dead weight” and intelligent, but not “in a way that matters” (p. 129)”.  Alexios is part human and part animal.  He is treated as a commodity to be used, and a curiosity to be tested endlessly by researchers.  He is kept in what he calls his “sea prison” and interacts with both people and animals, struggling with where he might truly belong. The questions of how far to go or what changes to the human body should be allowed and who should make those decisions thread through this story.  How do we deal with unforeseen consequences of alterations we impose on our children, presumably made for their own good, but with unpredictable results? How do we deal with consent in these scenarios? 

“California” propels us further into this future with the story of Jake, a California teen who chooses to be frozen in the hopes that scientists will develop a cure for his cancer. Geopolitical upheaval foils this plan, though, as Russia takes over the Estonian center where Jake’s body is stored, and all of the people housed there are re-animated and re-tooled to become platinum-mining “slaves.” We follow Jake’s escape as he tries to discover who he is now in this new body and new time period.  This story raises questions about choice and outcomes.  Jake chose to preserve his body in the hopes that a cure for his disease could be found.  The Russians chose to modify Jake and change him into a slave.  Who has the right to make decisions about Jake’s body?
 
In the final story, “Curiosities,” Luck and Starlock are “Protos,” or unmodified people who are told they are a separate species from the highly modified humans who keep them on a reservation.  When a catastrophic disease kills their human contacts, Luck and Starlock venture off the reservation to see how they might help. Luck and Starlock have grown up believing that they are not human, that humans are a species apart and evolutionarily beyond Protos.  However, what seemed like truth turns out to be a form of human oppression as it becomes apparent that one group has been using physical differences as a way to keep themselves separate from another group.  

The final stories focus the question of what it means to be human; the characters themselves wrestle directly with what makes someone human? What makes them more or less than someone else?  Where does technology start and end in the shaping and reshaping of humanity?
 
As readers, we see connections to familiar and frequently discussed tropes about human morality: pride and/or vanity will come before a fall (e.g., an apocalyptic plague); those who meddle with their bodies will be punished; those who oppress others will ultimately suffer; youth and innocence, hope and love will save humanity. Dayton offers the reader a complicated and nuanced way to think about technology—not as the savior or the cause of suffering but rather a tool to be used by humanity. This shifts the focus to how technology changes how we think about the technology itself. The moral question developed across these stories is not whether or not technology is right or wrong; it is, rather, the question of who makes the decisions about technology and how that technology gets used. Technology has been used to free and enslave and to kill and to cure; this young adult novel highlights those uses but also raises questions that challenge reader perceptions of technology and the ethical use of it in a society. Perhaps it is our human attitudes and human choices in how we apply both morality and technology that cause the harm attributed to technological development.

References
Dayton, A. E. (2018). Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful. Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books: New York, New York.

Sarah Burriss is a doctoral student in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her research focuses on teaching and learning about ethics and advanced computational technologies, like artificial intelligence. Sarah came from the public library world, where she was a young adult and adult services librarian.
 
Dr. Melanie Hundley is an Associate Professor in the Practice of Language and Literacy Education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College; her research examines how digital and multimodal composition informs the development of pre-service teachers’ writing pedagogy.  Additionally, she explores the use of digital and social media in young adult literature.  She teaches writing methods courses that focus on digital and multimodal composition and young adult literature courses that explore race, class, gender, and sexual identity in young adult texts.  She has taught both middle and high school English Language Arts and currently co-directs Patterson RAPS, a reading program for middle school students. 

Until next week.

This is another week where I get to host the work of great YA and ALAN community member. As I mention all of the time, I am not an expert in every area of YA literature. The field is vast and full of fantastic literature in every genre or, for that matter, sub genre. Today Lisa Scherff discusses Climate Fiction or "Cli-Fi." I love some of the books she mentions and have been meaning to follow-up. She has certainly peaked my interest again.

Lisa has contributed before. You can find her first post on YA memoirs. She has also written on the Alex Award, how the Amelia Walden Award committee functions, and promoted some books for summer reading.

The above was spoken by Greta Thunberg in her September 23rd address to the United Nations Climate Action Summit. Thunberg is a part of a vocal and growing movement (already in the millions across the globe) of young people and adults committed to bringing awareness of and driving political action towards the issue of climate change in order to help save the planet. I have been following the movement and the children very carefully not only because the situation is serious but also because of my love of dystopian fiction, especially those novels set after some cataclysmic event caused by nature/climate change. These (sometimes) futuristic novels, called “cli-fi,” are a genre I had not heard of before.

The term “cli-fi”—short for climate fiction—was coined by Dan Bloom, an English teacher, reporter, and environmentalist who was influenced by the 1957 novel On the Beach (a book I remember from high school) and the writings of British environmentalist James Lovelock. As reported on Lithub.com, “it wasn’t until he saw the 2004 disaster film The Day After Tomorrow . . . that Bloom started thinking about the power of storytelling to rally like-minded citizens concerned for the future of life on Earth.” Climate change fiction is rooted in science fiction but adds elements of both realism and/or the supernatural.

​According to one psychologist who has written about climate change denial, people distance themselves from the issue “because the facts of global warming are too often presented in abstract or guilt-inducing ways.” Amy Brady, deputy publisher at Guernica, “a non-profit online magazine dedicated to global art and politics,” argues that is the reason why stories that connect readers emotionally to the destructive and local effects of climate change are needed. Cli-fi explores “what the world might become if climate change continues unabated.”  

While climate change should worry us all, the issue hits close to home. Literally. Immediately below is a current map of the area I live, Lee County, Florida. I live about 9 miles northeast of the coastline (from where the bridge to Sanibel Island joins the mainland). So far, even with the heaviest rains during rainy season, I have not had flooding issues, although some areas (parking lots, streets, neighborhoods, etc.) often have 1-3 inches of standing water for a day or so. Not so bad given how much rain we tend to get from June through September. Even with the past few hurricanes, only those right on the water have suffered from relatively minor storm surge.

However, many of us are scared. Even the most conservative estimates have us being affected from rising sea levels within the next 30 years. The map below shows the potential impact of just a one meter rise in the sea level if both Greenland and the West Antarctic ice sheet melt.

And, this one: three meters. 

​So, it was with all of this on my mind that I read London Shah’s (2019) debut novel The Light at the Bottom of the World (Hyperion), which is set at the end of the twenty-first century in Great Britain. Sixty-five years earlier, the world went underwater when an asteroid hit Earth, causing most living things on the planet to die when everything became submerged. Everyone thought they had time, several years, before the strike; scientists and politicians had assured everyone that they would survive no matter how high the water rose. 

Sixteen-year-old Leyla Fairoza McQueen wins a chance to race her submersible in the 2099 London Subermsible Marathon. Winning this annual race means she can get one wish granted, and she knows what that is: asking for her father’s freedom. He was arrested, accused of encouraging victims of “seasickness” to take their own lives. Without giving too much of the plot away, Leyla does not get her wish and instead goes on a search for her father.
 
Reading this novel rekindled my desire to not only reread some of the “cli-fi” novels on my shelf but also search out some new titles. Below are links to some of my favorite titles.

Until next week.

Hi all! the ALAN Workshop is just around the corner. In fact, in four short weeks from the time I am writing this, I will be sitting on an airplane trying to sleep as I fly home. In all reality, I won't be sleeping. I will be reading my way through one of the books I pick up at ALAN Workshop.  

I previously shared keynotes, individual speakers, and authors in conversation in an earlier post. (If you missed it check it out now.) Now, it is time to share the panels. Panels are tried and true tradition at the ALAN Workshop. in fact, most new authors are on a panel for their first ALAN workshop appearance. I have heard some wonderful authors for the first time as part of a panel. For example, I heard Matt de la Pena, Coe Booth, Kekla Magoon, Cody Keplinger, Varian Johnson, Adriana Mather and David Lubar as panelist. I love their books and a small conversation sparked my interest. I pulled their book from the pile and started reading.

This year we have limited panels to only three authors. Sure, it would be great to have more authors, but I wanted to make sure new voices are heard. Some well established authors will be on panels this year. Not to marginalize them by any means, but to allow them to nurture and support some of the new authors or to share with authors who write in their genre, their style,  or who share similar themes in their writing.

We have ten panels, thirty authors and the list includes some of my very favorite authors. More important, some of these authors are some of my favorite people and prized members of the ALAN community.  Do you know them all? I doubt it? Check them out and get ready for a great at the ALAN Workshop.

All pictures are linked to the author's web page. Click on the link. Follow them on Facebook. Welcome them to the ALAN Workshop on twitter and include #ALAN2019. You can start to get to know them right now!

Until next week.

Do you remember the first time you read Kafka? Do you remember being confused, intrigued, or curious? I think your first experience with Kafka is memorable if baffling. 

Stacy Graber reminds that Kafka just might be perfect for more adolescents than we might think. Stacy is a frequent contributor to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday and her posts always stretch my imagination. Before jumping into Kafka you might check out her posts on Jack Gantos, students and curriculum at the Youngstown English Festival, Updike and others, Kate DiCamillo, Julie Murphy and Joyce Carol Oates, and Semiotics.  Just so you know, none of these posts are quite what you think they may be. Stacy will surprise you.  

After all, I speak to my own past when I speak to you.  One cannot help being friendly.
--Franz Kafka to 17-year-old, Gustav Janouch

Sadly, the work of Franz Kafka is too often regulated by secondary school culture as literature ostensibly reserved for honors and/or Advanced Placement courses, which is elitist and myopic as his fantastic storylines and gallows humor stand to captivate all readers.  For instance, as a 16-year-old, I remember laughing in awe at the ironic punchline Kafka delivers at the close of “A Hunger Artist,” his unsettling short story focused on carnival freaks and foodways.  Read that piece and you will easily see that kids don’t need David Foster Wallace (2011) to help them puzzle out why Kafka is funny (however charming the explanation).  Young people will understand Kafka’s jokes and love him because he speaks directly to anyone who has ever 1) felt alienated or marginalized, 2) been reduced to bug status by a dictatorial powerbroker, and/or 3) intuited the absurdity of everyday life (--which undoubtedly includes all adolescents).   

In fact, there are so many reasons why Kafka would appeal to adolescents that it almost seems unnecessary to assemble the evidence except to acquaint him with a new audience.  So, toward that end, I will offer a few of Kafka’s themes that would resonate with young people, which I have drawn from patterns observable in his diaries (Kafka, 1975): problematic body-image/self-concept, struggle with anxiety/depression, conflict with a tyrannical father and/or oblivious mother, feelings of entrapment within the prison of a parental home, ambivalence toward intersectional identity, experience of social exclusion/degradation, fear regarding intimacy/sexual impulses, skepticism toward/defiance of authority, intense requirement for solitude, critique of school and work, and transcendence through creative pursuits and/or nature.

Again, toward introducing a new audience to the work of this modernist giant, I will describe resources produced for a young adult audience that do the work of orientation so a high school teacher could contextualize with confidence.

​Hortatory in tone but never condescending, Kafka talks art, literature, science, architecture, language, philosophy, and politics with the young man, while simultaneously offering him a window onto the precarity of his own existence embattled by nemeses such as tuberculosis, anti-Semitism, administrative drudgery, and loneliness.  Janouch’s impulsivity and occasional gaffes are borne patiently and affectionately by Kafka as Janouch reminds Kafka of his younger self (see epigraph); whereas, for Janouch, the conversations suggest a possible future career as a writer/intellectual.  And, though some critics have contested the fidelity of Janouch’s reconstructions, both Max Brod and Dora Dymant praised the account as faithful to the presence or aura of their cherished friend (Brod, 1937/1995, p. 216). 

For example, a dialectic of shame and sadism is transmitted through a single panel depicting an image of the father’s rage in the repellent presence of his son/insect in Crumb’s graphic rendering of The Metamorphosis.  Likewise, the futility of an outsider condemned to perpetual exclusion and bleak itinerancy in The Castle is conveyed by Crumb through a kind of cross-hatched, existential shadow puppet theater.  But the union between art and text is strongest in the graphic interpretation of Kafka’s story, “A Hunger Artist,” which Kafka finalized editing as he perished from laryngeal tuberculosis (Mairowitz, 1993, p. 144).  This work, through Crumb’s grotesque and hyperbolic rendering of carnivalesque binaries (e.g., emaciation/corpulence, youth/age, community/solitude, equanimity/compulsion, abstinence/carnality, and vigor/debilitation) makes visible an oneiric grammar of sanctification.       

Mairowitz and Crumb’s rumination on the enduring legacy of Kafka concludes with a representation of the pair as tourists wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Kafka’s image, which is an interrogation of the symbolic economy that greedily exploits the idea of Kafka but cares little about the referent.  

Indeed, Stach succeeds in creating a more multifaceted portrait of Kafka through a crisp collection of images matched with brief explanatory notes that reveal the writer as a beer-lover, admirer of slapstick humor, bordello patron, proto-techie, closet illustrator, exercise and holistic medicine enthusiast, admirer of indigenous people of North America, committed postcard writer, student of Hebrew, hater of mice, and perhaps even early anti-vaxxer (Stach, 2016, pp. 81-82).  Again, the idea in the array of portrayals is to communicate a less singular and more complicated if contradictory rendering of the artist. Yet, Stach may or may not ultimately disrupt prevailing notions as some of the most compelling primary sources (e.g., Kafka’s niece Gerte’s description of her uncle and Milena Jesenská’s obituary for Kafka (as cited in Stach, 2016, pp. 260-262; pp. 279-280)) confirm the imposing, haunted figure we believe we know.                 

Of course, this conversation would not be complete without consideration of multimodal, non-print sources that would further serve to frame and animate Kaka’s life and writing for young people.
 
Some of the best resources include the following selections:
Alain de Botton’s (2016) School of Life episode dedicated to Kafka negotiates the meaning of the term Kafkaesque through explanation of imbricated social, historical/biographical, political, and cultural tensions.  Additionally, the style of the video includes the series-characteristic cut-out dramatization and the art of Egon Schiele.
 
Will Self’s (2015) video-travelogue, “Will Self’s Kafka Journey: A Prague Walking Tour,” tracks the cultural critic as he tours biographically significant sites in Prague toward interpreting Kafka’s surreal meditation on the vicissitudes of public service, “A Country Doctor.”
 
Koji Yamamura’s (2007) animated imagining of Kafka’s story, “A Country Doctor,” is a nightmarish vision, which replicates the tone and kinetics of the story through the techniques of distortion, juxtaposition, and tableau.
 
David Foster Wallace’s (2011) reading of a piece originally published in Harper’s Magazine in 1998, “Laughing with Kafka,” includes explanation as to how DFW helps college students understand Kafka’s idiosyncratic sense of humor through study of conceptual metaphors reminiscent of Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980), Metaphors We Live By.

BBC Radio Podcasts. (2018).  In our time: Literary Modernism [Podcast].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndfxeQSCgM0&t=1534s
Brod, M. (1995). Franz Kafka: A biography (G. Humphreys Roberts, Trans.).  Boston, MA: Da Capo Press. (Original work published in 1937)
De Botton, A. (2016).  School of life: Literature: Franz Kafka.  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4LyzhkDNBM
Deutsches Haus. (2017).  Is that Kafka? 99 finds: An evening with Reiner Stach and Kurt Beals [Video file].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCjjwBklJZg 
Janouch, G. (2012).  Conversations with Kafka (2nd ed.) (G. Rees, Trans.).  New York, NY: New Directions. (Original work published in 1968)
Kafka, F. (1975).  Diaries: 1910-1923.  (J. Kresh, M. Greenberg, & H. Arendt, Trans.).  New York, NY: Schocken Books. (Original work published in 1948)
Mairowitz, D.Z., & Crumb, R. (1993).  Introducing Kafka.  New York, NY: Totem Books.
Self, W. (2015).  Will Self’s Kafka journey: A Prague walking Tour [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niIf080qSfE
Stach, R. (2016).  Is that Kafka? 99 finds (K. Beals, Trans.).  New York, NY: New Directions.
Wallace, D.F. (2011).  David Foster Wallace: Remarks on Kafka [Audio file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzEO0qFFzwI
Yamamura, K. (2007).  Kafka’s, A country doctor.  [Animated short film/Video file].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDjmW-gIsKs&t=2s 

Stacy Graber is an Associate Professor of English at Youngstown State University.  Her areas of interest include critical theory, pedagogy, and popular culture. 

Until next week.