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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holes by Louis Sachar

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

Merci Suárez Changes Gears by Meg Medina

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

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

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

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

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

 New Kid by Jerry Craft

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

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

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

The Poet X  by Elizabeth Acevedo

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

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

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

March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

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

Dear Martin ​by Nic Stone

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

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

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

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

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

Patron Saints of Nothing ​by Randy Ribay

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

Internment​ by Samira Ahmed

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

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

If I Ever Get Out of Here ​by Eric Gansworth

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

Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida ​by Victor Martinez

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

To Build a Heart ​by Maria Padian

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

Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro

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

Read Between the Lines ​by Jo Knowles

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

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

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

​Until next week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am away on vacation. i appreciate the help from Ashley Black this week. I love her topic and you just can't go wrong with any of these books.

​Despite the number of times I have taught my university’s Young Adult Literature course, I find myself struggling to narrow down the reading list as there are just too many YA books I want to introduce to my students, most of which are teacher candidates in elementary, middle, or secondary education programs.  In past iterations of the course, I have tried to ensure the reading list meets an amalgum of criteria: (1) published over an expanse of time, (2) represent a diverse group of authors, (3) contain YA protagonists whose identities are multifaceted, diverse, and complex, (4) composed in a variety of genres, and (5) can be used for instruction in middle or secondary classrooms.  I thoroughly enjoy the task of piecing together a text set that meets these criteria, but for a four-week online YAL course in the summer, this challenge becomes even more daunting.  How do I choose eight books (the amount I typically assign for a four-week course) that can do all these things?  So, I decided to try something different this term.  We are reading the last eight winners of the Michael L. Printz Award Winners from least recently published to most recently published:

​Acevedo, Elizabeth. (2018). The poet x. New York: Harper Teen.
King, A.S. (2019). Dig. New York: Dutton.
LaCour, Nina. (2017). We are okay. New York: Dutton.
Lake, Nick. (2012). In darkness. New York: Bloomsbury.
Lewis, John, et. al. (2016). March: Book three. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf.
Nelson, Jandy. (2014). I’ll give you the sun. New York: Dial.
Ruby, Laura. (2015). Bone gap. New York: Balzer + Bray.
Sedgwick, Marcus. (2013). Midwinterblood. New York: Square Fish. 

Instead of reading each reading through a lens that I have already selected, my students are approaching this set to determine what makes these books worthy of the Printz Award, what literary lens we might use to unpack them, and how the texts help us understand ourselves and the world around us in more critical ways.  To accomplish these goals, students are participating in either online threaded discussions or Zoom discussion sessions on each book in addition to writing their own book reviews in which I ask them to reflect on the readings using the goals listed above. 

We are entering the half-way point in our class right now, and students have begun to notice several common threads among the award winners.  The first half of our reading (In Darkness, Midwinterblood, I’ll Give You the Sun, and Bone Gap) are all told through alternating narratives from various characters and/or through different points in time.  Students began to posit why this specific narrative structure resonates so much with YA authors and readers alike, and they explored how this type of structure supports the idea that adolescent readers, who are in the midst of expanding their worldview, need support in interrogating events from multiple points-of-view and in drawing cause and effect conclusions. 

Another similarity among the first four books on our reading list resides in human connection, whether the narratives are told by twins or two characters connected by space and time.  These connections are ones of love and sacrifice; of betrayal, separation, and reunion; of the fight against injustice; and of acknowledging what unites us all.  Through our discussions, these are some guiding questions that have begun emerging: (1) In what ways is love coupled with sacrifice?  (2) How do we confront cultural and societal systems of oppression that are rooted in the fabric of a place’s history? And (3) How do we find the courage to acknowledge and accept truth? 
​
While we still have the second half of the readings to tackle, I have enjoyed approaching this particular class through an inductive process, letting the texts speak for themselves and giving students the space to explore what these texts have to offer readers.  I look forward to discussing the award-winning qualities of these books with my students and to help students develop a rational for why YAL is relevant, potent, and necessary, not just for adolescents but for all. 
Below, I’ve provided a little introduction to each text with a link to the authors’ Twitter pages.  Happy reading!

Dr. Ashley D. Black is an Assistant Professor of English Education and Assistant Chair to the Department of Language, Literature, and Writing at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville,  MO. ​

Until next week.

I am so glad that Bird Cramer decided to contribute to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. I am especially happy that she has decided to focus on A.S. King. I have admired King's work for a long time. I think she is a remarkable writer. Over the years, I have selected several of King's books as weekend picks and have written briefly about her work. Bird provides an excellent overview of her work with a strong rationale for the value of King's books in our classrooms and in the lives of adolescents.

I claim that not only is A.S. King one of the best writers of YA fiction, she is one of the best living writers--period. When I read the first two pages of Dig. at an ALAN breakfast a couple of years ago and before it was spread around, I had to stop. I knew I was reading a masterpiece. I read a lot of fiction, both YA and adult and I can think of just a few authors whose books that just stop me. In just a few occasions I find a books so remarkable that my reading is stalled. I just have to stop and admire a passage. This has happened with Anne Tyler, John Irving, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, Jacqueline Woodson, and William Faulkner. As I hope you can tell, I think A.S. King is in good company, and if she keeps writing, who knows.

The world feels surreal right now and her novels welcome surrealism as a means of personal growth. King’s first published novel, Dust of 100 Dogs, features Emer Morrisey, a young girl who emerges physically unscathed after witnessing the brutal sacking of her Irish village by Oliver Cromwell. After this surreal experience, Emer begins to fend for herself only to find her gender and lack of wealth insurmountable obstacles. She bucks tradition and becomes a buccaneer. After maiming and killing thousands, she is crippled by a curse condemning her to live the lives of 100 dogs, memory intact the whole time. After her final life as a dog, Emer finds herself reincarnated and ready to reenact the violence she witnessed as a child. As soon as she’s old enough. Through switching narratives between 1650 various stages of Emer’s life, the reader is given a window into her ability to begin to process the loss of her family and the love of her life as she simultaneously travels to find her buried treasure. In the end, Emer has to choose between revenge and hope, to stay quagmired in the past or to make her peace with the events in her life that harmed her and begin to heal. ​

Published in 2014, Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, is another type of surrealist story.  Glory and her best friend, on the cusp of high school graduation, drink a potion of petrified bat that instills in them the ability to see the future. That future is one of civic unrest where The United States is on the cusp of the Second Civil War. It is an America where “a government official will be quoted as saying ‘We’re taking our country back!’” (p. 128). The man who leads this battle cry calls himself Nedrick the Sanctimonious.  Does a person need another reason to read this book? If so, then reading how Glory begins to sift through the pain of her childhood and adolescence to awaken to the chance of a future, is a beautiful and breathtaking journey. As the bat tells Glory “Free yourself. Have the courage” (p.304). If not, then I leave you with the thought that this story no longer feels surreal but prophetical in hindsight. ​

Until next time.

Today's guest post is provided by Morgan Jackson. She is a teacher in Las Vegas and provided the Weekend Picks for Feb. 2020. Go to this link and scroll down and to take a look. Morgan and I have only recently become acquainted, but I am already learning a great deal from her perspective. She recently presented at the UNLV 2020 online Summit and it was wonderful. 

Now is the time to say something. Say it with your words when you can, but also say it with your actions, with your purchases. Buy books that tell Black experiences, the multitudes and myriads of those experiences, from a Black author. We’ve taught problematic white guys for decades with little concern for push back, and often without even thinking about. Choose now to stop making excuses and start making choices. 
​
If you’ve asked what you can do? This is the bare minimum. Pick books that make you uncomfortable. That discomfort is the cost of being anti-racist. It is the cost of saying you do this for the kids. It is the cost of having the impressionable minds of young people in your hands. If you can’t pay that cost consider what your silence costs your students. ​

I am pleased this week to join with a host of other outlets helping to promote the work of Dr. Falter, Dr. Alston, and Dr. Lee from North Carolina State University. To be clear, this is a great resource. While I am duplicating it in Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday it is available at this link and in graphic immediately below. In fact, please to a minute to bookmark there document for future reference. I hope you will help in sharing this information. 

The senseless police-initiated murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, amongst hundreds of other murders of Black women, men, and children in the United States over the past 400 years due to systemic racism and anti-blackness, has become a much-needed call to action for all. This is particularly true and needed in our schools and in our classrooms, as we look to affirm, celebrate, and advocate for all students in our classes, but especially our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students. ​

3.   Interrogate Your Approaches to Text Analysis
Think about the ways in which you teach text analysis to your students. All of us want our students to be critical thinkers, but an anti-racist approach to ELA needs to do more than that. Does your analysis of texts include critical literacy practices? How do you disrupt traditional texts in your classroom to bring in more critical perspectives? 
Part One: Critical Literacy
Interrogating your approach to text analysis starts with an understanding of critical literacy. Critical literacy “refers to the use of technologies of print and other media of communication to analyze, critique, and transform the norms, rules systems, and practices governing the social fields of institutions and everyday life” (Luke, 2014, p. 21). Critical literacy is pedagogy that has the potential to transform lives and communities through a process of becoming aware of one’s experience relative to power relations, often realized through reading and writing.  We encourage ELA teachers to apply a critical lens when approaching literature. 
For practical suggestions, we draw on Haddix and Rojas’s (2011) questions as a framework for interrogating texts. When analyzing texts, consider these questions from Haddix and Rojas (2011):

1. Who was the text written for? 
2. Whose perspective and narratives are omitted or silenced by this text? 
3. What are the cultural meanings and possible readings that can be constructed from this text? 
4. What is the text trying to do to me? Or how is the text positioning me as the reader? 

It is important for you and your students to ask these questions. When teaching from a critical literacy lens, it is also important for your students to know that you are intentionally taking a critical literacy approach to texts. 
Part Two: Extending the Critical Literacy Lens
Haddix and Rojas’s (2011) also offer an extended critique to examine “what critical literacy makes possible and what such analyses leave out” (p. 22).  To avoid one construction of knowledge, teachers can also ask these questions from Haddix and Rojas (2011): 

1. How is the literature and curriculum defined within this critical literacy approach? 
2. How is the analysis of these texts (literature and curriculum) defined by particular discourses? 
3. How can these discourses be altered, interrupted, resisted? 
4. What subjectivities constitute and are constituted through these discourses (and what “new” subjectivities might be constructed)? 

Sources: 
Luke, A. (2014). Defining critical literacy. In J. Pandya &  J. Ávila. Moving Critical Literacies Forward. (pp. 19-31).  Routledge.
Haddix, M. & Rojas, M.A. (2011). (Re)framing teaching in urban classrooms: A poststructural (re)reading of critical literacy as 
curricular and pedagogical practices. In V. Kinloch (Ed). Urban Literacies: Critical Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Community. Teachers College Press.

Part Three: Bring Your Lenses to Action --#DisruptTexts
English Language Arts teachers have the ability to challenge the traditional, white-centered canon that are often core texts in current curricula. How can teachers teach the canon while pushing for restorative practices that repair “historic harm inflicted on students who endure school systems that perpetuate racial inequities” (NCTE 2020 Call)? How can we build an inclusive and equitable ELA curriculum by disrupting texts?  

We encourage ELA teachers to check out #DisruptTexts, which is “is a crowdsourced, grassroots effort by teachers for teachers to challenge the traditional canon in order to create a more inclusive, representative, and equitable language arts curriculum that our students deserve.”  

Educators who want to #disrupttexts should consider their four core principles: 

1. interrogating our biases to understand how they inform our teaching practices 
2. centering the authentic voices and lived experiences of people of color 
3. applying a critical literacy lens to our teaching practices that is anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-bias
4. working in community with other educators, particularly Black, Indigenous, and educators of color. 

Visit their website to join the effort and also join #DisruptTexts Twitter Chats.

I love conversations with Margaret Robbins. I always find that she is thinking deeply about a genre or writer that should be on my radar, but it just wasn't at the moment. As a result, I learn something and my to read list gets longer. In addition to the post for today, she had three previous posts that you should consider reading as well. 
They are: 
http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/the-lasting-influence-in-remembrance-of-ursula-le-guin-by-margaret-robbins
​http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/rape-culture-and-diet-culture-as-explored-in-recent-ya-novels-by-margaret-a-robbins-phd
http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/fandom-literature-a-new-sub-genre-of-ya-by-margaret-a-robbins-phd
​Go ahead and bookmark them. They are worth keeping on your radar.
​Her post this week is timely and important. 

Until next week

First, a quick glance at the future.

Last Thursday and Friday, June 11 and 12, 2020, were two days filled with wonder and growth. All of the authors reminded us why we loved Young Adult Literature. The presenters reviewed the robust opportunities surrounding research and suggested a host of ways to engage students in the classroom or through their own independent reading. 

You can browse the program here. It has links to many of the presentations. We hope to add a few more as presenters have time to catch their breath and send along their updates.  While we missed being able to meet face to face the keynote authors all managed to engage the attendees through their inspiring stories.  

We asked the presenters of each concurrent session to cover their material in a reduced time of 25 minutes. Clearly, they would have loved to have more time and we would have loved to have more time for Q and A. We focused on moving things along as advised from several other groups that worked with conferences in an online setting. We are learning as we go. We moved most of three days into two days and, by and large, it seemed to work well. Would we change a few things? Of course, but the good news is we would stay with most of what we put in place. 

The hard work of other make a conference like this happen. Sarah Donovan was wonderful as co-chair. Her help and feedback along the way as we moved from a face to face event to trouble shooting the obstacles of moving to an online event was invaluable.  It was important to have individuals willing to sit quietly in each session and function as a Zoom host. Thanks goes to Darby Simpson, Jennifer Dail, Dani Rimbach-Jones, and Amy Piotrowski. Their work enabled the Concurrent Session chairs and presenters to continue on without an additional worry. 

The Summit is over but you can revisit the event any time at this link in Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. You can see a list of the presenting authors and their book and check out the presenters. Yes, we will continue to update the page as we gain information. 

More importantly we will begin to build the page for the 2021 Summit before  too long.

Below are the photos of our visiting authors and they are linked to their websites. (A couple are so new, they still don't have them.) I would encourage you to buy their books and get reading. Which brings me to another positive action. I received the following note from Ashley. 

Local bookstores are around. Here is Las Vegas consider The Writer's Block. They are so kind and generous, that on their home page they encourage shoppers to support Black owned bookstores and provide a link on their home page so you can do just that. 

In the midst of preparing for the Summit, America was disrupted by death of George Floyd. I was at a lost for words. I am committed to including diverse books of all kinds in my curriculum. Yet, it didn't seem like enough. I reached out to people I respect who speak to the issue of diversity in YA literature. (I have to add that they are so many that I might have reached out to, but these two had previous experience with the Summit.) In short order I reached out to and heard back from Kekla Magoon and Stephaine Toliver. Both are amazing woman who work with the YA world from different angles. We also included Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides to serve as a moderator. I highly recommend all of their work. 

Several of the people who attended the Summit have provided some comments. Take a look and plan on next year. We hope to be holding an in person event. If we don't, we will do our best to improve on the experience we had this year.

I have attended each of the Young Adult Literature Conferences at UNLV for the past 3 years. The author panels and mentor teachers have been keenly chosen to represent a plethora of genres and diversity.  I have learned so much from each of the sessions, and I am so excited to bring back many of the ideas to share with my colleagues, as well as to incorporate them into my teaching of literature. I can't thank you enough for putting on this wonderful conference!
 
Judy Bryce
Del Webb Middle School
7th Grade ELA

Stimulating, Compelling, and Purposeful are just a few words to describe this year's incredible Summit on the
Research and Teaching of ​YA Literature!
 
Hands down, this was one of the most powerful virtual events that I have attended this summer.  Every session provided powerful insights and examples of social justice texts to foster critical engagements with readers. The keynote speakers empowered us to take action as we transform our classrooms and instructional practices.  
 
The conference provided me with tools and resources to promote and cultivate spaces where readers are free to dialogue about the complexities of their world while discovering texts that affirm their voices. Thank you, Dr. Bickmore, and the conference committee for organizing a fabulous conference
 
Mary Napoli

​I wish that I could bottle the energy, brilliance, and empathy of the people at the UNLV YA conference to save for difficult teaching days.  There are so many reasons to like this conference. Every speaker brings an original perspective and interpretation of the stories we use to shape the lives of children. The reading list I  gather while listening to all the speakers and other participants is worth the price of the conference and the insight into the world of YA and the lives of students makes it priceless.
​
Dana Hazzard

At the end of the #YASummit2020, Steve Bickmore encouraged us to "Take that step and go that place you haven't been before," and this is exactly what Young Adult Literature does, what this Summit did, and what we hope our profession does and will continue to do. 
 
In the middle of a global pandemic and as we enter our third week of protests supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, supporting the idea that our students' lives deserve respect and equal treatment, only Young Adult Literature and the discussion of it could have held our attention so closely for two full days. In the online forum, we shared laughs and we cried, we talked books and we talked movements, we compiled resources and joined ideas, we made friends that we can stand strong with as we leave the Summit and re-enter a world in need of so much work. 
 
This was my first time attending the Summit, and I hope it happens every year, and that it always is as responsive to students' needs and to the times as it was this year. The presenters and attendees came from across the country, across disciplines, and across grade levels. We discussed race and racism, intersectionality, LGBTQIA+ books and issues, the social constructs of adolescence, mental health, adaptations of classic literature, climate issues, and probably anything else our students and our profession are interested in. Leaving the Summit, I am grateful to have attended and been part of this group of educators and teacher researchers who amaze and inspire me and teachers and students across the nation every day. 
 
Ashley Hope Perez told us that the "promise of fiction lies in us," and this Summit gives us the tools, strategies, and support system we need to take the promise of literature and bring it to our students.  Books do make for a better world, and the Summit helps us continue to believe in our ideals and ideas in the midst of everything. 
 
Thank you, Dr. Bickmore and all the presenters and attendees for making this an experience I will never forget!  
 
See you next year in Vegas for #YASummit2021

Rebecca Chatham-Vazquez
President Elect, Arizona English Teachers Association
Vice President, English Language Arts Teacher Educators -- ASU Graduate Student Strand

Just a great summit.  Congrats!  I know that was a ton of work, but you and your UNLV gang pulled it off perfectly.  I had to duck away several times during the two days, but I saw quite a few keynotes and several breakouts.  Great thinking, great presentation, great conversation throughout.
 
Hope you can relax in knowing what a great job you did.  Enjoy the rest of the summer!
 
Gary Salvner

Attending the online version of the 2020 Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature on June 11-12 was a great decision. Thanks to the amazing presenters and keynote speakers, I learned about integrating graphic novels into the secondary and college classroom, strategies for teaching YA texts that promote social justice and empathy, and ways to bring in more diverse books to my curriculum. Two of my favorite sessions were Sarah Donovan's "LGBTQ+ Affirming Representations a Timeline and Lifeline" and the keynote given by Gilly Segal and Kimberly Jones. I loved collaborating with Louise Freeman on our session focused on YA texts and empathy research. I was also fortunate to share some preliminary research on "YA Retellings of the Classics" with Diane Scrofano. We are in the process of proposing a book on that topic; thus, our conference presentation was a great way to dip our toes in the water.
 
So what did I take away from the 2020 YA Summit?

• Renewed confidence in teaching young adult literature in my English Education courses and my college-level humanities classes;
• Phenomenal scholarly resources to help me facilitate difficult and important conversations about issues related to race, gender and sexual orientation, and mental health;
• Scads of titles of amazing books written for young adults to share with my students and colleagues; and
• Strengthened friendships and new acquaintances that will sustain me as we move forward in a world full of uncertainty and struggle.

Though I definitely missed seeing everyone in person (and leading folks to a local dueling piano bar for after-hours fun), thanks to the 2020 YA Summit, once again, my heart is full, and I am ready to do the work!

Kia Jane Richmond
Professor & Director of English Education
Northern Michigan University

"YA Summit exceeded all of my expectations for an online meeting. I felt connected to my friends and colleagues despite periodic glitches of camera and microphones, and once again met the greatest minds of the field represented by YA authors and scholars, teachers, and librarians, graduate and undergraduate students. The best lesson I learned is about disrupting texts. Our reality is a constant disruption; there is nothing comfortable, cozy, and smooth about it. This is the way we should look at the literary text questioning what, how, and why things happen the way they do. How can we make things better?
​
Thank you, Steve Bickmore and your amazing team at UNLV for tireless work organizing the event and passion for Young Adult literature!"
​
Leilya Pitre
Southeastern Louisiana University

Until next week.

This week, Sean Kottke helps us remember just how embedded YA literature is within popular culture. Sometimes we forget which came first--the YA book or the media version--the T. V. show, the movie, or the limited series. Do people remember that 13 Reasons Why was a book and that the series has moved far beyond the original narrative. The list goes on and on. Sean has chosen to look closely at a writer, Rob Thomas, who has captured adolescent angst through the entire body of his writing whether the work shows up in a novel, a movie, or a television show. Some of you may not know the name, but trust me, you should. I hope that some of these book end up on your to do list.

“She doesn’t kill vampires or kick ass like Alias. … Her power is telling other people to fuck off.” (Rob Thomas, in Solomon, 2019)

On more occasions than I care to remember (dating my future wife, teaching a young adult literature class, meeting my wife’s friends and family, Jeopardy! audition – yeah, no joke), I’ve had to follow up my answer to the question “who’s your favorite YA author?” with an immediate “not that Rob Thomas,” which I’ve always chafed at having to clarify, since I knew this Rob Thomas years before I really knew who that Rob Thomas was. This blog isn’t about that Rob Thomas, famous Carlos Santana collaborator who appeared as himself (and met a grisly, albeit fictional, end) in the season two finale of this Rob Thomas’ iZombie. This is about this Rob Thomas, the guy who didn’t start out trying to write YA fiction, yet created a multimedia universe of linked narratives that sold me more on the potential of YA literature to authentically capture the experiences of adolescents and generate social capital in communities of readers than any single author, scholar, fellow educator, or literacy advocate. And here I thought my prime directive as a high school English teacher was to get the next generation excited about Shakespeare.

All the best press about Rob Thomas’ work is published in Texas Monthly. That’s no coincidence. Although born outside of the Lone Star State, Thomas found his way there at an early age, stayed through high school, college, and a teaching career, set most of his books there, and made it his base again after an extended time living and working in Hollywood. There’s a particular worldview infusing his works that is Texas in a bottle, heavy on the Austin – described in Rats Saw God as “the coolest city in Texas. Even the frat boys recycle” (Thomas, 1996, p. 69) – whether the story is set in the Texas Hill Country, Southern California, Seattle, or the Irish coast. It’s the mother’s milk of my early childhood, the common denominator of my lifelong pop culture fandom, the ethos enshrined in the lyrics of Doug Sahm’s “Groover’s Paradise” and “Get a Life,” and in the films of Richard Linklater and Mike Judge. It resists an easy label, but for purposes of this blog, let’s call it an Austin Slacker Charm. 

The Austin Slacker is summed up well in Thomas’ screenplay for the underrated Drive Me Crazy (Schultz, 1999). Asked to describe his “perfect date,” Chase (played by a pre-Entourage Adrian Grenier) says it’s the kind of person who “will call you out on your bullshit … [is] not completely earnest, yet … not completely ironic.” It’s the perspective of an outsider – in the world, but not of the world, of the conventionally popular and successful – who nevertheless values the community. It’s a preference that Chase notes not in the film, but in the book on which the film is based, for “being on the outside, acting like I didn’t care. It felt safer out there. But it was only an act. Because I did care” (Strasser, p. 200). It’s an ethos telegraphed by the phrase “onward through the fog,” invoked prominently – and conveniently – in the works that so far bookend Rob Thomas’ two decades of film and TV work, Drive Me Crazy (1999) and the final season of Veronica Mars (2019). For the uninitiated, that phrase is the slogan of Oat Willie, the eponymous mascot for Austin’s legendary head shop and all-around underground culture headquarters. The answers aren’t always readily apparent, but if you persevere in the face of uncertainty, live and let live, “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” (Thomas, 1998, p. 10), do good work (the Austin Slacker works hard, FYI, contrary to the average slacker stereotype) and Keep Austin Weird, you’ll get by and find yourself in GOD’s good graces. GOD, of course, being the Grace Order of Dadaists, the anti-club founded by Steve York and friends in Rats Saw God. 

So, how does this outsider vision play out across Rob Thomas’ books, movies, and TV shows? Glad you asked. Crack open a Dr. Pepper, a Shiner Bock, or, in the words of late great Texas TV newsman Marvin Zindler, “whatever makes you happy,” and read on.

​Rats Saw God (1996)
​
Rob Thomas’ first novel was my gateway drug. I was teaching high school English in Tomball, Texas, and my mentor in English Education, Dr. William Tucker, recommended at an NCTE conference that I give this book a try. Steve York, recently transplanted for his senior year of high school from the Houston suburbs to San Diego, is called to task by his new school’s guidance counselor to explain how a near spotless academic record over five semesters could suddenly come to a halt. “’Do you mind telling me how someone who makes a 760 verbal on his SAT fails English?’ ‘I couldn’t make it all the way through The Outsiders again’” (p. 3). What ensues is a narrative equal parts 1 Henry IV and “Shotgun Willie,” as Steve relates both what brought him to the present day and what transpires over the course of his senior year. He copes with growing up in the shadow of “the astronaut” (aka, his father, Alan York), while “subverting the system” (p. 40) with his friends in GOD, a collective Falstaff to his Prince Hal. With such a pedigree, Steve might be considered the ultimate insider in Houston, but he rejects the claim to the throne based on his reading of his father’s behavior toward his mother before and after his parents’ divorce.

Steve’s coming-of-age moment comes less from defeating an antagonist like Hotspur than from coming to understand errors in his reading of past events. Steve is the prototypical Thomas Austin Slacker protagonist: an outsider seeking community without selling out to an in-crowd conformist mentality. The novel has an ahead-of-its-time edge and authenticity that has since become a hallmark of young adult literature, something noted in retrospect by Thomas. “I didn’t think I was writing a young-adult book. … I knew my central character was an eighteen-year-old. If I was thinking in terms of an audience beyond myself, it was my musician friends in Austin, so I didn’t alter anything. … [T]eenagers don’t live profanity-free, sex-free, drug-free lives” (Cohen, 1997). Incidentally, my first reading of Rats Saw God coincided with the publication of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999), which deeply impacted my ninth-grade Humanities students. A stirring book talk from the first student in my class to read Perks, a young man who reminded me strongly of Steve York, was the professional slap in the face I needed to embrace YA literature as a vital part of recentering my curriculum around the specific needs of the young, gifted adolescents in my charge, which went way beyond simply grasping the nuts and bolts of the Western canon. 

​Doing Time: Notes from the Undergrad (1997)
​
The first of two books concerning the exploits of students of the fictional Deerfield, Texas Robert E. Lee High School, this collection of short stories is presented as the interview responses of nine seniors narrating their experiences in a community service project. The collection is framed by their interviewer Randall, an undergraduate social work student, who illustrates his own skeptical perspective on the high school students’ service projects by narrating his own experience as a Little Brother to a Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback sentenced to community service. “[B]efore [him] I didn’t know shacks from mansions, so excuse me if don’t join the Hallelujah Chorus over three hundred high school kids set loose on the community, blindly colliding, if only momentarily, with real people living real lives. Those lives keep going long after the kids have reduced them to a line on a college application” (p. 19). This outsider perspective is echoed in many of the high school students’ individual stories. In “Loss of Pet,” for example, library volunteer Fiona describes “The Rot”: “It’s the sorority girl who parks in the handicapped zone because she’s still got the permit they gave her when she broke her leg jet skiing. It’s the politician who promises to restore family values. It’s the people throwing ‘Welcome Home’ parties for that boxer who raped a girl. It’s television. It’s every U2 album after War. It’s the women who come in here with black eyes and check out romance novels. It’s sex in general. It’s the jocks at school who whistle at Andrew when he walks down the hall, or the dance team girls who ask me whether I’ve ever seen the sun” (p. 22). In “Half a Mind,” Laura’s outsider status is gradually revealed as the discrepancy between the reality of her service caring for a survivor of traumatic brain injury and her Sweet Valley High-shaped romantic interpretation of their relationship becomes clear. That story presents a riff on Rob Thomas’ own mixed feelings of being perceived as writing for young adults: “You go to the bookstore and my books are always near little kids’ books or Sweet Valley High—all these things I don’t want to be next to. Those are aisles where no self-respecting teenager would go” (Cohen, 1997). Each story plays out like something from O. Henry, with a twist that challenges each narrator to change their assumptions about other people or about themselves. Not all choose to learn something of lasting consequence from their experiences, but all carry onward through the fog. 

Slave Day (1997)
​
The second book to feature characters from Deerfield’s Robert E. Lee High School also features multiple narrators, here interleaved into something of an oral history of an annual fundraiser in which students and teachers are auctioned off as “slaves” to do their “masters’” bidding. Included among the narrators are Keene Davenport, an African-American student who plans to protest the horror of a modern, predominantly white high school named after a Confederate general re-enacting slave auctions “for school spirit,” and Shawn Greeley, the African-American student council president genially presiding over the affair. Keene gets the winning bid on Shawn, and uses the opportunity to direct Shawn into darkly satiric behavior that highlights the awfulness of the school’s continuity of this tradition. These events continue to make the novel timely 23 years after it was published, and Keene and Shawn are but two of the outsiders narrating the events of this day.
​
Tommy Parks, nicknamed “Trailer” as a tease about his neighborhood, carries over from Doing Time, and among the outsiders featured, is most representative of Austin Slacker Charm. In the lower socioeconomic strata of the school population, Tommy hustles between getting by in school by day and working nights at Whataburger (a Texas institution). Without plans to continue his education beyond high school, he places the winning bid on Mr. Twilley, a long-serving history teacher with a reputation for being a stickler and bad memories of Tommy as a student. As in Doing Time, every character faces a moment of reckoning in which their assumptions are challenged and an ethical dilemma presents itself. In keeping with Thomas’ Capraesque vision of community, most dilemmas are resolved in a direction that brings people together, and no one – save for people who commit actual crimes – is incapable of redemption and learning to contribute to a better community. The experience doesn’t fix everything; Mr. Twilley muses about his ex-wife: “[a]s I’m walking, Esther enters my mind. I wonder what she would say about my day. Something about faith in mankind. Something about giving of yourself. And yet, it would still be over between us. Too many things said. Too many things never said” (p. 242). Onward through the fog.

​Satellite Down (1998)
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Rob Thomas stretches the outsider concept further in Satellite Down with Patrick Sheridan, a character of faith transported from the small town of Doggett, Texas to Los Angeles, where he is to become the latest student reporter on Classroom Direct, a thinly veiled stand-in for Rob Thomas’ early 90s employer, Channel One News. Patrick is a fish-out-of-water two times over, as a devout Catholic first in heavily Protestant small-town Texas and second in Los Angeles. The broad contours of the story mimic the trajectory of Willie Nelson’s “Bloody Mary Morning,” in which a disillusioned musician flies home to Texas from Los Angeles, as well as any number of cautionary Hollywood tales. One could argue Patrick’s outsider status (as indeed a hostile fan letter he receives does) given that he’s instantly labeled a “two percenter” by the Classroom Direct staff, one who has “the luxury that you can by on your looks. It means that you’re one of the beautiful people for whom everything comes easy. It means you’ll never have trouble getting a job, getting promoted, making friends, getting a loan, getting laid. Being a two percenter gives you the power to just bullshit your way through life” (p. 72). Nevertheless, that’s not Patrick’s lived experience, as he experiences microaggressions related to his small-town Texas background and a constant plea from Hollywood to “get jaded, for chissakes” (p. 83). As he travels around the country (and later, world) covering events for Classroom Direct, his reporter’s eye for detail and awareness of his own positionality as both an outsider and a “two percenter,” depending on the social context, allow him to gather more insights about the world and use his privilege “to expose corruption, afflict the comfortable, [and] defend the people’s right to know” (p. 159). Patrick moves onward through the fog and tries to lift it where he can. 

​Green Thumb (1999)
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To date Rob Thomas’ only middle grades novel, as well as the only book not to take place in Texas, Green Thumb details the adventures of junior high botany whiz Grady Jacobs. Grady details his outsider status early on: “People think that because I’m smart, I must like school. That’s not true at all. School may be easy, but it’s almost too easy. It’s boring. So what I’m stuck with is spending eight hours a day, five days a week around people who consider armpit noise high comedy. Teachers hate me because I intimidate them. Other kids hate me because I don’t blend in nicely. So, given the option, I’d never show up” (p. 25). Grady experiences bullying, and is clever enough to exact relatively harmless revenge on his tormentors. Soon though, he gets his wish to depart when he is invited to participate in an experiment with “super trees” in the Brazilian rain forest. These super trees are designed to thrive in areas made desert through deforestation, but Grady soon discovers dangerous consequences on the ecosystem as well as a hidden language that allows him to control trees’ reflex actions. Rather than serving as a latter-day Lorax who speaks for the trees, Grady declares “I am Awkye. I bend trees to my will” (p. 102). An outsider among humans, Grady becomes an insider among trees, and enlists the help of the native population (rendered outsiders by corporate interests infringing on the rain forests) to fight for a stronger ecosystem. 

​Drive Me Crazy (1999)

This motion picture adaptation of Todd Strasser’s “Time Zone High” novel How I Created My Perfect Prom Date (1996, originally published as Girl Gives Birth to Own Prom Date) doesn’t get a lot of love. Described as “endearingly ridiculous” (Garis, 2015), it boasts a 5.8 out of 10 rating on IMDB.com and a 28% Tomatometer at RottenTomatoes.com (both ratings as of June 8, 2020), and merits nothing more than an off-hand comment in nearly every article on Rob Thomas’ screen work. At least it gets a polite smile and genial shrug from my wife when I mention it to her, who gives it points for featuring former Rob Thomas neighbor Britney Spears’ “(You Drive Me) Crazy” instead of Fine Young Cannibals’ “She Drives Me Crazy” (wow, does Charlotte hate that song). That said, for the Rob Thomas aficionado, the film is no throwaway. Adrian Grenier’s Chase Hammond is as close as Steve York has come to appearing on screen in manner and Austin Slacker Charm. While Melissa Joan Hart’s Nicole Maris is in with the in-crowd and stays there for the whole film, the Pygmalion-esque makeover scheme she unhatches with Chase expands both characters’ worldviews and appreciation of each other’s social scenes. That’s not revolutionary, of course (Breakfast Club, anyone?). In fact, a musical sequence set to Barenaked Ladies’ “It’s All Been Done” (a Charlotte favorite, btw) cheekily telegraphs that to viewers. Rob Thomas’ screenplay is chock-full of Easter eggs from his books, from a subplot involving the school’s own Channel One newscast, a reference to one character “buying Alicia DeGasario at the student council auction last year,” and one outsider character’s revenge on the popular kids via a prank right out of GOD’s playbook. None of those elements are in Strasser’s original novel, and they’re more than gimmicky in-jokes. They’re each integral to the plot of the film, creating a world that mirrors those of Thomas’ novels in an attitude and atmosphere that’s “not completely earnest, yet … not completely ironic.” Is there no better expression of that ethos than featuring the pop punk band The Donnas (performing here as The Electrocutes) covering REO Speedwagon’s “Keep on Loving You” during the film’s climactic dance?

Rob Thomas on TV: Veronica Mars (2004-2019), Party Down (2009-2010), Play it Again, Dick (2014), iZombie (2015-2019)

“What I really want to do is replace Nancy Drew as the first name you think of when you think of female detectives” (Rob Thomas, in Solomon, 2019)
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Originally conceived as a novel featuring boy detective Keith Mars solving crimes in Austin’s Westlake High School, Veronica Mars has evolved into Rob Thomas’ Rabbit Angstrom, a character we’ve been privileged to see grow from adolescence to adulthood in real time. Across three seasons broadcast first on UPN and then The CW, a Kickstarter funded theatrical film, two novels co-written by Thomas and Jennifer Graham, a webseries spinoff (the very meta Play it Again, Dick), and a fourth season released on Hulu, Rob Thomas’ creation has pioneered 21st century cross-media storytelling and fan culture engagement with the creative process. Old faithful Texas Monthly has documented this well (see Cohen, 2014; Solomon, 2019), and Thomas performed the height of fan service by editing and contributing an introduction to Neptune Noir, a collection of unauthorized acafan essays exploring everything from loving deconstructions of individual episodes to thoughtful positionings of Veronica Mars in the vast library of noir and detective fiction (Thomas & Wilson, 2006). 

The last essay in that collection, Heather Havrilesky’s “The Importance of Not Being Earnest,” provides a detailed discussion of Veronica’s outsider perspective, noting that it comes not simply from “years of rejection, but a succession of tragedies – boyfriend Duncan dumped her, best friend Lilly was murdered by [spoiler!], Mommy bedded Mr. Kane then disappeared, Daddy lost his job as sheriff – that forced Veronica to face the ugly fact that life is filled with sadness, loss, and disappointments, and that it’s pure foolishness to trust anyone, ever” (pp. 209-210). And that’s not only just in Season One, it’s not even all of Veronica’s Season One travails. More than made to feel an outsider, Veronica is truly alienated.
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Nevertheless, Veronica persists, onward through the fog. Although set in the fictional Neptune, California, Veronica and her community are the apotheosis of Austin Slacker Charm, moving forward in uncertainty, working relentlessly toward creating a more inclusive community, never too earnest, never too ironic. Among the “18 More Things to Know About Rob Thomas and Veronica Mars” (Cohen, 2014) is that “Thomas doesn’t forget the little people.” While this refers specifically to the generous opportunities Thomas brings to Austinites, former students, and other collaborators to grow and expand their talents, it’s a hallmark of his storytelling style. Thomas’ sympathies are always with characters who work, whether it’s Veronica hustling as a private detective, Steve York working as a projectionist, Tommy Parks working third shift at Whataburger, the entire Party Down crew catering event after event in Hollywood between auditions, or Olivia Moore eating the brains of recently deceased to help the Seattle police solve murders. These are people doing often unglamorous work, doing it well (not always perfectly mind you, but not incompetently), and making other people’s frequently equally unglamorous lives better along the way.

You might be forgiven a double-take with the last two entries in that list of Thomas characters. Since both Party Down and iZombie (as well as Veronica Mars texts after the show’s original three seasons) deal largely with post-college adults, I’ve opted not to give them as detailed treatment here as the other properties that concern the lives of adolescents and young adults. It’s why I’ve also opted not to venture into the three X-Files novelizations Thomas penned under the name Everett Owens. However, the truth is out there in all of these narrative worlds that Rob Thomas has shepherded into being. That unique mix of earnestness and irony, of Capraesque inclusion and anti-establishment irreverence, all in a package of whip-smart dialogue, this Rob Thomas brings that to all his enterprises, and as we proceed onward through the fog, I can’t wait to see what stories emerge from his mind next.

References

Cohen, J. (1997, April). Teen idol. Texas Monthly. Retrieved June 1, 2020, from https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/teen-idol/
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Cohen, J. (2014, March). Mission to Mars. Texas Monthly. Retrieved June 1, 2020 from https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/mission-to-mars/
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Cohen, J. (2014, March 13). 18 more things to know about Rob Thomas and Veronica Mars. Texas Monthly. Retrieved June 1, 2020 from https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/18-more-things-to-know-about-rob-thomas-and-veronica-mars/
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Garis, M. (2015, September 24). 24 things you notice when you re-watch 'Drive Me Crazy' that are endearingly ridiculous. Bustle. Retrieved June 1, 2020, from https://www.bustle.com/articles/112629-24-things-you-notice-when-you-re-watch-drive-me-crazy-that-are-endearingly-ridiculous
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Havrileski, H. (2006). The importance of not being earnest. In R. Thomas & L. Wilson (Eds.) (2006), Neptune noir: Unauthorized investigations into Veronica Mars (pp. 205-212). Benbella Books: Dallas.

Schultz, J. (1999). Drive me crazy [Film]. 20th Century Fox.

Solomon, D. (2019, June 8). What we learned from the ‘Veronica Mars’ panel at ATX Fest. Texas Monthly. Retrieved June 1, 2020, from https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/what-we-learned-from-the-veronica-mars-panel-at-atx-fest/

Solomon, D. (2019, July 19). ‘Veronica Mars’ creator Rob Thomas talks revivals, Texas, and ‘Friday Night Lights’. Texas Monthly. Retrieved June 1, 2020, from https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-culture/veronica-mars-creator-rob-thomas-talks-revivals-texas-and-friday-night-lights/
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Strasser, T. (1996). How I created my perfect prom date. Simon & Schuster: New York.

Thomas, R. (1996). Rats saw God. Simon & Schuster: New York.

Thomas, R. (1997a). Doing time: Notes from the undergrad. Simon & Schuster: New York.

Thomas, R. (1997b). Slave day. Simon & Schuster: New York.

Thomas, R. (1998). Satellite down. Simon & Schuster: New York.

Thomas, R. (1999). Green thumb. Simon & Schuster: New York.

Thomas, R. (Director). (2014). Veronica Mars [Film]. Spondoolie Productions, In The Groove, Pace Pictures, Rob Thomas Productions.

Thomas, R., & Graham, J. (2014). Veronica Mars: The thousand dollar tan line. Vintage: New York.

Thomas, R., & Graham, J. (2015). Veronica Mars: Mr. kiss and tell. Vintage: New York.

Thomas, R., Rudd, P., Enborn, J., & Ethridge, D. (Executive Producers). (2009-2010). Party down [TV series]. Slaverats.

Thomas, R., & Ruggiero-Wright, D. (Executive Producers). (2004-2019). Veronica Mars [TV series]. Rob Thomas Productions, Silver Pictures Television, Stu Segall Productions, Warner Bros. Television.

Thomas, R., Ruggiero-Wright, D., & Etheridge, D. (Executive Producers). (2015-2019). iZombie [TV series]. DC Entertainment, Spondoolie Productions, Vertigo Productions, Warner Bros. Television.

Thomas, R., & Stokdyk, D. (Executive Producers). (2014). Play it again, Dick [TV series]. Rob Thomas Productions.
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Thomas, R., & Wilson, L. (Eds.) (2006). Neptune noir: Unauthorized investigations into Veronica Mars. Benbella Books: Dallas.

About the author: Sean Kottke has spent more years outside of Texas than in it, yet self-identifies as a Texan-in-exile and is a lifelong reader of Texas Monthly. He has been a high school teacher, university teacher educator, college dean, state education department consultant, Jeopardy! contestant and long-time board member of the Michigan Reading Association. He currently serves the realm as an Education Consultant Manager within the Michigan Department of Education.

​Until Next Time.