Librarians, Teachers and School Leaders Can Promote YA Literature in All Disciplines by Sharon Kane

Sharon Kane is one of the English Educators I look to for guidance. I always learn something in my conversations with her. Just when I think I am getting to be an expert in YA adult literature Sharon points me to something new. She has a noted reputation in content area literacy. This week she reminds us that YA literature has a place in all disciplines. 

Before you get started, take a minute to browse the contributors page for her other posts. All of her posts are interesting and you just might learn something new.

​Librarians, Teachers and School Leaders Can Promote YA Literature in All Disciplines by Sharon Kane

I have a t-shirt that reads, “Your Library IS the Common Core.”  In some schools, that statement is reality. In others, it may still be in the dream stage. So let’s envision what a school would look like where library staff, school leaders, and teachers have committed to collaboration in order to bring Young Adult literature into every discipline.
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It’s the week before students arrive for the start of the new academic year, and teachers are gathered in the library for staff development, eagerly waiting to hear about recently published books that connect to their curricular topics. The librarian, Mr. Ramalho, has disciplined-themed displays set up, and is just as eager to give book talks and co-plan activities based on the books as the teachers are to work with him. 

The math teachers always love to introduce their sometimes skeptical new students to people who actually find joy in mathematics. Mr. Ramalho offers Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson (2019), and Dreaming in Code: Ada Lovelace, Computer Pioneer, by Emily Arnold McCully (2019). (The whole school celebrates Ada Lovelace Day on the second Tuesday in October each year, along with others around the world.  (See more here.) There are fictional teens who are passionate about math, too. In Sandhya Menon’s When Dimple Met Rishi (2017), Dimple is an aspiring coder and app designer; and Early Auden, in Clare Vanderpool’s Navigating Early (2013), loves the number pi, envisioning a story where pi is lost, but will be instrumental in bringing his brother (presumed dead by the Navy) back to him alive. 

​The history teachers say that their students can never get enough of World War II-related literature, and want to know if there might be new additions for their classroom libraries. Sure! They can try The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler, by John Hendrix (2019), which uses a graphic novel format. White Rose, by Kip Wilson (2019), is a novel in verse based on the resistance movement in Germany. Operation Columba: The Secret Pigeon Service (Corera, 2018) will appeal to readers who love mysteries and true spy stories. Last Witnesses: An Oral History of the Children of World War II, by Svetlana Alexievich (2019) was just released this summer. And everyone can look forward to Deborah Heiligman’s Torpedoed: The True Story of the World War II Sinking of “The Children’s Ship,” which will hit book stores on October 8. 

Health, biology, and Family and Consumer Science teachers are planning to collaborate throughout the year using books related to nutrition, wellness, and care for the environment. Included in the display Mr. Ramalho has put together for them are the following:

-What’s on Your Plate?: Exploring the World of Food, by Whitney Stewart and Christiane Engel (2018) is an interdisciplinary text, able to be used in lessons on cooking, geography, history, language, culture, art, botany, etc. Readers will learn about the food culture in Thailand, Morocco, Mexico, Brazil, India, Greece, and more.

- Meal, by Blue Delliquanti with Soleil Ho (2018), is a graphic novel featuring protagonist Yarrow, who loves entomophagy; she has been harvesting insects and has earned certification from a culinary school. Her goal is to be hired in a new restaurant. The chef has given her a challenge, and we can join her as she looks for specialty ingredients such as ant larvae, grasshoppers, tarantulas, and mealworms, and then works her magic with them. Readers are rewarded with recipes at the end.

-Your Brain Needs a Hug: Life, Love, Mental Health, and Sandwiches, by Rae Earl (2019), combines the author’s personal experiences, tips about managing various conditions, humor, and resources.  

- With the Fire on High, by Elizabeth Acevedo (2019) introduces us to Emoni, a talented high school senior with a flare for cooking, and with great love for both the grandmother who raised her and her two-year-old daughter. How can she think about going to culinary school, with limited resources and competing responsibilities? Students will come away from this story with valuable lessons and intriguing recipes.
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-Diet for a Changing Climate: Food for Thought, by Christy Mihaly and Sue Heavenrich (2019) offers a rationale for broadening our view of what’s good to eat, and includes recipes students can prepare, including dandelion pancakes, roasted crickets, secret bug sauce, chirpy-chip cookies, mealworm tacos, and beetle croutons. Yum!

​ELA teachers clamor for fiction that is culturally relevant and that represents diversity in authentic ways. They want everyone to be able to find themselves represented in the classroom library. Mr. Ramalho gives a book talk for a new novel, Sarah Henstra’s We Contain Multitudes (2019), along with nonfiction and poetry books featuring Walt Whitman that are already in the library holdings. He shows A Queer History of the United States for Young People, by Michael Bronski, and adapted by Richie Chevat (2019), pointing out that an entire chapter is devoted to Walt Whitman.  

​Science teachers want to know what’s new related to their fields, and are not disappointed when they see interactive books such as Particle Physics: Brick by Brick (Still, 2017) and Marie Curie for Kids: Her Life and Scientific Discoveries, with 21 Activities (O’Quinn, 2017). There are biographies that will serve as mentor texts as students practice reading, writing, and thinking as apprentices in the sciences. These include the autobiographical Path to the Stars: My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist, by Sylvia Acevedo (2018), and The Plant Messiah (Magdalena, 2017) as well as biographies such as The Girl who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science (Sidman, 2018). Science-focused poetry books are on display as well: Countdown: 2979 Days to the Moon (Slade, 2018); Hidden City: Poems of Urban Wildlife (Tuttle, 2018); and Earth Verse: Haiku from the Ground Up (Walker, 2018).  

​The school’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) classes are larger than ever this year. They will be meeting often in the school’s makerspace, located in the library. Mr. Ramalho shows the teachers books featuring project-based, hands-on learning, including Engineering for Cats (Delaney, 2018); Temple Grandin’s Calling All Minds: How to Think Like an Inventor (2018); Build your own Chain Reaction Machines (Long, 2018); Fix a Car! (Schweizer, 2019); and How to Become an Accidental Genius (MacLeod & Wishinsky, 2019). The maker movement is represented in fiction, too. Adam Chen, one narrator in S.K. Ali’s Love from A to Z (2019), identifies as a maker, and is hoping to complete the conversion of a room in his house into a makerspace while he still can. He has recently been diagnosed with MS, the debilitating disease that took his mother’s life, so he does not know how long his hands will function well enough for him to use the talent he has for making art out of everyday objects.  

The art teachers have decorated their studios in an Impressionist style; their students will be learning art history using biographies such as Deborah Heiligman’s Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers (2017), and they will be painting outdoors. Mr. Ramalho recommends Gae Polisner’s novel In Sight of Stars (2018), in which Klee is grieving after his father dies by suicide. Vincent Van Gogh becomes involved as part of the healing process.   

​Physical education teachers and coaches know the power of literature. The school’s track team has doubled in size, thanks to Jason Reynold’s Ghost (2016) and the following three books in his Track series. In response to student requests after they read Pay Attention, Carter Jones (Schmidt, 2019) at the end of last school year, there will be a unit on cricket in the upcoming year. Fencing has also gained in popularity, due to Ibtihaj Muhammad’s memoir Proud: Living my American Dream, Young Readers Edition (2018).

​The music teacher can’t wait for the year to start.  She plans to bring her classes on a literary field trip to Woodstock by reading parts of the semi-autobiographical novel Summer of ’69 (2019). Her parents were there, as was the book’s author, Todd Strasser.  She grew up in a family that appreciated music festivals. But she will also introduce her classes to the graphic novel Operatic (Maclear & Eggenschwiler, 2019) featuring a middle school student who learns about the life and music of Maria Callas, falling radically in love with opera as a result. And she will read aloud from the verse biography Struttin’ with Some Barbecue: Lil Hardin Armstrong Becomes the First Lady of Jazz (Powell, 2019). She never knows which type of music will have the potential to change certain students’ lives. 

​Language teachers are happy with the table filled with books relating to language and cultures. There’s the novel in verse, Other Words for Home (Warga, 2019), where Jude, whose family fled Syria, adjusts to life in Cincinnati and learns to speak English. Maggie Stiefvater’s All the Crooked Saints (2017) contains numerous cultural references as well as bits of magical realism. Margarita Engle’s autobiographical Enchanted Air (2015) and Soaring Earth (2019) are filled with poems pondering issues of both language and culture.  

The main office has the look and feel of an indie bookstore; students who get sent to the vice-principal’s office because of an infraction often return to class with a book in hand, after a discussion of interests and reading habits. (Mr. Ramalho has taught the administrator about one of librarians’ favorite strategies, Reader’s Advisory.) Once a week, the principal’s voice comes over the PA system to announce that Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday’s latest post is out, or that there is a new “Weekend Pick” that just happens to be available in the library. Virtually all doors have signs indicating what staff members have recently read, are presently reading, and are looking forward to reading. Similar posters can be found on students’ lockers. What used to be the In-school Suspension Room is now a room filled with books and resources relating to Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), and is open to any student who wishes to spend time there. Any visitor would be able to tell that this is a school filled with people who read for pleasure. 

So, teachers are now ready to greet their new students. But further staff development is being planned. Instructional coaches and teacher volunteers will lead meetings of Professional Learning Communities using Lesley Roessing’s Talking Texts: a Teacher’s Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum (2019). Mr. Ramalho is awaiting the publication of Liz Deskins’ Content-Area Collaborations for Secondary Grades (2020) on October 1; he will use it as he plans future projects with teachers.

What do your schools look like in terms of literature in the disciplines? Feel free to write in the comment section if you have a book to recommend, or if you wonder if others have found literature connected to particular curricular topics. We can work together to create literature-based secondary schools, with the library, and the librarian, at their CORE.  

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Until next week.