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Stay tuned for information regarding the Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature!  

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Disney-fied YA: Exploring Recent Disney Adaptations of Popular Young Adult Literature

12/6/2023

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Historically, when you hear “Disney” or “the Disney treatment,” thoughts of white-washed, Euro-centric stories reinforcing hegemonic ideologies complete with merchandising opportunities come to mind. While Disney has not reckoned fully with their historical perpetuation of whiteness and racist caricatures, traditional gender roles, and heterosexuality, there has been a noticeable recent increase in the number of stories told by, for, and about people of Color across Disney properties, particularly through streaming offerings on Disney+.
 
Some of these stories are new intellectual property, but remakes of pre-existing Disney properties and adaptations of recognizable properties that are created by or starring people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds have also proved lucrative for the studio. These movies and shows and the merchandise ecosystem that accompany them offer big and little screen mirrors for millions of children who identify with the diverse actors of Color cast in starring roles. However, diversifying stories previously cast or imagined with white actors has led to racist backlash online. A recent example of this was the online outrage about the casting of Halle Bailey, a Black actress, as Ariel in the remake of The Little Mermaid (2023). These manufactured conflicts, fed into an “outrage machine” through social media channels, often contain rhetoric of “loss” for dominant groups (Sackl, 2022).
 
In this contested and often hostile space, studios and networks like Disney continue to acquire rights to multicultural intellectual property, including popular Young Adult and Middle Grades Literature. So what does it mean for these books and series to be “Disney-fied” today? Disney’s corporate imperative to make money while also expanding their market to meet shifting demographics worldwide has led to more representation behind and in front of the camera, but what opportunities and challenges does this offer? One example of recent Disney-fication that highlights the hopes and challenges of the expansion of market share is the Disney+ adaptation of the young adult novel The Crossover.

​The Crossover

The Crossover (2014) novel by Kwame Alexander tells the story of Josh Bell, known as  “Filthy McNasty” on the basketball court, as he and his twin brother Jordan “JB” navigate finishing middle school and winning big in basketball. Told in free verse, The Crossover reads like spoken word from the mind of Josh, one page visually mirroring moves on the court, the next detailing daily interactions with family and friends. Josh centers his life around his dream of playing professional basketball one day with his twin JB, just like their father, Chuck “Da Man” Bell. But when JB starts to dream of his future differently, and a medical diagnosis threatens to upend the tight-knit family, Josh has to figure out how to balance his dreams with the realities of life. 
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​When it debuted, the novel received rave reviews from children’s literature critics, particularly for its’ portrayal of a successful, tight-knit Black family. The Crossover novel has subsequently made its way into many classrooms and curricula as a beloved novel for many teachers and students. The Disney+ adaptation of the popular novel intrigued us as we wondered: how would the show convey the original text’s poetry and heart? Would toy aisles be filled with Josh Bell dolls and The Crossover branded basketballs? Would commodification upstage the novel's message? Or would it be the type of adaptation that brings new audiences to the original text and author? 
The Crossover show debuted on Disney+ in April 2023, with 8 episodes executive produced and written by Kwame Alexander and teams from several production companies. We got out our notebooks to compare the new show to its source material. In signature Disney fashion, the show introduces viewers to young actors Jalyn Hall as “Josh Bell” and Amir O’Neil as “JB,” marking them as new members of the “Disney machine.” Supported by recognizable actors like Derek Luke as “Chuck Bell” and Daveed Diggs narrating in spoken word style as the poetic inner voice of Josh, the show embeds its new stars with known talent, potentially piquing the interest of adults who may see a familiar face in promotional materials.

One of the potential advantages of Disney’s corporate strategies is a focus on expanding existing properties into longer forms. Because of the choice to make The Crossover into a series (with the help of author Alexander who served as a writer on the show), supporting characters from the novel are developed more fully with storylines that were not present in the original text. For instance, Josh and JB’s mom Crystal Bell has an expanded storyline where she vies for a promotion from middle school assistant principal to principal at the school her sons attend. The show also includes new plot events that center and celebrate Black history and Black joy; in one example, the twins prepare for and attend a Harlem Renaissance-themed middle school dance. Without an emphasis on expanding the source material, fans of the book’s characters would miss out on these storylines. 
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However, extended time spent on tense basketball games and worrying medical emergencies drives the plot of many episodes. This is in contrast to the text, where basketball is one aspect of JB’s world that he uses to help process his personal life and does not end up being the most important aspect of his story. Disney’s focus on creating marketable franchises with multiple avenues for profit may have contributed to the decision to foreground basketball scenes and minimize attempts to bring the poetry of the novel in verse to life. The show sometimes features visual flourishes that highlight Josh’s expansive vocabulary and inner monologue tied to tenderness and family dynamics, but they are secondary to the conventionally-filmed sports scenes.
 
Additionally, attempts to create dramatic tension in the show end up undercutting the impact of the book’s style. Most episodes are framed by jumps forward in time to see where the Bell family is now, including adding a future car wreck implying one of the twins becomes gravely injured and unable to play basketball soon after being signed to a professional team. These moments add higher stakes to the plot than were present in the book but do not add to the story in a meaningful way, while distracting from the artistry and the joy of the original text. The show ends with a cliffhanger, hinting that the story will continue in a future season, a recognition of Disney’s overarching goal to create long-lasting franchises.
 
The show also removes any reference to Josh’s locs, which feature prominently in the book, both as a source of pride and individual expression for Josh and a plot event when JB wins a bet and accidentally cuts off more than one. In fact, the actor who plays Josh has an afro throughout the show, and Black hair styles and preferences never feature as a storyline. Removing culturally-specific storylines like this may have left time for more basketball scenes, but eliminates a point of connection for viewers who identify with the characters’ experiences.
 
Overall, The Crossover series offers readers an opportunity to see their favorite characters come to life, and opens the door to practice critical literacy skills by asking questions like why aspects of the book were changed and to whose benefit. 

Thoughts for Teachers

​While The Crossover is one example of a multicultural YAL Disney adaptation, American Born Chinese (2023) is another recent example of a Disney+ screen adaptation of the novel by Gene Luen Yan that attempts to weave the original source material into a season (or more?) of television. Readers in classrooms around the country will also enjoy asking critical questions of the adaptation, particularly as film and TV may serve as access points to text for readers. 
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Some questions to consider when reading and making comparisons to screen adaptations might include:
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  • How is this film or television show marketed to children, teens, and adults?
  • What changes were made to the source material in the adaptation? How do these add to or take away from the original?
  • Who benefits from the adaptation? Who benefits or loses from the changes made to the original text?
 
When thinking about watching these adaptations with youth, these questions become critical to ask. While shows like The Crossover and American Born Chinese have brought more diverse actors, stories, and cultures to wider audiences, that does not mean they are fully capturing the nuance of the diverse perspectives of their source material.
 
Questions also remain as to the size and scope of audience these shows are reaching given the lack of transparency streaming services have about their viewership. For the new Disney+ adaptation of Goosebumps (2023), Disney has been vocal about the shows success, while it is difficult to find news about viewership for both The Crossover and American Born Chinese, which have been available much longer but with less marketing and merchandising. This exploration of The Crossover demonstrates the complexities of adapting multicultural YAL in increasingly thoughtful and inclusive ways in pop culture while “caught between online participatory culture and corporate fan service, fan activism and conservative backlash” (Sackl, 2022). 
Katie McGee is a doctoral student and graduate teaching assistant at Clemson University. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a school-based, district, and regional literacy coach and middle school English teacher in Oklahoma and Texas for 10 years. Katie holds a B.S. from Texas Christian University and a M.Ed. in Literacy from Clemson University and is pursuing a doctorate in Literacy, Language and Culture. Her research interests include equity-oriented preservice teacher education, young adult literature, and critical pedagogies. 

Susan Cridland-Hughes, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of English Education in the College of Education at Clemson University. Her research focuses on the intersections of social justice, critical literacy, orality in out of school educational spaces, particularly debate and debate education, and the rise in book challenges and YA censorship. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Language and Literacy Education, Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, and English Teaching: Practice and Critique.
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Banned during Banned Book Week!

11/8/2023

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Padma Venkatraman is one of the earliest friends of Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. We try to have her contribute at least once a year. This week she takes on the topic of censorship, a topic that is disrupting too the lives and livelihoods of authors. Padma shares a personal experience.  Thanks Padma.
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Padma Venkatraman is the author of Born Behind Bars (which has met with challenges in the current climate), The Bridge Home, A Time to Dance, Climbing the Stairs and Island’s End, which have secured over 20 starred reviews and sold over ¼ million copies. She is the winner of a Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children’s Literature, Golden Kite, Crystal Kite, three South Asia Book Awards, two Paterson Prizes, Julia Ward Howe and Nerdy Book Awards; recipient of Malka Penn, Sakura Medal, Prix des Libraries, Storytelling World and Litterado honors , etc. Her work has frequently appeared on numerous best book lists (ALA Notable, Kirkus, Booklist Editor’s Choice, NYPL, Chicago Public Library, Bank Street, CSMCL and many more). Dr. Venkatraman loves leading writing workshops and speaking to audiences of all ages about reading and diversity; has been featured author at international festivals; and the keynote speaker at NCTE/ALAN, SLJ Day of Dialog and other prestigious venues. Born in India, she immigrated alone at age 19, directed a school in England, served as chief scientist on a German oceanographic vessel, conducted research in environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins and the College of William and Mary, and led diversity efforts at the University of Rhode Island, before becoming an American citizen.
​October was supposed to begin with the kind of event I love most: a visit to a school. Shortly before I was scheduled to travel, I noticed there was a message from the school, and I opened it, expecting to see what I am used to seeing the evening before a visit: a friendly, welcoming, excited note.
 
Instead, I was shocked to find that questions were being raised about the information on the slides I’d sent ahead to the school to download (as I always do). This is my usual procedure, whether I’m presenting a keynote to a ballroom full of adults or a workshop to a select few students in a classroom. I like to ensure that the host has a chance to upload my presentation to a laptop on site ahead of my visit, well in time to ensure that everything looks compatible. That way, we’re ready to go, without any wasted time (but if something goes unexpectedly and inexplicably awry with technology, I can always pop in one of the billion back-ups that I bring with me on flashdrives). It was amply clear that I was sending my presentation to the school ahead of time so they could ensure the slides were in readiness for my use – I had not sent them to be reviewed. Never before, in the many schools visits I’ve done for over 15 years (since the release of my debut novel), have I experienced a similar violation and breach of honor and trust. Ironically, this occurred during banned book week.
 
Concern was expressed that the students would not be prepared to hear about some “heavy topics” addressed briefly in my presentation. One of the issues was domestic violence; although my novel, THE BRIDGE HOME, which I’d specifically been asked to speak about, opens with an off-screen incident of physical abuse. In the numerous talks I’ve given all over the world since the novel was published, I mention that I have survived a difficult childhood, and so this scene in the novel was particularly hard to write. I never get into any detail of the actual trauma I endured, not even with a group of adults, let alone a classroom full of children! But I insist on making this simple statement because speaking my truth aloud has enabled many children (and even some adults) who were experiencing terrible situations of their own, to ask for help from a professional they trust in their own communities. My book and my talks have acted as catalysts to help other human beings take potentially life-saving steps to protect themselves from further harm and move to safety. This is the most rewarding gift my work has given me – the knowledge that my words have the power to change lives for the better.
 
Another topic that worried the school was child enslavement, although this theme is also central to THE BRIDGE HOME. Forced child labor is an implicit threat that hangs over the main characters in my novel, which portrays the horrific reality that so many homeless children face in India, where the novel is set. And, whenever I speak to groups in our nation, I feel it is vital that my readers also realize that hunger, poverty and child labor exist not only half-way across the world, but also in these United States. If a discussion ensues during the question and answer session after my talk, I refer to the example in THE BRIDGE HOME, in which Muthu speaks briefly about being forced to work for the owner of a sweatshop. After reading THE BRIDGE HOME, children all over the world have helped combat hunger and poverty in their own backyards by taking the initiative to discover how best to assist those children who are their neighbors but who lack socioeconomic privilege. Other groups of young people have reached out to collect money or provide other kinds of assistance for children in remote parts of the world. Each time I hear about such an effort, it moves me, and I am humbled that I have helped inspire child-led empathetic action. 
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​Finally, the school did not want me to draw parallels and make connections between my novel BORN BEHIND BARS (which I’d also been specifically asked to speak about) and current injustices in our nation in terms of incarceration.  The protagonist of my novel, BORN BEHIND BARS, is the son of an innocent, poor, low-caste woman inmate in an Indian jail. In my author’s note, and in my presentation, I draw a parallel between the situation in India and current racist inequity in our country, where a disproportionate number of innocent people behind bars are Black. In the past, bi-partisan political efforts have tried to combat this injustice. Highlighting basic human values by speaking about this terrible injustice should never be considered out of place in any free society where individuals are respected.
 
A look at my biography should reveal that I once taught children in middle and elementary school. A quick perusal of my work should show that as an author, I prefer to center a character’s survival rather than getting into excruciating detail about any cruelty they may have suffered. My talks and my books allow my readers to see the inhumanity that exists in our world in an age-relevant manner, so that they may strive to create a better future. I am sensitive to the kind of reader I once was – a child who had nightmares for weeks if she ever came across graphic descriptions of violence. My goal is not to frighten but to inform, gently but accurately, so that readers’ hearts are touched, their minds strengthened, and their spirits ultimately uplifted.
 
In the numerous author events I have conducted with similarly aged children all over the world, I have always been humbled by the deep, lasting and meaningful connections my work has generated. My goal as an author is to increase respect, acceptance and compassion amongst us. When someone opens a book I’ve written, I hope they are opening a door, not just to a different time or place, but into the minds and hearts of my characters. I don’t write to entice readers to escape (although I respect authors whose aim is entertainment). I write to invite readers to engage by exercising their empathy – and thus empower themselves.
 
I love speaking with audiences of all ages – but there is always something extra-special about connecting with young readers. Much as I wanted to visit the children at the school that raised such unexpected concerns, I could not, in good conscience, change my program and omit discussing three vital themes in the books I was invited to speak about. The school chose to cancel my visit at the last minute, adding yet another incident that needs to be counted and added to the files documenting censorship. And I chose to write about it because recording these hateful acts is vital in our fight to preserve every child's democratic right to access to books that I consider to be packages of compassion.
 
In BORN BEHIND BARS, one of the characters says “Fear is a Lock. Courage is a key.” The desire to censor my carefully and caringly prepared presentations was, I believe, born of fear, as is every challenge my books have met. The recent spate of book banning has resulted in my receiving fewer invitations to speak than when I was a debut author. Inordinate numbers of  the books being banned in our nation today have been written by authors of color or authors who are part of the LGBTQ2+ community. Banning our voices is an attempt to erase our existence; a hateful exclusionary act rooted in fear. But my colleagues and I hold the keys of courage, and we will continue to create books that unlock mutual understanding in our society and our world. 
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Until next time.
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The Wonderful World of Manga

10/25/2023

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Our post this week is produced by Wendy R. Williams and Fio Moulton. 
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​Wendy R. Williams is an Associate Professor of English at Arizona State University, where she teaches courses on YA and children’s literature, visual storytelling, Studio Ghibli, food writing, and narrative research. She is the author of Listen to the Poet: Writing, Performance, and Community in Youth Spoken Word Poetry and is currently at work on a book for NCTE on writing instruction. 
​Fio Moulton is a junior at Arizona School for the Arts. In addition to reading manga and watching anime, he enjoys drawing, playing flute, and writing. This year, he is enrolled in AP Language and Composition and is serving as a band teaching assistant, which involves learning how to conduct the school’s Concert Band. He is looking forward to taking literature courses in college.

What is Manga?

​Manga are Japanese comics. These works are similar to graphic novels and are often printed in black and white. They are read from right to left, starting at the top right section of the page. Manga tends to be published as volumes in a series, and many serve as the source material for anime (animated TV shows and movies). Part of what makes manga so appealing is there are many different kinds to choose from. There really is something for everyone! 

Three traditional manga categories include the following:
  • Shojo: These stories are geared toward a young female audience. They usually focus on romance and friendship. Some examples are Sailor Moon, Nana, and Cardcaptor Sakura.
  • Shonen: These stories are geared toward a young male audience. They tend to include action, fighting, and friendship. One Piece, Naruto, and Dragon Ball Z are some examples.
  • Seinen: This category of manga is aimed at adult readers. These stories may contain violence, psychological elements, and more mature themes. Sample titles include Attack on Titan, Death Note, and Berserk.
 However, manga has evolved over the years, and these labels don’t necessarily reflect the current state of manga today. Often category clichés have been used to subvert audience expectations and play with the reader. For example, a series might begin in a typical shojo style and suddenly switch to a much more serious and violent one (e.g., Puella Magi Madoka Magica). Some series don’t even fit neatly into any of these categories at all.
 
We are a mom and son team who both really enjoy reading manga, but our tastes are very different. Below, we each provide our perspective on this form of visual storytelling.

Escaping into Manga: Wendy’s Perspective

​Reading manga is a wonderful break from the other reading I do for my job as an Associate Professor. These books transport me to other worlds, expose me to new perspectives, and sometimes make me laugh out loud. I am intrigued by the characters, themes, settings, and art.
 
My favorite manga series is The Way of the Househusband, which is about a former yakuza gangster who is now a stay-at-home husband. He approaches domestic activities with great zeal and intensity, whether it is preparing a meal, cleaning, or shopping for groceries. The over-the-top exaggeration of the importance of simple everyday tasks is hilarious. Another series that drew me in right away is Parasyte. In this eight-book science-fiction series, the protagonist is infected with an alien parasite, who gives him superpowers. Ultimately, he and the parasite have to work together to overcome evil forces. These books are unlike anything I have read before. The art style is beautiful, the story is packed full of action, and even the parasite becomes an endearing character as the series unfolds.
 
I have also enjoyed reading Baron: The Cat Returns, which is about a young girl who is carried off to a cat kingdom, where she is to be married to a cat prince. This book is fast-paced and full of action and humor. Not all manga is a good fit for the secondary classroom, but Baron: The Cat Returns is a book that would work. It could also be paired with the Studio Ghibli film, The Cat Returns (Morita, 2005), which follows the manga closely. 
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My History with Manga: Fio’s Perspective

I began reading manga around age eight. The art styles appealed to me due to the unique character designs and attention paid to the eyes and hair. Some of my first series were Sailor Moon, Fairytale, and My Hero Academia. I enjoyed both typical shonen and shojo works. Shonen, I could appreciate for its intense fight scenes, and shojo, for its drama and emotional impact.
 
As I got older, I noticed manga as a medium began to change as well. Stories were beginning to break the mold and challenge readers’ expectations. It didn’t matter whether a series was aimed at female or male readers, and people of all audiences enjoyed all kinds of stories. As I’ve matured, my taste in manga has as well, and I’ve expanded my library. Junji Ito, especially, has been one of my favorite authors and artists because of his detailed style and effective use of horror. He uses Lovecraftian Horror and the idea of a mysterious entity taking over the world (or a city). One of his most famous works, Uzumaki, depicts a town becoming overrun with spirals until the pattern becomes all-consuming.
 
One of my favorite series is Bungo Stray Dogs. The story features characters based on canonical authors as they commit crimes and/or solve them. Something I love about this series is its unpredictable and chaotic nature. Each character is captivating in some way, and even some of the most evil villains end up being likable. Almost no one is “good” or “bad”; rather, they sometimes end up doing “good” or “bad” things, depending on the circumstance. Some authors featured are Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bram Stoker. 
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Manga: A Unique Form of Visual Storytelling

Whether you are new to manga or an experienced reader of this form, we believe there is much to enjoy in the artwork and narrative features of these texts. In his book, Making Comics, Scott McCloud (2006) lists eight storytelling techniques commonly used in manga:
  1. “Iconic characters”
  2. “Genre maturity”
  3. “A strong sense of place”
  4. “A broad variety of character designs”
  5. “Frequent uses of wordless panels, combined with aspect to aspect transitions between panels”
  6. “Small real world details”
  7. “Subjective motion using streaked backgrounds”
  8. “Various emotionally expressive effects such as expressionistic backgrounds, montages, and subjective caricatures” (p. 216).
McCloud’s list helps to explain what makes this Japanese form of storytelling so unique.
Regardless of your age or interests, there is probably a manga series out there that you would enjoy reading. We hope you enjoy exploring the world of manga! 

References

​McCloud, S. (2006). Making comics: Storytelling secrets of comics, manga and graphic novels.
William Morrow.
Morita, H., dir. (2005). The cat returns. Studio Ghibli.
Until next time.
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Roots and Leaves by Dr. Chris Crowe

10/18/2023

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​Chris is a professor of English and English education at Brigham Young University (BYU) specializing in young adult literature. In addition to his academic work, Crowe is also a young adult literature author. Crowe taught English and coached football and track at McClintock High School in Tempe, Arizona, for ten years. He attended Brigham Young University on a football scholarship from 1972 to 1976 and graduated with a B.A. in English. He earned an M.Ed. and an Ed.D. in English education from Arizona State University in 1986.
Roots and Leaves by Dr. Chris Crowe
I’m old (next month I’ll begin my 48th year of teaching), and I like YA books, and I like history, and I like finding ways to bring all that stuff together. 

Don’t worry, I’m not going to wax nostalgic about the good old days of YA literature, but because I’ve been teaching—and reading and writing–for so very long, I’m going to share some important stuff about the past, stuff that I believe every scholar or teacher of YA literature should know. In the 4th edition of their YA literature textbook, my old friends Ken Donelson and Alleen Nilsen wrote, “professionals ought to know the history of their own fields” (545), and maybe because I am a Boomer with one foot planted smack in the middle of the 20th Century, I agree. In a field that tends to focus much, if not all, of its attention on what’s new and current, we shouldn’t forget the roots of all these new and current books.

About 23 years ago, I wrote an article for English Journal that traced the family tree of the people who had shaped the teaching of YA literature. In a chapter I have in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook to Young Adult Literature, I took a different angle and wrote about the origin and evolution of our field. In this blog post, I’m going to discuss significant books in YA history that are, whether we recognize it or not (and, of course, I think it’s essential that we recognize it) are foundational precursors to some of the best of today’s YA books.

My YA literature course this fall is entirely based on this premise because I don’t want my students to be like the urban children we sometimes hear about, and laugh at, who don’t know that eggs come from chickens or that milk comes from cows. The first item on my course syllabus is a quotation from Michael Crichton’s novel Timeline (1999): “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” I won’t have time in a single semester with a bunch of undergraduate English majors to cover all of the history of YA literature, but I can make sure that my students know where this semester’s books come from (and, no, it’s not Amazon). By the end of this course, I hope my students know that the contemporary books they read in my class are leaves from a robust noble, old tree.
The tree of literature has very long and deep roots, and it would be impossible and foolhardy to start a YA literature course with Beowulf or Pamela or even Oliver Twist, Little Women, or Seventeenth Summer. My not-so arbitrary starting point for my YA literature course is The Outsiders, a novel I consider to be the main branch of contemporary YA literature. I’ll have my students read that novel as a genre-defining text whose influences can still be found in nearly all YA novels published today. With each book we read after that, students will look for The Outsiders’ fingerprints in the book they’re currently reading.
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I started thinking about using this approach in my YA literature class some years ago when dystopian YA stories dominated bookstores and movie theatres. It seemed that many people believed that the dystopian trend started out of nowhere or out of the creative genius of its authors, and I was surprised that anyone rarely suggested that The Giver (1993) might be a precursor to that current YA dystopian literature trend. ​
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My approach this semester is kind of an adaptation of a traditional assignment called the classic bridge where students had to match a YA novel with a canonical one and then explain the connections (plot, setting, theme, whatever). Rather than matching a single YA novel with a classical work, my students will read pairs of YA: the antecedent matched with one of its prominent descendants. Nearly the entirety of our semester’s required reading will be paired books that I selected. 
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So after setting the stage with The Outsiders and a lecture on the history of YAL, students will read A Wizard of Earthsea as the precursor to YA fantasy, and they’ll watch a brief PBS interview with Neil Gaiman where he claims, “I don’t think Harry Potter could have existed without Earthsea having existed. That was the original, the finest, and the best.”
This proclamation will surely rile my students, most of whom are ardent fantasy readers, and I hope that will set them thinking about elements from Earthsea that appear in their favorite fantasy novels. They’ll then get to choose their own YA fantasy novel that is a leaf from the Earthsea tree.
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After this opening pairing, we’ll continue our reading with Lisa, Bright and Dark (1969), one of the first YA novels to directly address mental illness/neurodivergence, with Francisco Stork’s Marcelo in the Real World (2009), a novel that broadens the issue of neurodivergence while at the same time addressing other contemporary issues.
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The next pair matches A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich (1973) with Jason Reynold’s Long Way Down (2017). Both novels examine the plight young Black men face in the inner city and the importance of loyalty and family. Reynold’s novel’s ambiguous, provocative conclusion mirrors the conclusion of Hero in remarkable ways.
Long a mainstay of my YA literature course, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1977), is the first book in the next pairing, and it sets the stage for The Hate You Give (2017). Both books feature strong families with fathers and uncles who complement each other with plots thickened by the unrighteous challenges fomented by racism and racists.
We then take a break from reading pairs to read a handful of Robert Cormier novels in literature circles. Cormier’s unforgiving, unflinching realism pushed back boundaries that made space for scores of realistic, even bleak, YA novels that would appear in later decades.
Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (1983) and The Serpent King (2016) are the next pair, both books benefiting from the space created by Cormier’s bleak books. Central to these two novels are close friends relying on their friendship and their own courage to face the conflicts imposed upon them, with Crutcher’s creating a model that’s magnified by Zentner’s book.
YA books in verse have a fairly long history, with Mel Glenn’s books setting the stage for full, unified narratives in free verse, and my students will read Make Lemonade (1993), a novel that raised the stakes and the complexity of verse novels; alongside it they’ll read what may be the pinnacle of YA verse novels, The Poet X (2018) to see how wonderfully the field has evolved in 25 years.

English majors tend to be ignorant of narrative nonfiction, so our next reading combo will be Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World (1998) with Steve Sheinkin’s Bomb (2012). Nearly any one of Sheinkin’s books would serve well in this pairing, but the current blockbuster movie Oppenheimer makes Bomb especially relevant this semester. Both books rely on narrative technique to tell amazing stories, but Sheinkin’s book shows how the expectations for research and the inclusion of extra-textual features have changed.
Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak (1999), is such an important, foundational work that students won’t have to read a matched novel. Instead, we’ll discuss all of our reading to date with an eye for Speak’s influence throughout the field.
Graphic novels are another genre that’s unfamiliar to most English majors, and while it might make sense to point to Maus as the root of all YA graphic novels, I choose to have my students read American Born Chinese (2006), a book that’s more explicitly YA, as their intro to the genre, and then students are allowed to select a more contemporary YA graphic novel to pair with American Born.
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The final required reading is what might be the pinnacle of recent YA fiction, All My Rage (2022). Students will consider that novel with the perspective of all the YA books sthat have come before it—at least all the YA books we’ve read in the semester.  After discussing the merits of Tahir’s award-winning novel, we’ll look for traces from the past, for evidence that shows how this fine novel is a leaf from the grand old YAL tree. 

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Of course, students will read more than just these pairings. Next semester they’ll end up reading at least 32 YA books, but the takeaway, I hope, will be an awareness of the long and excellent history of YA books that have been published since 1967. With each YA book they read after my class is done, I want them to remember that new books have antecedents, books that opened doors, paved paths, and made possible the new, exciting books we’re reading and celebrating today.
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Interviews with Dr. Bickmore have started again! Welcome Gia Gordon

10/13/2023

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After nearly a two year hiatus, I am beginning to interview authors again. 

I am starting with Gia Gordan and the title and cover reveal for her book that will arrive in May. Check out our brief interview. Find out a bit about the new book.

​We have a title and cover. Gia discuss a bit about the book and the new characters.
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Check it out! You won't be disappointed.  Gia and I had a great time, we hope you do as well.
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The 2023 Whippoorwill Book Award: Representation of Multiply Marginalized Identities by Chea Parton and Erika Bass

9/8/2023

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Erika L. Bass is an Assistant Professor of English Education at the University of Northern Iowa. Her research focuses on writing instruction, rural education, and teacher preparation; often those areas converge. She is currently working on a book manuscript on critically placed writing with rural high school students, conducting rural-focused book studies with secondary English teachers in her state, and writing feedback partnership to help preservice teachers engage in providing writing feedback to high school students. She is also a member of the Whippoorwill Award Committee for rural Young Adult novels and serves as the academic advisor for the English Teaching program at UNI. In her free time, she enjoys taking her dogs for walks and playing slow-pitch softball. 



​Chea Parton grew up on a farm and still considers herself a farm girl. She has been a rural student, a rural English teacher, and is currently a visiting assistant professor at Purdue University where she works with future teachers through the Transition to Teaching Program. She is passionate about rural education. Her research focuses on the personal and professional identity of rural and rural out-migrant teachers as well as rural representation in YA literature. She currently runs 
Literacy In Place where she seeks to catalogue rural YA books and provides teaching resources, hosts the Reading Rural YAL podcast where she gives book talks and interviews rural YA authors, and serves on the Whippoorwill Book Award for Rural YA Literature selection committee. You can reach her at readingrural@gmail.com. ​​

The 2023 Whippoorwill Book Award: Representation of Multiply Marginalized Identities by Chea Parton and Erika Bass
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Now finishing its fourth award cycle, the Whippoorwill Award continues to recognize quality rural literature for young people. Every year, the award committee selects up to ten books that portray and honor the complex experiences of rural cultures and communities. The award was created with a desire to help young rural readers, teachers, librarians, and other community members locate books that position rural people as more than just the butt of a redneck joke. This fourth cycle celebrates books published in 2022, and the winners include ten books diverse in genre and representation that depict rural people and experiences in nuanced ways and celebrate rurality, even as they tackle important social issues and challenges in rural places.
Several of the criteria the Whippoorwill Committee uses to evaluate submissions revolve around the representation of rural identities (The Whippoorwill Committee, 2020) including these:
  • The literature portrays characters and settings accurately and authentically in terms of physical characteristics, social and economic statuses, intellectual abilities, and other human attributes.
  • The literature avoids stereotypes of rural people and places by representing the complexities of the situation, problem, and/or people. 
  • The literature contributes to the body of diverse YA literature by providing representations of diverse people and places. 
In our deliberations, members of the committee find ourselves frequently returning to how and whether submitted and winning books continue to complexify, deepen, and add nuance to our understanding of what rural identity is and what qualifies as a “rural book.” Anecdotally, over these past four cycles, the selection committee has noticed an increase in the number of submissions featuring multiply marginalized rural representations and identities. Rural identities are already at the margins or marginalized, in that they are often portrayed in stereotypical ways or as foolish, backward, and less deserving of success or excluded from mainstream or valued pursuits and accomplishments. Many characters in this year’s Whippoorwill winners are multiply marginalized because they are rural and have identities that intersect with other marginalized identities including LGBTQIA+ identities; feature characters who are Black, Latinx, Indigenous and bi-racial; or have a disability. Even this year’s genres invite readers to consider multiple marginalization. Several titles are from the horror genre and/or feature the supernatural which tend to be considered pedestrian and less than realistic fiction. We have also begun to notice how in- and out-migration tend to play a frequent role in helping us analyze and think about rural culture and identity-building. 

Horror and Rural Identity

The identities of both places and people play a huge role in the construction of horror stories. In 2022, author Liz Carey compiled a collection of Rural Monsters, Myths, and Legends, stories originally published in the rural online news source and then compiled into a book published for adults. In the teaser summary, Carey noted that rural places have “forested woods…remote lakes…and sprawling fields…[creating] plenty of room for the wild and weird to take root” (Carey, 2022, unpaged). However, rural horror stories are not always as simple as being far fetched or scary; in fact, “they offer a valuable window into the unique culture and community of places often unseen and underappreciated” (Carey, 2022). Examining the impact of monsters, myths, and legends can highlight important nuances of the rural communities in which those events happen. 
Likewise, horror is rooted in primal empathy because mortal humans all share the same weaknesses and are connected to one another by our fears of death, disease, and loss (as well as our search for joy, love, and community). So, “to learn what we fear is to learn who we are. Horror defines our boundaries and illuminates our souls” (del Toro, 2013, p. xi). Further, horror provides opportunities for readers to acknowledge, name, and critique the worst aspects of our world—to critically read what is “wrong with the world” (Link & Grant, 2014, p. vii)—and who they are in it. Horror doesn’t shy away from the negative aspects, from the monsters, of the world so that we might call them by their names and vanquish them. 
This year’s winners include several texts that use horror conventions to invite critical thinking and discussions about rural people and places. Angel Falls by Julia Rust and David Surface explores generational trauma and healing through the use of the preternatural and the geographical features Carey (2022) describes. The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson invites readers to face rural sundown towns and their role in the systemic oppression of Black folks. Man Made Monsters by Andrea L. Rogers traces how systems of White supremacy and Indigenous oppression have impacted past, present, and future generations of rural Native people. The Gathering Dark, a collection of short stories from contributing editor Tori Bovalino, explores a number of issues salient to rural places such as the conflict to leave or stay, feelings of isolation and connection, and what it means to be an insider/outsider of the community. All these stories face and critique social issues that exist in rural places; however, none of them paints rural people and places as all bad—or all scary. The treatment of rural communities and the issues that exist in them invite nuanced and critical readings of the identities of rural people and places, asking us to think about how we can make the world better. 

Queer Identities in Rural Places

Just as horror gives us a specific look into the darkness that exists in the world, the number of submissions of books containing queer rural identities provide evidence of folks who are striving to bring light into darkness. In our current cultural moment multiple legislative decisions, all-to-frequent book bans, and near constant political rhetoric have made life more difficult for folks with queer identities, including those in rural spaces. Rural identity is complex; it includes both objective and subjective components. This means that rural identity is tied to places of residence and work, but also social and cultural meanings (Cain, 2021). Growing up rural means taking on many societal and cultural perceptions and reconciling those with individual perceptions of identity. Rural students develop an understanding of themselves as individuals and how they identify by reconciling their self-perceptions and how they are perceived by others (Ketter & Buter, 2004). Because of this, rural students who are navigating identity exploration are often marginalized and are underrepresented. The increase of submissions featuring rural LGBTQIA+ identities helps to “negate the assumption that rural students are monolithic and that rural areas lack diversity” (Cain & Willis, 2022, p. 75).
Award winners telling queer rural stories this year included stories with characters that both accepted and struggled to accept their LGBTQIA+ identities, and stories where their LGBTQIA+ identities were both challenged and heart-warmingly accepted by families and community members. For example, The Complicated Calculus (and Cows) of Carl Paulsen by Gary Eldon Peter features a gay main character who knows and accepts his queerness as he works to navigate how that identity fits into the greater identity landscape of the people around him. In A Little Bit Country, readers see both—a character who tries to hide and deny his queerness and another who accepts it openly—while occupying a rural town. Among other salient themes, many of this year’s winners highlight the complexities of navigating rural places as queer youth. They don’t shy away from the challenges that queer rural young folks can face, but they also don’t depict rural places as wholly homophobic, offering readers an opportunity to engage with a more complex understanding of rural places. 

In-/Out-Migration

Rural places and people are not  static. Rural people frequently out-migrate and leave their rural towns when their line of work or goals or interests lie outside of  their rural hometown (Parton, 2023). Despite the dominant narrative that in order to be somebody, rural young folks must leave their hometowns, sometimes they leave and stay gone for good and sometimes they return (Carr & Kefalas, 2009; Parton & Kuehl, in press; Sherman & Sage, 2011). Whenever geospatial borders are crossed, cultural exchange happens and the people and places are changed in the process, revealing aspects of the cultural practices and knowledges associated with those places (Parton, 2023). 
Three of this year’s winners featured in-/out-migration in ways that invite readers to think about how we define rural identity and what qualifies as a rural book. In Rachel Bird by Becky Citra and Vicious Is My Middle Name by Kevin Dunn, the main characters move to live in rural places that belong to their mothers but not to them. Rachel, in Rachel Bird, moves with her sister to live with grandparents she’s never met on a remote Canadian ranch. Though she is from people who have generational ties to the land, Rachel does not (initially) identify as rural and it takes time before she chooses to learn the place of her people. Syd, in Vicious Is My Middle Name, moves to live with her grandparents in rural Appalachia. She too is from the people but not the place. Like Rachel, she learns and cares deeply for that place throughout the book, eventually fighting for its survival. 
An out-migrant story, Phil Stamper’s Golden Boys tells the story of four friends from rural Ohio who end up in nonrural places during the same summer. One travels to France to study abroad, one travels to Boston to save the trees in Boston’s park system, one stays with family in Florida to work at their arcade, and one takes an internship with a senator in Washington, D.C. Although the majority of the action does not take place in a rural setting, Golden Boys is a Whippoorwill Book book because it tells the story of four rural people. Despite leaving their rural town, all the boys grapple with and maintain their rural identities. As rural people in nonrural places, their interactions with nonrural people reveal and highlight rural culture and knowledge. 
One final identity that we saw this round (and  that we’d like to see more of) is the representation of rural people with disabilities. There are characters with disabilities in both Golden Boys and Air by Monica Roe. Air, in particular, addresses the challenges of having a physical disability in a small rural place, particularly in terms of infrastructure. Emmie’s school's lack of accessibility for folks who use wheels for mobility drives the action of the plot. Her story gives readers the opportunity to think about rural infrastructure and support as well as what it really looks like and means to help someone. 

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Gothic Humanization: A Useful Principle from Gothic YA by Jesse Bair

8/30/2023

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​A former English Teacher, Jesse is the LGBTQ Coordinator at Utah Tech University pursuing both his passion for social justice work and independent scholarship. When he is away from his institutional duties and community outreach, they engage in research topics anchored around the EcoGothic, MidWestern, Rural, and Film Studies.
Gothic Humanization: A Useful Principle from Gothic YA by Jesse Bair
Whereas ghosts and monsters are staples of the Gothic genre, what I hope to share with readers is that such entities are the product rather than the cause of conflict in horror stories. Jeffrey Weinstock notes, in his introduction to an anthology discussing the American Gothic, that “the central topic thematized by the Gothic is inevitably power​: who is allowed to do what based upon their subject position within a particular society at a specific moment in time” (2). In other words, what is meant to scare us is in itself a reflection of a power struggle. 
Labeling one a monster is itself the act of dehumanizing a population or force wherein the labelers gain power over whomever/whatever they aim to vilify. For example, think of Dr. Frankenstein renouncing his responsibilities as a father by declaring his creation as a monster instead of his son. Ghosts are also not spectral forces of nature that come from nowhere, but are instead supernatural representatives of disenfranchised folks striving to be heard in death since they were muted in life.
Much remains to discuss, but for the purpose of this publication, the Gothic is not so much about scary elements but rather how disempowering one group leads to said group becoming a monster to either assert its existence or by those aiming to assert control over them.

Gothic Humanization, a term I created, is then the act of readers seeing past the imagery we’ve been conditioned to fear and instead empathizing with the disenfranchised labeled as scary. Gothic Humanization is then a principle, a gift from what scares us to help ease tensions birthed from an “us versus them” mentality that spans across genres and fields of work: heroes and villains, soldiers and enemies, as well as the marginalized and the police. The United States is perhaps more divided than ever as it and nations across the globe wrestle with resolving generational crimes in lieu of the comforts bred by such inequality, yet my hope is that the book recommendations below serve as practice grounds for us to help students learn the empathy necessary to ease instead of exacerbate the tensions that vilify all of us.
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Ghost Boys by Jewel Parker Rhodes, and I am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina are two of my favorite pieces of Gothic YA because they are a textbook case of ghosts representing the muted voices of the departed. Both follow the deaths and spirits of two adolescent black men who lost their lives at the hands of a police officers. Guided by the ghosts of those who died before them, both narratives echo the injustices committed against African American and Black people in this country, thereby humanizing their struggles, while also humanizing the lives of the cops who shot them. As Rhodes’ piece is a novel and Medina’s is a graphic novel, both provide a bountiful opportunity as a pair or as elements in a text set discussing how all involved in systemic racism — black and white — are affected by a centuries old claim for power that asserts itself even today.
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For students yearning to explore the worlds of Japanese manga, there are numerous storylines rife with examples of humanizing opposing sides but perhaps none does as good of a job than Demon Slayer by Ryoji Hirano and Koyoharu Gotouge. The story follows a classic fantasy tale of a gifted young man joining comrades in progressively defeating a supernatural villain. In this case, the young Tanjiro joins a secret organized collective of demon slayers set out to vanquish the minions of the conniving demon lord Muzan. 

Where the overall plot mirrors much of action manga, the story separates itself by humanizing its monstrous antagonists. Without giving spoilers, never have I felt more empathy nor more compassion for monsters passing on to hell for their murderous crimes. As the departed take their final steps, I dare say that the demon is left behind and the human is laid bare onto Hell’s flames, and that is why I set aside space for a potentially eye-opening read for both teachers and students looking for an independent read. 
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Freaks of the Heartland by Steve Niles and Greg Ruth is an excellent graphic novel for educators looking for a Midwestern and or rural piece that tackles the negative impact that maintaining homogeny in a community can have on parents and children. The story follows a young boy as he frees his brother from the barn that his family has locked him up in for years because of his physical deformities. As they escape, the siblings come across other children with similar monster-like figures, another human-like sibling, and witness the pain of the parents who hid and, in some cases, killed their deformed offspring. A heartbreaking story at points, yet a hopeful one that encourages hope for a better tomorrow the closer the children get to leaving their hometown.
While a movie, Rob Letterman’s cinematic adaptation of Goosebumps is what led me to the idea of Gothic Humanization in the first place. Specifically, Jack Black’s characterization of R. L. Stein has a relationship with his infamous puppet Slappy is an overt allusion to Dr. Frankenstein and his unnamed monster. The humanization in this case, and what I argue the film does masterfully, is detail how both Stein and Slappy are both human and monster — worthy of empathy and worthy of scorn. If with 8th graders like I tried, or even in a unit with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for older audiences, possibilities for classroom discussion abound.

References
Weinstock, J. A. (2017). Introduction: The awareness gothic. In J. A. Weinstock (Ed), The Cambridge companion to American Gothic (pp. 1-12). Cambridge University Press.

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Facing Difficult Family Situations in YA Literature by Dr. Katherine Higgs-Coulthard

8/23/2023

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Katherine Higgs-Coulthard is an Assistant Professor in the Education Department at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Past-president of ICTE, and a teacher consultant for the Hoosier Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project. Dr. Higgs-Coulthard’s passion for story informs her research on the teaching of writing, her work as a teacher educator and YA author, and her advocacy for teen writers. In 2013, she founded the Get Inked Teen Writing Conference, which offers opportunities for teens to write alongside published YA authors. Her YA novel, Junkyard Dogs (Peachtree Teen, 2023), highlights issues of teen poverty and homelessness.
Facing Difficult Family Situations in YA Literature by Dr. Katherine Higgs-Coulthard
One of the things I love the most about working with teens, both as readers and as writers, is the way they take books so incredibly personally. They get emotionally entangled in stories that let them see beyond the superficial trappings of a life into the characters’ hearts. When characters they know and love face adversity, teens root for them like they would a close friend. This is especially true with characters facing difficult family situations. 
Even though I knew this already as a teacher and mentor of teen writers, I was still surprised during my first school visit for my debut YA book, Junkyard Dogs when the students were more interested in discussing protagonist Josh Robert’s family dynamics than the mystery around his missing father. While their questions seemed very specific to Josh’s situation (“How could Gran treat Josh like that? Doesn’t she love him?” “Why doesn’t Dad take Josh and Twig with him?”), what students actually wanted to know was what causes families to fail one another and can anyone survive despite their family’s dysfunction.
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And that is the amazing thing about stories. Readers can lean against the guardrail and peer into a canyon of chaos, not as voyeurs, but as apprentices. Characters in tough situations lay down breadcrumbs for potential paths through the thorns readers will face in their own lives. Pairing this examination with writing fiction provides an opportunity for teens to respond to the complications in their own lives through the veil of invented characters.
The following books are about different topics, from winning the lottery to encountering an ancestral spirit, but each has resonated with the teens I work with and led to deep conversations and complex student writing about what it means to be a family.
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American Road Trip by Patrick Flores-Scott looks deeply at the impact of economic recession and military service on families. Told from the perspective of high school senior, Teodoro Avila, the story follows T as he sets out on a road trip with his sister, Xochitl, and their brother, Manny. As the siblings travel along the West Coast to New Mexico, T learns that the war has impacted Manny to the point where he considers suicide. While the impromptu drive cannot heal Manny’s PTSD and depression, it can provide time for the process to begin. Although suicide is an incredibly difficult topic to discuss, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reports that nearly 20% of high school students state that they have had serious thoughts of suicide and 9% have made an attempt. The Avila Family’s experiences can provide a supportive frame for sharing mental health resources and creating opportunities for teens to get help. 

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Losers Bracket is informed by author Chris Crutcher’s work as a mental health counselor and follows fictional character Annie Boots as she straddles the social and economic divide between her biological and adoptive families. Although Annie’s birth mother struggles with addiction and her older sister is raising a young child by herself, Annie still cares about them both and creates opportunities to see them against her adoptive father’s wishes by playing multiple sports. When her nephew goes missing, Annie learns that people can come together to help in difficult times and that all families have complex dynamics. A major theme of the book is nature versus nurture, which opens up opportunities for teens to consider the influences in their own lives.

Everything You Want by Barbara Shoup explores what happens when Emma Hammond’s dad wins $50,000,000 in the state lottery and her family goes from being weird to dysfunctional trying to figure out what to do with it. Emma’s a freshman in college, still in love with her former best friend Josh who dumped her. Unfortunately, he’s at the same university and behaves horribly to her whenever she sees him. Her perky roommate Tiffany is even worse—commandeering their room all weekend so she can spend time with her boyfriend, forcing Emma to take shelter in the psych lab with Freud, the goose that’s the subject of a class experiment. Money is freedom, she thinks—and everything that’s good in her life. This story raises great questions for teen readers about the relationship between wealth and happiness as Emma and her family spin off in different directions, threatening all they hold dear.
She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran also considers the impact of money on family dynamics. Jade Nguyen’s estranged father is willing to help pay for her college tuition, but only if she comes to visit him in Vietnam over the summer. The French Colonial house that her father is restoring is beautiful, but it hides a terrible secret that threatens to devour Jade and her family. While this story is rooted in a horror, the heart of Jade’s story is the secret she carries about the last conversation she had with her father before he abandoned his wife and children in America. Jade’s experience lends itself to deep conversations about blame and forgiveness in families.
Family is the first thing we know, but it takes our whole lives to understand what it means to be part of a family. The stories listed here provide opportunities for teens to root for characters who are navigating difficult terrain and may even help them find their own path.
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References:
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2021). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the United States: Results from the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS Publication No. PEP21-07-01-003, NSDUH Series H-56). Rockville, MD: Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Retrieved from https://www.samhsa.gov/data/

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Coming of Age Stories for Adolescents by Dr. Margaret A. Robbins

8/2/2023

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​Margaret A. Robbins has a PhD in Language and Literacy Education from The University of Georgia. She is a Teacher-Scholar at The Mount Vernon School in Atlanta, Georgia. She has peer-reviewed journal articles published in The ALAN Review, SIGNAL Journal, Gifted Child Today, Social Studies Research and Practice, and The Qualitative Report. She recently co-edited a special issue of English Journal. Her research interests include comics, Young Adult literature, fandom, critical pedagogy, and writing instruction.  She can be reached on Twitter at @writermar and on  Instagram, too: @dr.margaretrobbins



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Coming of Age Stories for Adolescents by Dr. Margaret A. Robbins
The popularity of the recent Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret film, based on Judy Blume’s beloved novel, reminds us of how much we all love coming of age stories, regardless of our numeric age. As a Humanities educator and scholar, I’ve always had a fondness for coming of age stories because they can help us connect. This past year, some of our high school freshmen student leaders decided to create a book club to help them get to know middle school student leaders better. The long term goal of the book club, if we’re able to keep it going this coming school year, is to foster more connection between middle and high school students, particularly younger high school students, and make the transition to high school easier. In this blog, I’ll discuss the two books we read and discussed this year. I’ll also discuss other coming of age novels I’ve read recently as well as age and/or classroom recommendations for younger and/or older adolescent students. I teach students who are at the younger side of their adolescent years, but my reading interests focus on both middle grade and YA books. 
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​A Mango Shaped Space
by Wendy Mass
: Mia Winchell is a bright, creative middle school student who has a rare processing difference known as synesthesia, where she sees the world in different colors. She’s hesitant to tell her friends, even her close friends, and this causes her to feel disconnected. However, upon learning more about her condition, Mia finds a whole community of friends with similar experiences and learns to better articulate her story to others. In the meantime, she’s able to process her grief of her grandfather’s recent death through her relationship with her cat Mango and her artistic talents. Middle and high school students alike in the book club enjoyed the novel. I believe it would be a good book for students aged 10 and up to read.
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Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: This book club session with the middle and high school students had all female students, which made for an interesting dynamic. The novel tells of the March girls (Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth) and the challenges they face during and after the Civil War, as their father has to be away for a long time. A lot of our book club conversation was around how the novel would be different in the modern day. In particular, would Jo have gotten married and/or had children, or focused more on her career if she’d had more options? Students had mixed feelings about Amy, as I always have, but appreciated her growth during the novel. Overall, the students thought this novel “held up” even though it was written a long time ago, which encouraged a discussion about what makes a book a “classic.” While I think this book might be better suited for high school and more mature middle school students, I think it’s perfectly appropriate for students ages 10 and up, as I read it in late elementary school.   ​

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The Surface Breaks by Louise O’Neill: This is a book I chose to read on my own time this summer, after reading and writing about Asking for It by the same author for the SSAWW conference in Ireland in 2018 and also for another YA Wednesday blog. I’d recommend it more for older high school and college aged students, as it has some sensitive content in it (attempted sexual assault, body image issues, fatphobia, excessive drinking). I thought the pacing of the book was a little bit off at times, and the end in particular seemed rushed, especially considering some of the sensitive content of the book. Some of the characters would have benefitted from more development. I did enjoy the book, though, and I appreciated the feminist perspective. In particular, I was interested to see how the Sea Witch was portrayed in a different, more positive light, what options the little mermaid had for her future, and how her father the Sea King was portrayed differently. For older students in particular, it would be interesting to compare and contrast this novel to the new The Little Mermaid movie and consider how and why we need to rethink and re-imagine our fairy tales as our understandings of the world emerge and evolve. The book is dark at times, but it’s also beautiful with some riveting descriptions of the ocean world.    

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The Magician’s Daughter by H.G. Parry: I learned about this book when reading The New York Times and thought it sounded interesting. There’s some discussion as to whether or not it’s a YA novel, but the narrator and the main protagonist is a sixteen-year-old girl who has grown up with a wizard and his familiar, a rabbit, in a magic castle. Due to circumstances beyond her control, Biddy (Bridget) has to leave the castle and familiarize herself with the real world, which she has wanted to do for a while, yet proves more challenging than she anticipated. This story has a lot of classic hero’s journey elements, and I believe it would be a good book club choice and potentially a good classroom read appropriate for students 12 and up. The book takes place in 1912 in England, and I love the historical fantasy elements and what a reader can learn about how the Industrial Revolution affected England. Like both Little Women and The Little Mermaid, this novel can be a good springboard for discussion of how women’s roles in stories are continuing to change. The writer drafted the novel during the 2020 lockdown period and writes about how it was “a light” during that time, and Goodreads reviews have hailed it as “a warm hug.” I think the theme of magic and light during dark times is one that will resonate with many people right now. 

As the summer season continues, I’ll keep reading more coming of age middle grade, YA, and new adult novels, both for myself and for my students. What are some of your favorites? Email me and let me know. I’d love to keep this middle and high school cross grade level book club going, so I’m open to books within those age ranges. Coming of age can happen during any phase of life, and in particular, it’s a theme that resonates with my younger adolescent students. Happy summer reading season to all! 

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Celebrating Positive and Nuanced YA Disability Representation for Disability Pride Month by Dr. Caitlin Metheny

7/26/2023

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Caitlin Metheny
is an assistant professor of English Language Arts education at University of South Carolina Upstate; she has taught courses in secondary ELA methods, K-16 writing methods, children’s literature, and young adult literature. As a disabled teacher educator, she is passionate about children’s and YA literature with nuanced disability representation. Her research primarily focuses on critical engagement with these texts for readers and educators. She is also currently serving a 5-year term as co-editor of The ALAN Review (TAR).
Celebrating Positive and Nuanced YA Disability Representation for Disability Pride Month by Dr. Caitlin Metheny
“I’m sick… And I don’t wish that I wasn’t. And I don’t really care how uncomfortable that makes you anymore” (Moskowitz, 2019, p. 276).

The above quote is said by disabled teen, Isabel, in one of my favorite YA novels that shows a positive disabled identity, Sick Kids in Love, which is an excellent book to celebrate Disability Pride Month!

Disability Pride Month takes place every July to mark the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was written into law in July 1990. While defining disability pride varies for folx who have differing disabling conditions, many agree that it is a time to highlight disabled identities, celebrate the disabled community, draw attention to achievements of that community, acknowledge the nuance and wide range of disability experiences, and reflect on successes for disability inclusion in society. Disability Pride Month also highlights existing ableism and injustices in our society and draws attention to progress and changes yet to be made.

As someone who became disabled at the age of sixteen from treatment for bone cancer, who also didn’t identify as disabled until I became immersed in Critical Disability Studies scholarship during my PhD, I can understand why disability pride id difficult to define. How can I be proud to be disabled when life with a disability is difficult in a world created for nondisabled bodies? How can I take pride in calling myself disabled when society has taught us to believe this is a sad existence to be avoided at all costs? For many disabled people and disability justice activists, disability pride is a both/and situation, not either/or: you can feel positively about your disability and recognize that being disabled is challenging because of disabling conditions and the prevalence of ableism (Pulrang, 2021).

To me, disability pride means having a (mostly) positive sense of self (looking at your, internalized ableism), accepting my disabilities as important elements of my personal identity, being proud of myself for navigating ableism and a world that does not always accommodate my body, while also acknowledging that sometimes being disabled is painful, challenging, and just plain sucks. Both/and. This acknowledgement of both/and disability nuance has become central in both my personal life and my role as a teacher educator and scholar of YA literature centering disability.

As Rachel R. Wolney and Ashley S. Boyd wrote in their May 24 YA Wednesday post on disability representation in middle grade novels, it is important, but also challenging, to find and teach novels with disabled representation that do not reinforce discrimination or perpetuate harmful stereotypes and assumptions. I would like to expand upon their advice on selecting texts that reject disability stereotypes to propose highlighting books that explicitly address the nuance of proud disabled identities: characters who possess a (mostly) positive disabled self-image while also drawing attention to ableism and its detrimental effects for disabled people. This work is incredibly important, but it can also be challenging for folx who do not identify as disabled, are not closely connected to the disabled community, and/or do not have experience critically reading YA literature explicitly to interrogate disability representation. As Wolney and Boyd recommended, Patricia Dunn’s (2015) book is a good entry point to approaching disability representation critically; I would also recommend Lessons in Disability: Essays on Teaching with Young Adult Literature, edited by Jacob Stratman (2019). 
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To help determine if disability representation is positive, proud, and nuanced when making YA text selections, please consider: 

Disabled characters written by authors who share the same disability. While many in the YA community have, understandably, moved away from the term #OwnVoices, it is incredibly important to consider author positionality as it relates to authentic and accurate disability representation. The phrase “nothing about us without us” has been tied to disability rights and activism since the 1990s and we should remember this sentiment when selecting book titles about disabled characters because—through my own and others’ research—authors who write from the position of the same disability as their characters are less likely to perpetuate ableist stereotypes and can more accurately represent the nuance of disabled lived experiences. Further, disabled authors are better equipped to balance positive and frustrating moments in characters’ disabled identity to create that both/and nuance I am advocating for. That is not to say that all nondisabled authors write poorly developed disabled characters—I have read and enjoyed many such books—however, those texts may require a more critical lens when reading.

Disabled characters—and plots—who reject disability stereotypes and common fictional tropes. Historically, disabled characters: served as narrative tools to teach valuable life lessons to nondisabled characters and readers; were seen as innocent and child-like (and deserving of pity) or strange and villainous (and, thus, avoided); were viewed as courageous and inspirational simply for living with their disability; were seen as super human if they could accomplish things despite having a disability; were only seen as valuable if they were cured, fixed, or able to overcome an aspect of their disability by the end of the narrative; were killed off by the end of the narrative. I could go on forever about common tropes of disability in fiction and media, so for the sake of time and space, this Book Riot article provides a bit more detail to help you understand and identify these stereotypes in texts, so you can ultimately highlight books that move away from the perpetuation of these narratives.

Be critical of authors and characters who casually use ableist language or disability euphemisms throughout books. Ableist language includes, but is not limited to, words and phrases that were once used to describe disability, but have since become connotations for other terms. For example, “lame” was a common term to historically reference a physical disability and has now become synonymous with words like “bad” or “uncool.” Similarly, people often use words like “insane” when they mean “surprising” or “unbelievable.” Ableist language also includes misusing words that can trivialize a disability or perpetuate negative assumptions. For instance, saying “I was paralyzed with fear,” “Are you deaf?,” or “My sister is so OCD.” Disability euphemisms include avoiding the term “disabled” by using terms like “differently-abled,” “special needs,” or “handicapable” to refer to a person with disabilities. While most folx who use these euphemisms mean well, they ultimately perpetuate ableist assumptions that disabilities are bad and undesirable. Disabled is not a bad word and to be disabled is not a bad existence. Thus, if ableist language is used throughout a novel, or within an author’s note, educators should draw attention to the terms and engage in critical conversation with students about what the author actually means to say by using the term/phrase, how the term might affect a disabled reader, how the term perpetuates negative views of disability, and how the author may have written a sentence with more inclusive language.

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Disabled characters who show a positive sense of self and show the challenges of living with a disability in an ableist world. Below, I explain what this might look like in four of my personal favorite YA books for nuanced disability representation to celebrate Disability Pride Month (and all year long!):

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​The Silence Between Us
by Alison Gervais (2019) has been my go-to recommendation when folx ask me for a book with good disability representation. It is an excellent example of disability pride as readers follow Maya, a proudly Deaf teen, as she navigates a transition from a Deaf school to a traditional hearing school and its lack of appropriate accommodations for her. This book allows readers to examine many layers of systemic and personal ableism (as well as to reflect upon their own implicit biases about disability), as well as to interrogate numerous disability stereotypes. Maya proudly rejects societal pressures to “fix” her deafness, she navigates ableist educational settings and draws attention to accessibility challenges, she disrupts the common ableist assumption that Deaf people desire to be hearing, and she is given the space to feel good about who she is while also expressing frustration as the only Deaf person in her family and school. This novel is inspired by Gervais’s identity as a Hard of Hearing individual living in a Deaf community. 


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Sick Kids in Love by Hannah Moskowitz (2019) is a favorite feel-good book of mine for its depiction of invisible disabilities and the challenges that come from looking “normal.” Readers follow two main characters, Isabel and Sasha, who meet in a hospital while receiving treatment for their chronic illnesses—rheumatoid arthritis and Gaucher’s Disease, respectively—and who bond over their shared experiences. This novel is an excellent example of disability pride because we see two characters who illustrate the nuance of disabled identity formation for teens with invisible disabilities whose families and friends misunderstand them and make assumptions about them and their capabilities. Sasha has always accepted his identity as a “sick kid” and his character often explicitly calls attention to common ableist views (and then disrupts them). Conversely, Isabel has some elements of a positive disabled identity, but she shows readers numerous examples of internalized ableism, as well as how sexism and ageism intersect with her illness to negatively affect her self-concept. Through her friendship with Sasha, she learns to question her own internalized ableism to develop a more prideful disabled identity. This novel was inspired by Moskowitz’s own experiences as a teen learning how to balance looking “normal” while living with the daily symptoms of a chronic illness.

Breathe and Count Back from Ten by Natalia Sylvester (2022) is a great book to understand the complicated relationship disabled people can have with their disabling conditions. Verónica has never wanted anything as badly as she wants to be a mermaid at a local Florida freshwater spring attraction; however, she has hip dysplasia, a very painful physical disability that will require (another) surgery in her near future. This novel presents an excellent examination of nuance because Roni is able to appreciate her body and feel frustration when it doesn’t work the way she wants. Similarly, Roni appears to have a positive self-concept early in the novel, yet readers see glimpses of internalized ableism and its negative effects on her life, such as when she hides her surgical scars and lies to her family and medical professionals to hide her pain. Readers also see how numerous marginalized identities can affect disabled people by witnessing how Roni’s culture, her family’s immigration status, and their socioeconomic status complicate the circumstances of her disability. Roni’s personal experiences—including her dream to become a mermaid—are directly inspired by Natalia’s Sylvester’s life. 

Where You See Yourself by Claire Forrest (2023) is a new favorite that I can’t stop raving about for its nuanced disability representation! Readers follow Effie, a wheelchair using high school student with cerebral palsy as she sets her sights on college applications. Unlike her nondisabled peers, Effie’s decision process is more complicated than just picking the best program for her career goals, the hippest town, or the prettiest campus. Her college choices (and the towns that surround those colleges) must go through a rigorous analysis process to determine the accessibility of physical spaces, as well as accommodations and support systems in place for disabled students. This novel provides numerous examples of ableist beliefs, especially toward wheelchair users, highlights issues of access and “reasonable” accommodations (which are often determined by nondisabled people) in public high schools and other public spaces, and draws attention to common exclusionary practices and policies that negatively affect the lived experiences of disabled students. Effie’s characterization also shows readers the complicated nature of internalized ableism and how possessing a proud disabled identity changes daily, depending on various circumstances. Forrest’s lived experiences as a wheelchair user with cerebral palsy inspired this novel. 
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More YA books I recommend for disability pride—all written by disabled authors who show the both/and nuance of positive disabled identity while also navigating ableism—include:

Darius the Great is Not Okay & Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram (2019 & 2021)

Disability Visibility: 17 First-Person Stories for Today (Adapted for Young Adults) Edited by Alice Wong (2020)

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White (2023)

One for All by Lillie Lainoff (2022)

The Reckless Kind by Carly Heath (2021)

This is My Brain in Love by I. W. Gregorio (2020)

This is Not a Love Scene by S. C. Megale (2019)

​Do you have any books to add to the list?
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    Dr. Gretchen Rumohr
    Chief Curator
    Gretchen Rumohr is a professor of English and writing program administrator at Aquinas College, where she teaches writing and language arts methods.   She is also a Co-Director of the UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. She lives with her four girls and a five-pound Yorkshire Terrier in west Michigan.

    Dr. Steve Bickmore
    ​Creator and Curator

    Dr. Bickmore is a Professor of English Education at UNLV. He is a scholar of Young Adult Literature and past editor of The ALAN Review and a past president of ALAN. He is a available for speaking engagements at schools, conferences, book festivals, and parent organizations. More information can be found on the Contact page and the About page.

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    Meet
    Evangile Dufitumukiza!
    Evangile is a native of Kigali, Rwanda. He is a college student that Steve meet while working in Rwanda as a missionary. In fact, Evangile was one of the first people who translated his English into Kinyarwanda. 

    Steve recruited him to help promote Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media while Steve is doing his mission work. 

    He helps Dr. Bickmore promote his academic books and sometimes send out emails in his behalf. 

    You will notice that while he speaks fluent English, it often does look like an "American" version of English. That is because it isn't. His English is heavily influence by British English and different versions of Eastern and Central African English that is prominent in his home country of Rwanda.

    Welcome Evangile into the YA Wednesday community as he learns about Young Adult Literature and all of the wild slang of American English vs the slang and language of the English he has mastered in his beautiful country of Rwanda.  

    While in Rwanda, Steve has learned that it is a poor English speaker who can only master one dialect and/or set of idioms in this complicated language.

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