The only thing more magical than teaching a rich text is pairing it with meaningful activities. One of my favorite assignments to pair with a class novel is Kelly Gallagher’s “Responsibility Pie Chart” (from his book Deeper Reading).
The Responsibility Pie Chart challenges students to divvy up the blame and decide which characters–and to what degree–are responsible for the conflict at hand. As students slice up the pie, they are challenged by the fact that there is no single correct answer. As they grapple with the question, they realize that the story’s conflict–like life–is not black and white, but rather a complex weaving of factors. 

I originally used this assignment with my middle school students after the climactic fight scene in Jason Reynolds’ When I Was the Greatest.

The past few years, I’ve incorporated the Responsibility Pie Chart into my unit on Sold by Patricia McCormick. Sold is the beautifully written novel in verse about the ugly epidemic of human trafficking. For my freshmen, it brings to life the story of millions of enslaved around the world by focusing on the story of one main character, Lakshmi. It’s a heavy story that leaves readers longing for change and asking “why?”. Why did Lakshmi have to suffer? Which people along the path of her life contributed to her being trafficked?

At the end of the novel I assign the Responsibility Pie Chart. I offer students a blank pie chart (an empty circle) and a word bank of the characters in the story. I ask them to divide the pie chart with the characters they think had a hand in forcing Lakshmi into sexual slavery. Consider her stepfather and Mumtaz; the first is the one who sold her and the latter is the one who kept her locked in the brothel and forced her to be with men. Is one of these guiltier than the other? There are no easy answers.  But as students mull over the story and draw their lines, they also write. Not only do I ask them to create the pie chart, but I also have them defend it, articulating support for their choices.

After they work independently, we discuss as a group. The pie charts students created act as a strong springboard for debate, as they exchange perspectives and text evidence. After reading the novel, this assignment and the conversation that follows help my readers further understand how complicated the problem of human trafficking is. 

The Responsibility Pie Chart is a simple but powerful tool that can be used not only with many, many novels, but also with nonfiction historical texts and current events as teachers guide students to develop their critical thinking skills.
​

Maria Copp is a graduate of the Vanderbilt Reading Education M.Ed. program and is currently a Reading Specialist at Nathan Hale High School in Oklahoma.
​

What better way to start the year than with a young adult novel in verse? It is no secret that Emily and I love verse novels—we are deeply passionate about what they do to capture readers’ imaginations. Novels in verse push storytelling boundaries—they use rich language, create engaging and complex characters, and develop powerful stories often about deeply personal and socially complex issues.  The narrative structure of verse novels looks different; the plot is developed across verse rather than chapters and the visual elements of graphics and white space become important tools in the storytelling.  The verse novel is a hybrid genre incorporating elements of verse, drama, and prose to tell engaging stories.

Ode to a Nobody by Caroline Brooks DuBois (2022) is a verse novel set in Nashville. On one level, it is a story about Quinn, a tornado, friendship, survival, and family. On another level, it is a love letter to English classes and poetry month. On yet another level, it is a story about how writing can help someone find her voice. It is all of those things and more.  As one of my teacher candidates said, “This book is about writing and seeing kids.”  Another said, “I found 27 poems that I could use as mentor texts tomorrow with my students and I am only halfway through the book!”

I shared this book as a read-aloud to a small group of 4 middle school students.  We started with an activity called “Judge a book by its cover.” Using a picture of the cover, the students do the following:

1. Identify what they notice about the cover.
2. List the “things” that stand out about the images on the cover.
3. Break apart the title.
4. Make an educated guess.

The four students studied the picture of the cover of the book.  The students listed the things they notice on chart paper:
Noticings of things on the cover:

1. I notice the back of a girl’s head and her hair is blowing like it is windy.
2. I notice that there is a house and trees.  The trees are blowing like it is a windy day.
3. I notice a hamster and a game controller flying around. A teddy bear and a skateboard too.
4. I notice that the colors are blues and pinks and salmon colors.  They seem “moody.”  
5. The trees and swing are blowing a different direction than her hair—like it is rotating.

Breaking apart the title:

1. The title is Ode to a Nobody.
2. The two words that stand out are ODE and NOBODY.
3. Ode is an English class word. I think it is a type of poetry—maybe one when somebody died or is real famous.
4. Nobody is a word everybody knows.  It’s common—it often is a negative word. Kind of.

Educated Guesses

1. I think the book is about a girl who writes a poem about somebody who dies in a storm. 
2. I think the book is going to be a book about a tornado because of the wind images.  I think the girl is the main character and she loses her house and her stuff in the tornado because I see stuff blowing in the wind.
3. I think the book is a mystery about a girl who finds someone’s stuff that gets blown away during a storm and she has to find the “nobody” the stuff belongs to and give it back.

 
The educated guesses are based on evidence the students found on the cover; their predictions are close but not exactly what they will find. They are now curious about the book and look forward to figuring out who was the most “right.”  We move on to one more introductory task—figuring out the title and more about the book by focusing on the word “ode.”
We begin by talking about and defining the word “ode.” I start by asking them where they might have heard the word “ode.”  We talk about what it sounds like (owed) and what we think this word means. One student reminds us that he thinks it is “an English class word” and another student says that she thinks she heard it in a video game.  I read them three of the poems from the book “Ode to the Dogwood Out My Window” (pp. 23-24), “Ode to a Stationary Ollie” (p. 32), and “Ode to My Bedroom (and Pumpkin)” (p. 33). 

“I didn’t know you could write a poem about skateboarding!” One student says.  The students nod.  “I thought it had to be about nature and big stuff.”  More nodding. We talk more about the poems and what they mean to us.  Then I ask, “Based on these three poems, what do you think an ode does?”  The students list what they notice about the three poems.

1. Each poem talks about what is special about the thing its about.
2. It seems like the poem wants us to think it is as special as the author does.
3. The poems have details that make it seem real.

The students decide that an ode is a poem that celebrates how special something is and uses details to make the reader believe it.  We then look up the definition of “ode” to discover how close we are.  The Cambridge online dictionary defines “ode” as “ a poem expressing the writer's thoughts and feelings about a particular person or subject, usually written to that person or subject.” The students then wonder, “So this book is an ode to a nobody? Can an author do that?”

The students and I are just beginning our journey together reading this book. They are already excited about reading it.  I look forward to the discussions and writing projects they create! 

Ode to a Nobody is a book that both Emily and I love.  As reading and writing teachers, we are excited about how we are seeing students respond.  As teacher educators, we are thrilled with the responses from our teacher candidates. 

Happy Reading, 
Melanie and Emily

​

The items in the list are adapted from an assignment by Melanie Hundley and are concepts that we have been working on in class. These criteria (i.e. adjectives, similes) are skills that we had been practicing and when mashed together in this assignment make a nice way to discuss characterization and see what all students have learned. You can change the criteria to skills that you’ve been working on in your class. You can ask students to complete the assignment alone or in small groups. There is lots of room to play with this assignment. See image 3 for example posters of the character Fatuma from the novel When Stars are Scattered.

Clarice M. Moran, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English Education, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC

Daily reports of the war in Ukraine have, sadly, become part of the wallpaper of the news cycle--with regular footage showing bombed-out buildings, scarred land, and displaced people. It is hard to fathom that as of Oct. 11, 2022, 14 million people were classified as Ukrainian refugees. Pushed out by the violence and pulled into countries more peaceful, these refugees have risked their lives to seek shelter. 

Yet, it is so easy to turn away from them. 

When I visit area schools, I ask students, “What do you think about the Ukrainian refugee crisis?” I am met with blank stares. 

Ukraine seems so far away, so removed from students’ daily lives that they have a hard time connecting to the situation. The war seems to have gone on for ages, and it has become background noise, drowned out by midterm elections, mass shootings, and salacious tidbits about celebrities. An in-person visit to Ukraine would bring the war and the refugee crises to the forefront of our consciousness. Yet, obviously, none of us can (or want) to visit. What to do? How can teachers focus students’ attention on this humanitarian crisis? One answer may lie in pairing digital technology with Young Adult (YA) literature. 

Virtual reality (VR) and the YA novel Refugee by Alan Gratz offer a way for students to gain empathy for the refugees in Ukraine. Together, they offer a one-two punch toward understanding. 

Refugee and Virtual Reality
Refugee, suitable for middle grades readers (or any secondary reader with an interest in the topic), tells the story of three kids – Josef, a Jewish boy in 1930s Nazi Germany; Isabel, a Cuban girl in 1994; and Mahmoud, a Syrian boy in 2015 – and how each of them became a refugee. Gratz builds the characters slowly and puts the reader alongside them as they escape their home countries and seek asylum. Their stories are interwoven in an unexpected way, and the turmoil and crisis of each one makes the novel a page-turner. When I read it for the first time, I quite literally read it in one sitting—too absorbed in the perils of the characters to put the book down.

The novel is quite engaging, but sometimes a virtual field trip can help students really picture what’s happening. Aided by the wonders of a 360-degree VR sphere, students can feel as if they have stepped into another world. They can see up, down, behind, and in front of them, walking alongside refugees and visiting their camps. 

VR is useful for more than playing video games. It is an alternative paradigm that allows a viewer to enter a new domain and become someone else. VR is a portal into a realm in which users can “see” as if they are a character, “feel” as if they are in a new place, and “know” what it means to inhabit the skin of another. It belongs in the English language arts (ELA) classroom as a way to amplify literature and act as an experiential tool for a deeper understanding of course content. 

Using inexpensive VR cardboard players is a great way to help students enter this 360-degree sphere. The cardboard players, available on Amazon from $5 each, use a mobile phone to view video content. The players are sturdy and can be used for years without much wear and tear. They are low-tech and have no moving parts. But when you slide a mobile phone into one, you get an immersive experience that is lifelike and rich with sound and color. 

To pair VR before, during, or after reading Refugee,

• Ask students to open the YouTube documentary, “Life in the Time of Refuge,” on their mobile devices. This 10-minute film, created by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), documents the life of young Syrian refugees. 
• Tell students to insert their phones into the VR cardboard players and watch the documentary. (Tip: Students without a mobile phone can be paired up with another student who has a phone. Ask students to use earbuds to reduce noise in the classroom.)
• After watching the video, ask students to answer the following questions:
  • In what ways do the characters in Refugee seem the same as the real people in the documentary?
  • In what ways are they different?
  • Can you imagine how you would feel if you needed to leave this country and move to another country? 
• Lastly, ask students to write about the plight of refugees and propose some solutions to help them. 

 
In addition to Refugee, similar text connections for the same activity and same VR documentary are as follows:

• A Long Walk to Water (Linda Sue Park) – This novel, based on a true story, follows a boy and a girl as they become refugees and walk across Sudan in search of water. This book is appropriate for older elementary and middle school readers. 
• Other Words for Home (Jasmine Warga) – This Newberry Honor book tells the tale of Jude, a young Syrian girl, who leaves some of her family behind to move to America. This book is appropriate for middle school readers. 
• We are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World (Malala Yousefzai) – Nobel Peace Prize winner Yousefzai gives a first-person account of her own story as a refugee and weaves in the heartbreaking tales of other girls. This book is suitable for middle school readers and some high school readers.
• Before We Were Free (Julia Alvarez) – This novel is loosely based on Alvarez’s own experiences as a 10-year-old refugee. It follows the saga of Anita who flees the Dominican Republic in the 1960s to escape el Trujillo's dictatorship. It is suitable for middle school and high school readers.

 
Teachers interested in service projects or a call to action, can partner with local non-profit agencies and gather supplies or write letters to refugees. Organizations such as UNICEF, the Red Cross, and Save the Children have active campaigns to assist refugees. The government website, Office of Refugee Resettlement, also offers links and ideas for assistance. 

Although a novel and a VR experience won’t stop the crisis, they might be enough to garner empathy in students, who may then go on to enact real change. 
 
Additional Resources on refugees can be found at:

• UNHCR (the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees): https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/
• World Refugee Day: https://www.globetrottinkids.com/world-refugee-day-resources-activities-for-kids/
• Trauma-Informed Strategies to Help Refugee Students: https://www.edutopia.org/article/5-trauma-informed-strategies-supporting-refugee-students

​Clarice M. Moran is an assistant professor of English Education at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia, as well as a master’s degree in creative writing, secondary English teaching certificate, and Ph.D. in literacy—all from North Carolina State University. She is a former journalist and high school English teacher, and she has published four books, including Virtual and Augmented Reality in English Language Arts Education (Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington)—winner of the 2022 Divergent Publication Award for Excellence in Literacy in a Digital Age Research—and the recent Next Level Grammar for a Digital Age (Routledge/NCTE). Her research centers on digital literacies, teacher education, and digital technology in English language arts.

By the time we finished The Crucible by Arthur Miller, my students were fit to be tied. Students woke up and spoke out disgusted by the power Abigail Williams and her posse held over their community and the destructive judgmental oppressive atmosphere prevalent within the text and their Puritan society. As a class, they knew something went wrong and they wanted to talk about it: 

• “Abigail Williams is a snake.”
• “I hate her.”
• “I can’t say the word.” 
• “She is a little rat – a cold blooded manipulative snake.”
• “She made me feel dirty.”
• “She made me feel good about myself.”
• “She made me feel like I was an amazing person.”
• “She used innocent people!”
• “She exploited the honesty of good people to protect herself.”
• “They (people in the community) became outcasts if they didn’t conform to the way everyone else was thinking.”

The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller, is an anchor text in most American Literature classes. Based on the true events of the Salem Witch trials in Puritan New England during the 1600s, this play tells the story of a Puritan community living in constant fear of judgment that they will be accused of making deals with the devil. If they confessed, they were forgiven and set free. If they did not confess, they were hanged. Members began to confess to save their lives. The protagonist of the story, John Proctor refuses to admit to witchcraft and is hanged:

“I’d have you see some honesty in it. Let them that never lied die now to keep their souls. It is pretense for me, a vanity that will not blind God nor keep my children out of the wind…It is no part of salvation that you should use me! I have three children – how may I teach them to walk like men in the world, and I sold my friends?”

The Crucible is full of characters that use their voices to either destroy or empower. John Proctor’s bravery inspired students to look into their own world and realize that they have a voice they can use to speak out against injustices and wrongs in and against society.
I posed the following discussion questions about how to stand up for themselves and others.

• What are our pressures to conform and the consequences associated with standing up for yourself?
• How can you find your voice?

I asked my students, “For who or whom can you advocate? Who or what in our society needs someone to use their voice – a voice that can lead to change? 

I shared an article as a tangible example of 16 year old Shelby O’Neal with a passion to see marine life have a better chance at survival used a small idea that has let to a big change. We read the following article: Stirred to action: Alaska Airlines to ditch plastic straws in favor of marine friendly stir sticks. 

Students begin to research people, places and problems that need a voice. They create a Canva Postcard-sized document that presents a person, a group, or an issue that needs defending. Students use their voice to explain who or what needs defense, what has been happening to this subject, the results of the actions(s) or inactions(s) toward the subject, and their suggestions for a plan to relieve the suffering this subject is experiencing. 
​
One student shared his reflection on the assignment: “You don’t know about who you advocate for, but then when you know, you want to do something about it, you want to be a better person.”
Student Postcard Examples:

One of my favorite assignments with any literature class is social justice connection posts. The goal of this assignment is for the readers to think beyond the text, consider what's happening in the world, make connections between the text and the world, and share their thoughts to start thoughtful discussions.

Each week students are required to spend at least 30 minutes keeping up with social justice related topics as they relate to the topics and themes of the books we are reading. Each student then posts a link to an online article, video, blog, etc. to our discussion board with their thoughts, connections, and wonderings. These initial posts become an engaging and thoughtful resource for us to return to throughout the semester and in the future. 

After they post, students read through what others have posted and respond to ones that stand out to them. We get some fantastic questions and in-depth conversations before the students even come to class. 

These are the exact directions I give: 
Steps:

1. Think about the socio-political concerns raised in the texts, search online,
2. Post a link and your thoughts on the link/connections to texts/how it relates to class material/teaching, AND
3. Read over some of the posts by your classmates and start/contribute to the conversation. This is meant to be an online dialogue!

A couple of weeks ago, we read  Blended by Sharon Draper. Students connected to several topics from the novel: Black Lives Matter, divorce, emotional well being of students, multiracial families, and more. The protagonist Izzy is a child with divorced parents, who often feels out of place and like she didn’t have a permanent home. She alternated weekly with her parents and struggled to find her identity. Izzy is affected, especially emotionally, by the divorce of her parents. Here are some excerpts and connections students made to the text.
 
One student posted:

• "I wanted to research the experience of students who identify as multiracial in U.S. schools after reading Sharon Draper's portrayal of Isabella's treatment by some of her peers. According to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 10 percent of children born in the U.S. in 2013 had parents of more than one race, and this demographic is growing quickly. While being multiracial is an enriching experience for most children and has not been found to change children's self-esteem or raise their risk of psychiatric problems, those who embrace their multiracial or multicultural identity end up happier than multiracial children who identify with only one race. This data suggests that it's important for schools to be places where students don't feel they have to conform to a single racial stereotype or identity and where all aspects of their identity are affirmed. Pertinent to Blended, the AACAP notes that "multiracial children in divorced families may have greater difficulties accepting and valuing the cultures of both parents." This article offers some helpful anecdotes and examples of how educators can make schools and classrooms welcoming and affirming for children who identify as multiracial. Nancy Brown, president of the Association for MultiEthnic Americans, states that it's important not to create another ambiguous racial category called "multiracial" on forms, because we want to move away from classifying people by race — instead, the standard now is to allow people to select multiple options." 

Some of the responses from classmates were:

• "This post is super informative and I'm glad there are resources out there to support and affirm multiracial children. This makes me think about standardized testing and how children are forced to select one race when they are clarifying their background information. This is also something that is brought up in Blended, and I can imagine that it is super frustrating for multiracial children to feel like they have to align with one racial identifier. I hope that as schools continue to diversify, they encourage students to embrace all aspects of their identity rather than pushing conformity and limitations."
• "Children should not have to choose to identify with only one aspect of their identity, as they do on forms and standardized tests. Classrooms should be a place where all identities are embraced. I would love to see literature and classroom resources that embrace all identities and help all children feel represented!"
• "I love this call for understanding, accepting, and supporting students with difficult home situations. I think that in Izzy's story we see that when her friends understand and support her in her situation she finds some comfort. I had a student whose parents were divorced and his home life at different parents' houses were very different which caused him to fluctuate emotionally in the classroom. Being able to work with him to set the expectations in our classroom while giving him space to learn to work through these difficult switches and emotions ended up creating an easier transition for him with time. I think that is the most important piece I learned about social-emotional learning. It takes time like any other learning but it is so worth it!!"

Tips:
1. Use the posts to deepen in-person discussions both whole group and in small group. It's great to hear a student in a small group say, "In your social justice post this week, I thought about..." or when a group member asks a question and a student says, "Oh, I wrote my post on that this week!" If necessary, provide sentence stems to help students get started with thoughtful discussion. Some examples:

• I can relate to the part you shared about (topic) because (reason).​
• Your post changed the way I think about (topic) because (reason).​

• When (name) commented on your post, it made me think of (topic). 

• You asked a great question at the end of your post, let's explore that together. (inset question from the post)

2. Practice giving continuing the conversation comments. Sometimes we sort discussion ending statements vs continuing conversation statements. Other times we orally practice how we can respond to someone to keep the conversation vibrant and alive. 
3. I don't actually ask students to track time their 30 minute investigation outside of class--it's just a guideline/expectation.

The above examples are with college students, and you might think that this would be impossible with your students. It is not! I did this with middle school students. While reading Alma Fullerton's Walking on Glass, 8th graders connected to real world articles on suicide-attempts, comas, and depression where they shared statistics, causes, resources, etc. for supporting mental health in themselves and others. Another example is when the 7th graders read Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt, and they connected to adolescents changing relationships with their parents, the Vietnam War, religious differences in the town, and trying to figure out what really matters. I've learned that when we task students and readers to connect to the wider world and life outside of school, they are more willing to engage in the "necessary school-ELA" discussions in class. It's also extremely rewarding for students to amplify their connections from their lives to our classroom community. 

What ways have you connected the world to your students' learning? 

Emily Pendergrass is an Associate Professor of Literacy at Vanderbilt University. Prior to her current role, she spent 9 years with middle school students. The social justice student example posts shared above are from reading education students: Grace Carter, Samantha Horowitz, Kate Petras, and Mollie Sullivan. 

The Key Idea
Teachers would benefit from mining YA nonfiction for its potential to catalyze engaging and meaningful, researched writing in public history. Books like Aronson’s (2021), Four Streets and a Square: A History of Manhattan and the New York Idea, catalyze such work as they provide a methodological model of the social history of space, in that place markers can be read as complicated sites of conflict and (re)invention. Moreover, nonfiction texts like Four Streets and a Square have the capability to position young people as historians and authors of a new variety of digitally researched writing, as well as arbiters of what these histories of place mean.

Overview and Method

Place always signified something important for me. Growing up in Detroit, I felt ever conscious of places or representational spaces that served as portals of meaning to understand the city at large, like Belle Isle and the Belle Isle Aquarium with its polished brass rails, vitreous, green ceiling tile, cool, dank passageways, and the still silence of the giant gars. City planners intended Belle Isle as a respite and natural encounter, a sanctuary in contrast to the toils of the workweek. Moreover, historians indicate that traces of Frederick Law Olmstead’s vision are imprinted on the design of the park (Detroit Historical Society, 2022).

We might recognize Olmstead’s name as the landscape architect of Central Park, and generalize some of the same forces at work in the creation of that green space as so many others in the nation, in that public parks allegorized social tensions concerning wealth and access made comprehensible through the opposition between those who had always enjoyed the pleasures of a private garden, and others whom city planners believed would benefit from the pedagogy of parks toward cultivating an aesthetic disposition of appreciation (Aronson, 2021, pp. 133-135).

The story of Central Park is one of many that Aronson (2021) relates in Four Streets and a Square, a vibrantly ambitious social history of Manhattan, which also represents a method of research and composition. More specifically, Aronson enables public space to become comprehensible through the location of central tensions that reveal competing identities, social arrangements, and values, and from this conflicted set of encounters emerges a complex portrait of the city. For example, Four Streets and a Square reminds us that the verdant space of contemplative pleasure, Central Park, emerged from the forced removal of “Black and German communities” who made their home in Seneca Village, the park site prior to 1853 (Aronson, 2021, p. 133).

In this rendering of New York cityscape, the reader tracks the emergence of cultural institutions and landmarks, affinities and oppositions, through a succession of clashes: Indigenous dwellers and Dutch traders, immigrants and nativists, reformers and challengers—up to present day disputes between longstanding residents and investment firms.
However, what I have shared thus far only accounts for half of the compositional method. For the material book, Four Streets and a Square, is doubled by a parallel text or digital catalog of thematically related, multimodal sources that enhance and expand the reading experience. Meaning, the reader is cued by signs embedded in the print text to shift to the digital companion. In this way, the reader embarks on a hypertext journey that enables the city—in all its contradiction and fullness—to sensorially materialize. 

For example, the hypertext companion reader (accessible here) is introduced by Tito Puente’s, “110th Street and 5th Avenue,” which initiates readers to the coming catalog: digital texts from historical archives (e.g., Knickerbocker’s History of New York ); wiki (e.g., the Welikia: Beyond Mannahatta, a curated encounter with pre-colonial nature); interactive maps of landmarks reflective of specific social and cultural histories (e.g. Mapping the African American Past and resources from the Cornell library on labor and working class studies); archival photos and illustrations; Smithsonian links to online resources; academic articles and lectures (e.g., Wynton Marsalis’ discussion on the history of minstrelsy); musical selections and reaction videos (e.g., opera, swing, klezmer, folk, and New York Salsa); records on public emergencies and disasters (e.g., the New York Draft Riots of 1863 and burning of the Orphan Asylum); virtual museum tours (e.g., the New York Transit Museum); podcasts (e.g., an episode of NPR’s Code Switch on the history of the “cakewalk”); video and audio recordings of key performances (e.g., samples of Ragtime, Jazz, show tunes, gospel, and rock); constellations of resources on special topics (e.g., the History of Harlem, musical theater, etc.); film clips and historic shorts (e.g., Pennebaker’s Daybreak Express), paintings (e.g., Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series), and numerous politically and socially resonant conversations (e.g., some topics include Malcolm X, Nina Simone, Lorraine Hansberry, and the Stonewall Project).

All these resources enable—and ultimately model—an evocative journey into place through an initiation to arts, architecture, history, politics, and socio-cultural relationships.

Activity
It would be easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of place-specific detail in the book. However, if the reader keeps certain organizing concepts in view (e.g., political/ideological conflicts, shifting economic and social relationships, cultural-artistic watersheds, and semiotic decoding of public space), then a compositional blueprint emerges as to how the project might be adapted and applied to any space on any scale the reader might choose, contingent on a person’s individual locale.

For example, a student could select a site (e.g., city, building, landmark, monument, natural space, etc.) that would open a window onto public history discoverable by research. And, in the process of that research, specific tensions would emerge as to the location’s divergent meaning or value for varied stakeholders across time, which the student would then interpret and evaluate through commentary.

Students might consider places like 1) formerly restricted areas (e.g., neighborhoods, schools, or social sites), 2) contested places that had a specific meaning for community members at one time and then newcomers proposed other meanings, perhaps with a change in ownership (e.g., stadiums, businesses, factories, or neighborhoods), or 3) monuments and landmarks that act as cartographies of complicated social relationships over time.
But that is not all. Based on the wealth of digital resources I mentioned above, a faithful mirroring of Aronson’s (2021) project would also have to render the subject digitally through an eclectic assemblage of multimodal sources that would present the space in all its paradox for readers to consider. This could occur through curation of a companion constellation of resources outside of the text, akin to Aronson’s (2021) method, or it could happen through the composition of a digital document with embedded hyperlinks.

Text Connections
The scholar and writer, Will Self (2012), composed a multimodal essay titled, “Kafka’s Wound: A Digital Literary Essay,” that incorporated a rich array of resources like we see in Aronson, toward offering a non-linear, oneiric rumination on Franz Kafka’s Prague to contextualize the short story, “A Country Doctor.” Although the document is no longer available on the internet, the essay demonstrated an impressive level of technical skill, artistic ingenuity, and research authority, inaugurated by an animated, weeping willow-like graphic organizer that appeared as a header and device for loosely arranging the hyperlinked materials. This kind of digital composition is texturally reflective of the 21st Century writing forms advocated by numerous scholars of composition pedagogy.

Additionally, although nonfiction social histories of place in YAL are a rarity, there was an Alex Award-winning text by Stephen G. Bloom (2010) titled, The Oxford Project, which took a different approach to presenting a diachronic vision of place. This remarkable book contrasted the photos of residents of Oxford, Iowa across a gulf of 20 years, and offered ethnographic description of place through changes in the portraits and interviews with subjects. This book reads like the nonfiction, multimodal complement to Anderson’s (1919/1992) Winesburg, Ohio.  

Additional Resources
I recommend the following resources for the teacher interested in designing a unit on writing about place.
Augé, M. (2008). Non-places: An introduction to supermodernity (J. Howe, Trans.). Verso.
Bachelard, G. (1994). The poetics of space (J.R. Stilgoe, Trans.). Beacon Press.
Cresswell, T. (2004). Place: A short introduction. Blackwell.
Lefebvre, H. (1992). The production of space (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). Wiley-Blackwell.
Massey, D. & Jess, P. (Eds.). (1996). A Place in the world? Places, cultures, and globalization. Oxford University Press.
Mathieu, P., Grattan, G., Lindgren, T., & Shultz, S. (2013). Writing places (2nd ed.). Pearson.

References
Anderson, S. (1992). Winesburg, Ohio. Penguin.
Aronson, M. (2021). Four streets and a square: A history of Manhattan and the New York idea. Candlewick Press.
Bloom, S.G. (2010). The Oxford project (P. Feldstein, Photog.). Welcome books.
Detroit Historical Society. (2022). Belle Isle Park. Encyclopedia of Detroit. https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/belle-isle-park
Self, W. (2012, August 9). Kafka’s wound: A digital literary essay. The Space [digital arts service].

Stacy Graber is an Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of English Education at Youngstown State University. Her areas of interest include critical theory, pedagogy, young adult literature, and popular culture.
​

I realize that there is still another week before Banned Books Week. However, I thought today’s Monday Motivator could serve as a charge to all educators, librarians, and people who love books, as we continue to unite against Banned Books. While Banned Books Week is important, I fear that it falls in the same vein as Black History Month or Poetry Month. People, places, and things that are an integral part of society cannot be relegated to a simple unit of time. Respect, learning, and recognition should be a daily practice. While I offer ways to consider integrating books into lessons during Banned Books Week, I do think it’s important that students are engaging with books across the content areas and throughout the day.   

As students  return  to school in Fall 2022, stakeholders are facing the same issue appeared regarding censorship and banned books. In 2021, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 729 challenges to library, school, and university services in 2021. On August 18, 2022, The Hill reported that a Texas school district removed 41 books from the library, including a graphic novel version of the Diary of Anne Frank and the Bible. Maybe it’s a positive sign that I am still shocked by the censorship of words and thoughts, but the continued assault on these books, on different perspectives and realities of the world, is frightening. 

In June 2022, USA Today (O’Connell-Domench) highlighted the broader implications of this continued assault on books:

• Tennessee schools removed more than 300 books from the library shelves as state legislators made proposals for banning LGBTQ+ books and books labeled as “Black Lives Matter”.
• The residents of a small town in western Michigan voted to defund the only community library when librarians refused to remove LGBTQ+-themed books.
• A community library in a small town in Iowa briefly shut down without a director after a series of resignations and criticism over hiring LGBTQ+ employees and including books that focused on underrepresented communities and perspectives. 
• More and more librarians are receiving threats and becoming targets. 
• More and more teachers are receiving threats and becoming targets.  

According to Unite Against Book Bans, 71% of voters oppose efforts to remove books from public libraries, and 67%  of voters oppose efforts to remove books from school libraries. The key word in these phrases are voters. These surveys don’t include most of our K-12 students. I am fairly confident that surveys of K-12 learners raise these numbers considerably. K-12 students want to learn, and they want to see themselves. In anticipation of Banned Books Week, I thought I’d give a head’s up to classroom teachers who may want to highlight banned books in their classrooms.  

Using Banned Books 
While the impetus is to broaden representation of silenced voices through the integration of banned books in our classrooms, I limited myself to books that were challenged during 2021 and provided only the briefest snapshot of ways to incorporate these books. 

English 
Monday’s Not Coming (Tiffany D. Jackson): English teachers,  obviously you can take your pick. I’m choosing Monday’s Not Coming because I was surprised to read that it became a challenge during the 2021-2022 school year. The book was challenged simply because it was written by a Black author. Texas state representative Matt Krause released a list of about 850 books that he claimed "make students feel discomfort" due to their content about race and sexuality during the anti-CRT (Critical Race Theory) movement. Monday’s Not Coming provides English teachers an opportunity to support students’ development of critical media literacy skills. Jackson brings attention to the fact that BIPOC females are often overlooked during media coverage of missing children despite higher rates of missing children among communities of color, (Kaur, 2019), including Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). 

Math
10,000 Dresses (Marcus Ewert): (Hear me out math teachers… I’m working off of memories of Calculus).  This book is banned for LGBTQ+ themes. In this book, Bailey dreams about magical dresses…10,000 of them. There are dresses made of crystals , flowers, windows… But, Bailey only hears from his parents, “You’re a Boy!” After reading the book, students may use the dress to apply principles of permutations, or simply use Bailey’s story for word problems of various algebraic concepts. Ultimately, it’s about the Banned Book itself. Incorporating 10,000 Dresses in a math class would not only celebrate Bailey and Bailey’s fashion sense, but underscore the importance of representation in all of our content areas. 

Modern Languages 
13 Reasons Why (Jay Asher): With any of the Modern Languages, I think there is also choice built into these lessons. It would be easy to find translated versions of any of the books, and integrate them into a lesson for comprehension and vocabulary. I chose 13 Reasons Why because it is extremely popular with young adult readers already, and because the reasons/tapes themselves lend themselves to opportunities for students to build verbal and communicative proficiency in these languages. Students can discuss the reasons by developing their interpersonal communication skills. While the book is banned because of the fear that it “glamorizes” suicide. I would argue that discussing Hannah’s experiences in a safe school classroom does not glamorize suicide, but offers a connection and opening for discussion for readers who may need it.

Science
Lawn Boy (Jonathan Evison): (A little patience here, too, Science-based teachers). While this book focuses on issues of classism, the main character Mike Muñoz, was a “lawn boy." Mike is a  young Chicano man in Washington State who was just fired as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew. While the focus should be on issues of race and class, the nature of landscaping crews and who employs them can lead to a larger conversation surrounding current issues on climate change (and our responsibilities as a society). Again, lessons with Lawn Boy are ultimately about the Banned Book and bring awareness to our responsibility to unite against banned books.  

Social Studies
The Complete Maus (Art Spiegelman): This was another one that caught me completely off-guard. With the surprising resistance to any education surrounding the Holocaust, a topic in history that had unified Americans since 1946, it is increasingly urgent to include these texts in our classrooms. Maus is an accessible text for many learners. Teachers can differentiate lessons through engagement and meaning-making with the visual text, as well as identifying and analyzing historical events, the atrocities committed against 6,000, 000 million Jewish people, and the consequences for Jewish families like Vladek and Anya’s. 

Share Your Love Of Books
Those of you who are reading this post are doing so because you love books. Share your enjoyment of finding new books and highlight the books people are trying to hide, and the authors who are being silenced. Learning should be uncomfortable; becoming uncomfortable with situations and issues within books is a way for young learners to make sense of the world around them. We know that representation is crucial for learners and their development. Books offer multiple perspectives and provide resources for readers to engage with and learn from difficult situations and complex issues in a safe way. While challenges and bans tend to work out well for the authors through increased sales of books, we can’t forget the readers left behind without access to the book in their immediate community. 

Works Cited
Dutton, J. (2022, January 14). Black authors are being pulled from school libraries over Critical 
Race Theory Fears. Retrieved from: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/black-authors-are-being-pulled-from-school-libraries-over-critical-race-theory-fears/ar-AASMIvW?ocid=BingNewsSearch

Kaur, H. (2019, November 3). Black kids at a higher rate than white kids. Here’s why we don’t 
hear about them. Retrieved from: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/03/us/missing-children-of-color-trnd/index.html

O’Connell-Domench, A, (2022, August 18). Texas school district removes 41 books from shelves 
including Diary of Anne Frank and Bible. Retrieved from: https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3607044-texas-school-district-removes-41-books-from-shelves-including-diary-of-anne-frank-and-bible/

​