For the past three weeks my mind has been revisiting A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. As I mentioned last week, this wonderful novel was one of the books featured at the Youngstown State University English Festival. Facing death and the feelings that surround the event is not easy for adolescents. It is always shocking, difficult, isolating, and perhaps lonely. For adolescents who experience death for the first time it can be traumatic and confusing. By the same token, I am not sure that, as adults, we are more prepared. As I prepared to talk to students and teachers in Youngstown about this book, I contemplated the fact that my own parents are aging - 87 and 84. Am I prepared? Have I thought about my own reactions?
While at Youngstown I fell ill, stomach flu, bad food, whatever it was, something hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. I felt inadequate and not as upbeat and energetic as I often am and certainly not everything that the organizers hoped I would be. It was mainly one bad day, but I felt my own mutability. My own limitations and waning strength. Now, a week later, life has been a whirl wind with more events.
My dad called with news that his older sister, 91 years old, was not expected to last through the week. My wife and I began to think about how we would be able to help my parents. They were great travelers until my dad turned 80, and then they slowed down.  Now, it is a bit of an ordeal—medicines, being comfortable, navigating strange places. Then on Tuesday my wife got a call. Her aunt’s husband, one of her father’s closets friends for years, had just past at 89. My wife was close to them and their children and she needed to go help her own aging father. Within the next few hours, my Dad called and his sister was gone.
What does his have to do with Young Adult Literature? First, YA novels are great for adults. The real secret is that I read these novel because I like them. I am moved and engaged. Second, the by product is that I get to act like reading and writing about books is a profession. Third, they help me navigate my own emotions and reactions to real life events.

Through all of this, I should have been producing a YA Wednesday, we were finishing teaching our courses for the week, attending those ever present university meetings, preparing to travel to the two funerals, and making sure we have contacted everyone. Then there was a YA announcement that trumped anything I might have been able to say in a YA Wednesday posting.
S. E. Hinton will be speaking at the ALAN Breakfast during NCTE 2017!!!
What a gift. As I live in the reality of my own life and the demands on my emotions, I have been doing a mental rereading of The Outsiders. Indeed, we are all subject to the ravages of time; Nothing Gold Can Stay. But, if anything has a chance at longevity, it is, as Shakespeare suggests in Sonnet XVIII, the written word:
​​
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

​Hinton’s novel along with other novels, most notably, Lipsyte’s The Contender and Head’s Mr and Mrs Bo Jo Jones, marks 1967 as a year of transition for the viability and growth of young adult literature. Specifically, The Outsiders helps us think about how the themes of the novel remain accessible and timely with adolescents today. Is it shocking to us to remember that the original teens who read this book in 1967 are at least in their sixties? What is it like to feel alienated, to lose a parent, to watch a friend be both immature and heroic? Are the emotions that are central to this book or other young adult novels dated? A few years ago Dr. Angelle Hebert, an associate professor at Nicholls State University did her dissertation at LSU on the reading prospective of African American male students who identified as reluctant readers. The dissertation is entitled "Give me something that relates to my life": Exploring African American adolescent identities through young adult literature can be found here. While Angelle tried to use novels like Walter Dean Myers’ Monster to provide what she hoped would be culturally relevant and approachable texts, The Outsiders surfaced over and over again as a text the participants both liked and wanted to discuss.

​As I browsed other books from the year, it becomes clear that 1967 was a pretty good year for books all around. A quick look at goodreads shows the most popular 200 books of 1967. Number one is Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (adult?), number two is The Outsiders (YA?) and number three is E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (childrens?). Not bad company. I put question marks behind each classification, because I feel like it is time to realize that the labels are too often divisive. I believe people find books when they are ready for them, even if they have been taught to hate reading, and are nurtured and guided to books that are developmentally appropriate. I started Moby Dick four or five times before I ever finished it in college. I can’t imagine my life without that narrative in my mind. Furthermore, I am glad that I have the image of my middle school persona trudging home from the bookmobile with that heavy tome. I gave it a try and then another, and another, until I read it. Not because I was assigned the novel—I never was—but because I wanted to be part of the conversation of the discovery. I am glad that I endured. 

​Among the other gems in the goodreads list were Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, Scarry’s What do People Do All Day?, Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions, Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, Harris’s I’m OK – You’re OK, Fiztgerald’s The Great Brain, Potok’s The Chosen, Derrida’s Of Grammatology, O’Dell’s The Black Pearl, Iceberg Slim’s Pimp: The Story of My Life, Peck’s Are you in the House Alone?, Wilder’s The Eighth Day, Freire’s Education for Critical Consciousness, Lowell’s Life Studies and for the Union Dead, and McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage. What a great year. One final book that set me on my heels a bit was Jonathan Kozol’s Death at an Early Age. For fifty years he has been sounding the watch cry about effects of poverty in education. It looks like 1967 is a year with books worth revisiting.
At the very least, I hope you will join me as I revisit the four pivotal YA novels (The Outsiders; That Was Then, This Was Now; Tex; and Rumble Fish) by S. E. Hinton between now and November.
You see, I ramble. I am soaring through family memories as I write this and prepare to engage with family at the funeral. I will see cousins and others that I haven’t seen for years. Yes, I feel the loss, but I relish the opportunity for renewal. I have literally become, like Y. B. Yeats, in his riveting poem, Among School Children, “a sixty-year old smiling public man”, as I wander through schools talking with students about what they like to read and encouraging teachers to offer more compelling choices.

This week's posting is exciting for me. I was invited to attend the YSU English Festival as the James A. Houck Guest Lecturer. This is an absolutely amazing festival that is celebrating its 38th year of bringing students, teachers, and librarians to the university for a celebration of young adult literature (nearly 3,000 participants this year--Why aren't more universities and school districts forming partnerships to celebrate reading and writing?) Each year the advisory committee picks seven novels for middle grades students and seven novels for high school students. (see the current list here and the complete list of books from the beginning here.)

Inviting an academic like me is one thing, but each year they anchor the three day event with a fabulous author. This year's Thomas and Carol Gay Guest Lecturer is Matt de la Pena! I know, how exciting is that? I get to be at a three day event with Matt. Not only is he the current winner of the 2016 Newbery Medal, he is a great guy.

Matt really doesn't need an introduction. If you have been paying attention to the YA world you understand that Matt's body of work is important. Most of us now his major YA works--Ball Don't Lie, Mexican White Boy, We Were Here, and I Will Save You.  One of my favorite things about Matt is the way he reacted to his books and others being pulled from Mexican-American studies classes in Arizona. You can read about his involvement here. Matt is a rock star. It is a gift to be at this festival talking about his books and the books of others listed below.

The list of middle grades books was quite fun to read.  Some of the books were old favorites and others were completely new to me. It was great for me to spend some time in the creative fantasy exploration in Holly Black's Doll Bones. If you have read Thanhha Lai's Inside Out and Back Again_--you should stop everything and read it now. If you have, you should revisit it--It is National Poetry month by the way and this verse novel should be read over and over. I loved the character of Willow that Holly Goldberg Sloan created in Counting by 7's. This was a new author for me and I am glad that I found this wonderful novel. Vince Vawter's inaugural novel, Paperboy, was a wonderful trip down memory lane. Yes, I am old enough that I delivered The Review Journal in the Las Vegas afternoon heat and had the opportunity to collect the monthly bill from my customers.  I  folded 80 to 90 papers, stuffed them in a canvas bag, wrapped the bag around the handle bars of my bike, and navigate my way up down the streets near my house.  I have heard about Patrick Ness for years. I know that adolescents love his work, but A Monster Calls was my first, but it won't be my last. I am not sure how to describe both its power and beauty. 

The list of novels for the 10th through 12th grade also includes Matt's I will Save You but  adds We Were Here. (In addition, A Nation's Hope: The Story of Joe Lewis is a bonus book for each level.) I love Matt's work and I have to continually thank Jennifer Buehler for a wonderful article she wrote for The ALAN Review a number of years ago. She forced me to think critically about Matt's work from the early stages and it has been a great journey. The other writer that is shared by both groups is Steve Sheinkin. I tell all of my adult friends who are looking for something to read to check out his books. It was a thrill to read Bomb: The Race to Build and Steal the World's Most Dangerous Weapon. This Book provides the perfect opportunity for cross-curricular instruction. If you don't love the novels of Matthew Quick, my guess is that you haven't read them yet. The book featured for this festival is the wonderful "sports" novel, Boy 21, but I also love Sorta Like a Rock Star. In preparing for this event, I discovered he will have a new bIook out soon--Every Exquisite Thing-out on May 31, 2016. Another featured book is Elizabeth Wein's Rose Under Fire. If some of you don't the significant contributions of women during times of conflict-you need to add her books to your list of must reads. For those of you who are looking for a fast paced thriller jump directly to Marcus Sedgwick's Revolver. I can't wait to hear want the students at the festival have to say about his novel. Last, but not least Scott Westerfeld is represented at the festival with the fantastic first novel in his steampunk trilogy, Leviathan. I heard Scott talk describe how he wrote the book and collaborated with the illustrator at an ALAN Breakfast some years ago. I was riveted at the time and enjoyed revisiting it once again. 

Wow! What a great day at Youngstown State University!  The teachers were tremendous and the students were fantastic. Nearly nine hundred 10th grade to 12th students who voluntarily read (on average) 4 to 7 books beyond there regularly scheduled class work. Amazing! Why doesn't every school district have a partnership like this with a local university? If anyone one out there has a festival like this one, I would love to hear about it.

Updated and links added.

This week’s guest columnist is Lisa Scherff and her students. It is great to have Lisa contributing again, but it is more exciting to hear from her students (Sorry, Lisa). If more of you have students who are doing interesting things, I would love to hear from you. 

​For this installment, I am proud to not write because, instead, several of my 10th grade Honors English students from Cypress Lake High School (Fort Myers, FL) will present some Alex Award winners that resonated with them.
 
Ivory Walker writes about My Friend Dahmer—2013 winner; Parker Furman describes Juvenile In Justice—2013 winner; Chelsie Allender comments on Those Who Wish Me Dead—2015; Hadassah Jean Philippe writes about Mr. Pip—2008 

Ivory Walker:
My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf
​
Teenagers are into some pretty interesting and weird things. Some of those things involve crimes, or serial killers, and graphic novels. There’s just something about them that hooks us and drags us in. The graphic novel My Friend Dahmer combines these things. The novel is from the point of view of Derf Backderf, a “friend” of the famously known killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. In this book you follow the teenage years of Dahmer and learn what his life was like and how he started out.
​
As James Ellroy, the American crime writer (e.g., L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia), describes it: “A solid job. Putrid serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s origins are explored in this fine book. Dig it- it’ll hang you out to dry.”
Reading it brought a cluster of emotions: anger at Dahmer’s tormentors, disgust at what he was doing, and, of course, sadness and heartbreak from the life he was living as a teenager and the reasoning behind why he did what he did.
Other teens would enjoy this book because it follows Dahmer throughout his younger years. It amazes me, and others too, when as you’re reading this story you think about how this could have actually happened.  

​Parker Furman
Juvenile In Justice by Richard Ross
 
This documentary style book gives the reader a visual experience of the day in the life of a juvenile in the detention system of the United States. There are dialogues between the kids and the author that give a first-hand account of how life is for these young people--the day to day struggles they must face, the feeling of isolation in their cells, and the idea that they have no one out there who is willing to help them. The pictures drive home these ideas and really fill the reader’s mind with a glimpse of life inside and a voice crying out for someone.
  
For a young adult, reading a book like Juvenile in Justice would invite them to open their minds up to think about more than themselves. As young people, myself included, we fall victim to our own self interests. We shut the world out and don't understand much of our neighbors’ hardships. These neighbors would be those in juvenile detention. They are just like you and me. But one thing sets us apart: these kids have been through hell and have not had a voice nor a helping hand to escape such a place. This is something the majority of us are grateful we do not have to experience. However, for those who are less fortunate, they become  just another statistic. That is not right.
​
After reading this book and getting a view of what these kids must endure without anyone to be there for them is heart breaking. Yes, there are some very troubled children in these establishments, but the way we go about dealing with them has proven to only make things worse. I know that after reading this, it makes me want to do something to reform the way our government deals with such matters. These kids need a voice and who else better to help them then the next generation.

​Chelsie Allender
Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta
 
Those Who Wish Me Dead is a thriller written by Michael Koryta that will strongly appeal to both children and adults. In this novel, a teenage boy witnesses a horrible murder and must obtain a new identity.  To protect him, he is hidden away in a wilderness skills program for problematic teenagers. This plan was supposed to keep him away from the killers until they were caught by the police; however,  “the result is the start of a nightmare.”

The intense action and unexpected events are substantial enough not only to keep a teenager entertained but also longing to see what will happen next. Throughout the novel, the reader is kept on their toes and is easily consumed with the fast-paced plot. I recommend this book to anyone seeking adventure and excitement.

Hadassah Jean Philippe
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

The novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2007, and  it won the Commonwealth writers’ prize for one of the best books of the year. As a girl 16-years of age, I really enjoyed that book. It is a great novel that teenage girls of all ages would love and enjoy reading. Although it might seem like a documentary because of the mention of civil wars, it relates greatly to teenagers’ worries today.
​
The novel is the story of a girl caught in the throes of war on the island of Bougainville. It is through the guidance of her devoted but strict Christian mother and teacher (Mr. Watts) that Matilda survives but, more importantly, through her connection with Pip, a fictional creation in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Pip helps Matilda maintain a desire to live, especially after her mother, the wise Mr Watts, and her island home cease to exist. Matilda becomes a teacher in Australia in order to fulfill her dream and educate people but to also keep the memory of Watts alive.
 
There is always a story behind the success of a person, and behind that story, someone. Someone who at one point in your life, when everything was upside down, supported you, listened you, advised you, became a model to you, or did an action that completely changed your way of thinking about your life and brought you to a new path that makes you the successful person you are today. This “someone” might not be physically with you; it can be an actor from a movie or a person from a book, and through their actions or words totally change your life.

Every so often, I find that there are so many things are going on it that we need a bonus edition. A new follower, Jon Cullick discusses To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman followed by a call for chapters for a book about teaching the works of Harper Lee in the classroom. Next, as some of you might know, Shelbie Witte, Jennifer Dial, and I have a call for chapters for a book about Digital Media and YA literature. We are anxious to see where that leads us. Marshal George has asked me to share the link to a survey that begins a study he is doing with Brian Kelley. I will let them explain it below. Last, but not least, we are extending the current call for articles for Study and Scrutiny until the end of the month. Below, you can find slightly longer descriptions of each project.

New Possibilities For Teaching Harper Lee in the High School Classroom
Harper Lee’s classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, is a mainstay of middle school and high school classrooms throughout the United States. For reluctant readers, the novel offers an accessible story. For advanced readers, it offers historical and social resonance. For all readers, it offers an inspiring, reassuring story with what seems to be an unambiguously heroic parent figure. The Common Core State Standards lists To Kill a Mockingbird as an exemplar text for grades 9-10 alongside works of Ovid, Homer, and Shakespeare.

Putting To Kill a Mockingbird in the genre of young adult literature is a debatable move. The novel does have great appeal to teenage readers. But if we’re searching for a poetics of young adult literature, Stephen Roxburgh identifies the primary characteristic of YA literature as being a first-person narrator-protagonist who transforms from initially unreliable to reliable in the course of telling her own coming-of-age story (read it here). TKAM’s narrative perspective is substantially that of a consistent adult voice focalizing through the thoughts and events she experienced as a child. We never meet the teenage Scout. 

But we do encounter Scout-as-teenager with the publication of Go Set a Watchman. Set twenty years after To Kill a Mockingbird, Go Set a Watchman was actually written a decade earlier but was set aside when Harper Lee began work on the manuscript that would become To Kill a Mockingbird. Go Set a Watchman sat in a safe deposit box for fifty years. The facts of its discovery by Lee’s lawyer are in dispute, but that is not the only controversy. Go Set a Watchman confronts teachers and student-readers with a disturbingly different portrait of the hero of To Kill a Mockingbird. Jean Louise (Scout, the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird), now twenty-six years old, returns home for a visit. To her horror, she discovers that her father harbors racist views, including membership in the local white citizen’s council. As the 26-year-old Scout tries to redefine her identity in light of this discovery, the 3rd person narrator presents a perspective (along with flashbacks to Scout’s high school years) that will look familiar to adolescent readers.

For middle and high school teachers, the publication of Go Set a Watchman raises some uncomfortable but exciting questions: Does the publication of Go Set a Watchman change the way we can or must approach To Kill a Mockingbird as teachers? How does Go Set a Watchman complicate the inclusion of To Kill a Mockingbird in the curriculum? Could we, or should we, teach both novels together as a pair? Should we ignore Go Set a Watchman altogether? How can we most effectively use the pedagogical potential of this new novel?

Many teachers like to use Atticus’s walk in another person’s shoes advice as the means for students to analyze characters. For example, high school teacher Leigh Ann Lane offers many ideas for role-play: students can write journals, letters, diaries, and thank you notes from the perspectives of particular characters. Students can stage a talk show portraying characters of their choice responding to a moderator’s questions. Students can enact a social gathering in Maycomb County or write biographical poetry about characters. These are all useful, creative approaches.

Now, let’s fast-forward twenty years, introduce an explicitly racist Atticus and a horrified Scout, and try those same learning activities. Imagine, for example, a student assuming the perspective of Scout creating Scout’s journal or blog or Facebook page before and after reading GSW. It would be fascinating to observe how students might approach those activities differently.
​
Go Set a Watchman also offers opportunities for students to explore more deeply the Scout-Calpurnia relationship. Go Set a Watchman presents this relationship through Scout’s adolescent years. When Scout has her first period, it is Calpurnia who assists and teaches her (GSW chapter 11). When Scout worries that she has become pregnant because a boy kissed her, it is again Calpurnia who explains sexual maturity to her (GSW chapter 11). It is Calpurnia who assists Scout with her dress for the school dance (GSW 207). We see a level of familiarity that is reflected only in a mother-daughter relationship. Just as Scout notices shifts in Calpurnia’s speech when Calpurnia takes the children to church in TKAM, in Go Set a Watchman Jean Louise notes that as she entered adolescence, Calpurnia shifted toward addressing her with formality. In Watchman these shifts rise to a crisis when the 26-year-old Jean Louise visits Calpurnia. In one of the novel’s most powerful scenes, Calpurnia’s manner and speech are distant. These scenes offer much opportunity to explore more deeply these two characters, their relationship, and the pressures of racial codes on that relationship. Learning activities used in a pairing of both novels can encourage greater empathy or sensitivity to the separateness that is imposed upon these characters by Southern racial codes. Used for comparison, these texts offer us an opportunity to teach middle school and high school students how social attitudes about race put pressure on personal relationships. 

Works Cited
Lane, Leigh Ann. “Role-Play With TKAM.” Engaging American Novels: Lessons from the
Classroom. Joseph O. Milner & Carole A. Pope, editors. Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 2011. 183-189.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: HarperCollins, 1960.
-----. Go Set a Watchman. New York: HarperCollins, 2015.
Stephen Roxburgh, “The Art of the Young Adult Novel.” The ALAN Review Winter 2005: 4-10.
See the call for proposals below.

Young Adult Literature and Digital Media
It would be hard to find two people as friendly, as collegial, and as hardworking as Jennifer Dial and Shelbie Witte. I am thrilled that I get to tag along on this book project. Those of us work with adolescents know that they have a different relationship with the digital age that those of us who began teaching in the 70's, 80's, or the 90's. I am so old that I graduated from college before the invention of the personal computer--I know, old. I am constantly amazed that I do so much work on a keyboard when one of my greatest fears as a high school student was being asked to spell something. I don't know that I am over it, but the IBM Selectric, onion paper, whiteout, and a word processing program with auto correct made my life easier. 

How do adolescents deal with the digital age? Do they have different fears? Do they have added challenges as they have so much information at their finger tips? How do they sort and shift the important information from the useless? They can manage images and text in ways that was only in the realm of science-fiction when I was in high school. 

In the call for this book, we want to know what is happening in classrooms and what should be happening. Should our English classroom be more interdisciplinary and multi-modal? We wonder which aspects of technology should be second nature in the classroom. YA literature is all over the internet. You can find fan fiction, reviews, interviews, book trailers and much more. Much of what can be found is generated by adolescents. How much is voluntary and how much is assigned? We will muddy the water if we make these activities assignments? We hope you take the time to read the call and consider submitting an abstract for a chapter. 

See the call for proposals below

Teaching issues related to lesbian, gay, and transgender individuals, are we ready?
Marshal George is always up to something interesting. He and his colleague, Brian Kelley are trying to find out how we are preparing teachers to discuss the complex issues stated in the title of this section. We the current legal issues in Mississippi and North Carolina what should we be doing? Here is their introduction to the survey:

We are currently completing a survey of middle and high school English/language arts/literacy teachers’ preparation and readiness to teach issues and themes related to lesbian, gay, and transgender individuals.  This has become increasingly important in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision re: Obergefell v. Hodges.  We are asking that you share this link for the survey (it is available on SurveyMonkey) with your English/language arts/literacy education students (both current and former) who are or will be teaching middle or high school English/language arts/literacy.  We are also asking that you send the survey to other colleagues in English education as well as teachers of English with whom you work (e.g., in the field).  If your own background is in teaching English/language arts/literacy at the secondary level, you might also be interested in completing the survey.
 
To share the link, please feel free to forward this email and/or add the link to your FaceBook page or through other social media (e.g., Twitter).  Please note that this is study is not reflective of your program or your college.  Please feel free to contact me at 212-220-8000x.1420 or [email protected].

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/S2PYX5M
 
Respectfully,
 
Brian Kelley, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Academic Literacy & Linguistics
Borough of Manhattan Community College
 
Marshall George, Ed.D.
Olshan Professor of Clinical Practice, School of Education
Hunter College

Study and Scrutiny--Extending the Call
It is that time of the year when everyone is busy--finishing the semester's teaching, meeting deadlines for papers, and planning summer vacations. Well, before you get to comfortable, we want to remind that we are in the process of preparing the third issue of Study and Scrutiny. We have some very interesting pieces, but we have room for more. We are extending the currently deadline until April 30, 2016. We appreciate the time that many of you have spend reviewing for these first two issues and, now, for this one. If you have any questions, please contact one us: Crag Hill [email protected], Leilya Pitre -- [email protected], Steve Bickmore -- [email protected]. By the way, many of you that have contributed a column to this blog have a good start on some thinking that could develop into an interesting article. (Just a subtle hint.)

Please check the out the current call for manuscripts below. 

The UNLV Young Adult and Children's Literature Conference June 13 -17.

Last but not least, he is the reminder to register. Come spend a week discussing how to engage adolescents in book that they will love. The visiting authors will be Virginia Euwer Wolff, Jason Reynolds, Meg Medina, Andrew Smith, and Alan Sitomer. What a great group! Please be sure to checkout the conference website here and register while you can. Contact us for information about group discounts.

​Once again, we have another enlightening post.  This week my former colleagues from Louisiana State University, Jackie Bach from the School of Education and the current director of Women’s & Gender Studies at LSU, and Charity Cantey a librarian at the LSU Laboratory School remind us of the many resources that are being provided by the YA community.  Furthermore, they ask us to chime in and comment on sources that you might use that they don’t mention.  

I recently took my car in for its annual inspection. While I was in the waiting room, one of the attendants stuck her head into the room and said,
​
“I hope you don’t think this is weird, but can you suggest something for me to read?”
She went onto describe herself as a voracious reader who was always looking for a good book to read. I didn’t bother to ask her why she thought I might be a good person to make a recommendation, but it might have been because of the several stacks of young adult novels I keep in my car to give to the teachers in local schools I visit or leave in my backseat in the hopes that my son will pick one up and read it so I can ask him what he thinks (that recently worked with Lost in the Sun by Lisa Graff—but he told me later he wished I had told him it was a book about sports). But I digress.

1. The first place I go is usually the American Library’s Association’s website. Here you can find a list of books that have won awards, including the Alex Award, the Stonewall Award, and Teen’s Top Ten.

2. Many of you have Goodreads accounts. Charity, my go to librarian, has managed to link her Goodreads account into her email so every time she sends me an email, I get to see what she’s currently reading. But there are so many resources on this site, many of them generated by readers. And some of the reviews are so helpful in making a decision about whether or not to pick up a book.

3. State awards. Many states have annual awards for books that are popular among their readers. In Louisiana, the list is put together and then students from all over the state vote for their favorite. One of the best things I did this semester was require my students to read one of the books for middle or high school students and create a book trailer for it. I’m particularly proud of our state as this website is full of resources, including promotional materials and book talks.

4. Professional journals. I have been a subscriber to the English Journal even before I got my first teaching job. I love the young adult literature columns, and Mark Letcher’s column on adaptations of Shakespeare inspired me that year to create a weekly topic on that (students were asked to read one of the books he mentioned in his column). Jim Blasingame and Sybil Durand’s column in The ALAN Review is another place I look to for good books. The ALAN Review also features quick book reviews online at ALAN Picks, moderated by Bryan Gillis and a very thoughtful column called Under the Radar in which cj bott, James Bucky Carter, Sean Kottke, Jon Ostenson, Daria Plumb, and Jennifer Walsh examine books from smaller presses as well as topics that are less explored in mainstream publications.  School Library Journal and Young Adult Library Services are also great places to look for book reviews and thought-provoking articles on YA literature.

5. Highlight books from smaller presses. Another good spot is Purdue’s journal First Opinions, Section Reactions.
​
6. And social media with inspiring stories like this one from the Huffington Post that I found retweeted on Little, Brown School’s twitter account. 

I imagine there are so many more resources than these, including my wonderful colleagues and the bloggers here like Marshall George. Thanks, Steve, for not only exploiting, but also for bringing us together.  
Now, it’s your turn. Where do you find books to recommend? Post your comments below and feel free to self-promote.