From Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil

As with past ALAN experiences, it's been difficult for me to narrow down to one favorite moment.  Of course there is the not-so-different-from-Christmas-morning anticipation of opening those book boxes and the joy of seeing a long-awaited book such as Shout.  Or there is the not-so-different-from-family-reunion joy of connecting with beloved colleagues who love young adult literature as much as I do.  And I will never downplay the not-so-different-from-being-completely-starstruck feeling of shaking a respected author's hand and telling them just how much their writing has impacted my--and my students'--life.    This year was a bit different because I had the privilege of introducing a conversation between Sandhya Menon and Kayla Cagan.  Both writers recognize the transforming power of art, especially among young women.  Not only did their discussion inspire me to encourage my own students toward books that nurture an artist identity, but it also made me think about how I've never tried painting.  Sandhya and Kayla will be happy to know that I'll be borrowing my daughter's watercolor brushes, paints, and paper this week--that is, after I finish Art Boss and From Twinkle, With Love.​

From Sarah Chan

Five hundred book walls
Each magical brick creates
Mirrors and windows

The ALAN Workshop is something special. This was my third year attending, and I can honestly say that a buzzing room full of educators and authors is some of the best company—I always leave feeling inspired (and a little sad that all good things must come to an end). There are too many highlights from ALAN ’18, so I just picked one from each day. Closing out Monday’s session, Tomi Adeyemi spoke about the power that teachers have to unlock, or lock, students’ potential and change how our students see themselves. She later signed Children of Blood and Bone for my former student who recommended the book to me last school year. Above her signature, Tomi wrote a note that read: “For Queen [name of my student], I wrote this for warriors like you.” On Tuesday, Elizabeth Acevedo talked about how she doesn’t write books that give answers because it’s important for readers to wonder and ask questions. As I stood in her signing line, it felt a bit surreal and so very cool because The Poet X is easily one of my top five favorite reads of this year (as well as a must-listen audiobook) and she’s a National Book Award winner! When I first read the book, the dedication warmed my heart because my grad school teaching internship back in 2013-2014 was at Buck Lodge Middle School, and I remember being blown away by the performance she gave during an assembly in the school’s cafeteria. I love that her students inspired her to write The Poet X and now her words pay tribute to them and inspire countless others.

At ALAN, I’m always reminded that representation matters. Our students deserve to be seen, and they deserve to be heard. They also need to be exposed to stories that celebrate diversity and make marginalized identities and perspectives visible. I’m grateful for all the authors and the 500+ educators who keep these values at the heart of what they do. ALAN ’18 was a much-needed time to reflect and refuel, and I hope to continue to attend the workshop in the future.

From Katie Sluiter

I look forward to the ALAN conference all year. It is my Christmas morning because it feels like coming home. Seeing fellow educators who are all so passionate about reading, connecting with friends I only see once a year, and of course experiencing all the authors and books! This year was one of the best. Cynthia Leitich Smith did a fantastic keynote and set the tone for the inclusivity that YA lit can sow in the classroom. Bill Koningsberg’s speech made me weep for the work we have yet to do, and reminded me of how important it is to create a safe space out of my classroom. Ellen Hopkins and Kody Keplinger grabbed the issue of gun violence, and Laurie Halse Anderson and Gayle Forman talked about using their own experiences in their writing. I left the day fired up and ready to hug all my students. Thank you, ALAN for another great conference!

From Mary Warner

One of the best parts of NCTE 2018 and ALAN was actually seeing and being able to hear Kylene Beers  and Teri Lesesne.  Both women are such major contributors to ELA and ALAN and have struggled with serious health issues.  What a gift that they could be there!

Second I loved the session "Crossing Selma's Bridge..." featuring you, Gretchen, Laurie Halse Anderson, Luke Rumohr, Rich Wallace, Sandra Neil Wallace,  Brendan Kiely, and Shentia Clark.   It simply was so relevant and poignant, and scholarly and worthwhile!

I could only stay for Monday for ALAN -- I liked Cynthia Leitich Smith's keynote; Laurie Halse Anderson and Gayle Forman were great too -- especially because Laurie is so supportive of newer authors.

From Anita Dubroc

ALAN 2018 marked my first ALAN conference and I didn’t know quite what to expect. Being greeted with a huge box packed with (very heavy) young adult titles was quite a shock. My new friend, Book Box, and I were fortunate enough to get first-row seats for two days filled with author readings, conversations, and panels on YAL’s many forms, some genres were like familiar friends and others new acquaintances. I think my TBR exploded a little, which is never a problem. (Many thanks to FedEx for delivering them safely home). I liked how each author focused on his or her writing as a form of writing resistance and each panel, though composed of two to three people, was like peeking in on a conversation. The writers and their works took on hard to discuss subjects, which many adults shy away from, yet are important in young people and teens’ lives. I was also happily surprised at my fellow attendees’ passionate responses to the panelists works and words. Though many of us endured a busy four day NCTE, I was thrilled to see so many faces at 8am on Tuesday! Bringing in the many books recommended and spoken of during ALAN 2018 makes me think of the many ways in which we can encourage young people to activists in the classroom, at school, and in their communities. ALAN 2018 showed me that young adult literature extends much further than the books we read and enjoy and into acting upon the issues that the books present. I was thoroughly inspired by my first ALAN experience and I truly hope to continue attending. 

I made it back from NCTE and ALAN 2108. I marched through with about 5 to 6 hours of sleep. (I know some of you got even less.) If you promised me a paragraph about your experience about the ALAN breakfast, Y2A reception, or the ALAN Workshop, please send it along. You can find what you need in the contact section. This post has a strong family component. That feels right. I feel like my family grew over the last week. Erinn Bentley (She has a previous post of the blog here.) and her son talk about finding books that you not only want to read, but maybe can't wait to read. 

I will turn it over  to Erinn and Noah. I hope all have a great holiday weekend.

​For today’s blog, I would like to focus on an issue most of us have probably experienced as educators and/or parents: How do we inspire a child who is a reluctant reader? What books might appeal to such readers? This issue hit home for me when my older son, Noah, transitioned from 5th to 6th grade. At that time, he absolutely hated to read. He had a fantastic English teacher, excellent grades, and no literacy-associated learning disabilities. His Lexile scores and other reading assessments revealed he was on the lower end of his grade level, but he was not considered a “struggling” reader. Still, he hated reading.
 
As I combed through our bookshelves, I noticed that he had outgrown the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and I Survived series. He had no interest in the young adult literature I adored, such as the Harry Potter saga and The Chronicles of Narnia. I then realized the heart of our issue: I had no idea what his adolescent reading tastes or interests were. He lived in a home stocked with tons of books; yet, these texts were either too juvenile, too difficult, or (according to him) too boring. We needed to find authors, genres, and topics that resonated with him.
 
Noah and I then set out on a quest to develop a personalized reading list. In this blog, we will describe the top 5 books that transformed him from a reluctant to an engaged reader. For each book, I will first provide a brief summary of the novel’s content as well as why we selected it. Then, Noah will share his perspectives and recommendations as an adolescent reader.

​Noah’s Perspective:
This book was really interesting because the story was spread out across different settings making the theme more dramatic. The main character went to so many concentration camps that it makes readers see how much the Holocaust impacted a whole race of people. I would recommend this novel to people who would like to understand what life was really like in WWII. Because this was a true story, I feel like it gives a better picture of the Holocaust than some fictional stories I have read. Because it is dramatic, this novel is more interesting that reading about war in a textbook. Until I read this book, I don’t think I really understood how terrible the Holocaust was. This book made it real for me.

​Noah’s Perspective:
I liked this novel better than Prisoner B-3087. I don’t know of any other book that shows perspectives of the Nazis like this one does. It was interesting to see how the Nazis treated the younger generations and raised them. As I read the book, I kept thinking that I was the same age as some of the characters, and I’m glad I didn’t have their experiences. Something else I liked was that there was a lot of action in this novel. Most protagonists in action stories are adults (like Spider Man or Iron Man). This was the first time I saw a boy as this kind of protagonist. I would recommend this novel to people who really like historical fiction but also like a suspenseful story. 

​Noah’s Perspective:
I wanted to read a book that was interesting and had a deeper meaning. A Night Divided showed how people lived when the Berlin Wall was built. But the book is more than just a story about a literal wall. It’s a story about other walls that divide people in different ways. For example, the protagonist (Gerta) experiences invisible walls. Gerta and many characters in the book question whether they should silently accept being trapped inside the wall’s borders. They also question who they can trust when they are talking about their true feelings and beliefs. They are trapped with what they can or can’t say, do, and think. I would recommend this novel to people who want to think about these deeper ideas.

​Noah’s Perspective:
The Saturday Boy was appealing to me because this novel was very different from the other books I have read. In this novel, the protagonist’s father went off to fight in a war, and Derek did not know what happened to him. The readers did not know what happened to the father either, so it kept the plot suspenseful. Derek also experienced being bullied; I thought that was harsh because he didn’t have a father to help him get through it. It was interesting to see that Derek and his father did have a relationship by writing letters to one another when his father was away. This novel made me wonder what happens to people when families experience separation and wonder how they keep those relationships over a long distance. I would recommend this novel to people who like fiction but also a dramatic story. It made my mom cry! 

Noah’s Perspective:
I liked this novel because it shows what being a “bystander” really means – If you are a bystander, you are just as guilty as the person doing the bullying. I have never been bullied, but I thought the events in the novel felt realistic to what kids in middle or high school experience. I chose Bystander because I liked that the novel was based on a topic that is really important right now. A lot of kids might not know what to do when they see their friends being bullied. If people read this novel they might realize that it is better to stand up to bullies rather than stay silent and ignore them. I think it would be good for teachers and parents to read this novel because they probably do not understand the different ways that bullies intimidate the people around them.  This book shows how actions, even small actions, can affect others.

Until next week.

What are you doing next Monday and Tuesday? Well, I will be at the ALAN Workshop, but not before I spend several days at the NCTE Convention. This workshop is always the Monday and Tuesday after the main National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) convention.  Most of you who follow this blog know about ALAN, but for those who don’t, ALAN stands for The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE. ALAN and The ALAN Review have been around for enough years (the journal is now in its 46 volume and I believe that the assembly started that year or the year before) that most of the founders are gone or it is difficult for them to attend. Their legacy and commitment to education and reading is not to be forgotten.
​
You can read a good history of the journal and the organization in Volume 40 Issue 3. It is free in the archives now and can be found at this link. It is worth the read. It has reports from the early editors of the journal and some of the authors who appeared in the first 40 years of the journal.

The ALAN Workshop is well established and now has an annual attendance of 500 people. This year it is in Houston. I am looking forward, not only to the program, but to meeting the people who are attending the workshop for the first time. I hope you introduce yourself. I will be trying to introduce myself to as many people as possible. If you aren’t attending the workshop, but are attending NCTE I hope to see you at some of the ALAN related events during the main NCTE convention.

The current President of ALAN, Mark Letcher, has put together a dynamite program. I am sorry if you can’t be there, but you can certainly browse the program, be inspired, and start planning on joining us in 2019 in Baltimore. It is not too early to start thinking about how to get there. 

​Every year I try to recruit attendees to write a couple of paragraphs about their favorite parts of the workshop. Last year, quite a few people were willing to help. Check out this link to see who contributed last year (By the way, I hope they all sending me a paragraph this year. I will keep my fingers crossed.) If you are attending the workshop, I hope you consider sending me a paragraph and photo or two.

​I have the privilege of introducing one of the sessions. I am very excited about this opportunity to introduce Ellen Hopkins and Kody Keplinger. They both have relatively new novels dealing with guns, gun violence, and school shootings. Ellen’s book is People Kill People and explores some of the reasons people feel the need to have guns and the consequences of those choices. Kody’s book is That’s NOT What Happened. This book tells the story of a school shooting through the voices of some of the survivors. I can’t wait to introduce them and to listen to their discussion. Guns and gun violence is an issue that is too frequently front and center in the minds of teachers and students. It shouldn’t be, but it is. I am looking forward to hearing about their motivations for writing the books and the reasons they framed their novels in the way they did. 

It is a topic that worries me quite a bit. I prepare teachers to go into classroom. I never worried about this as a teacher and now I would be remiss if I did discuss the issue of guns and gun violence with preservice teachers. I also have grandchildren that attend public schools. Is this an issue we should have to worry about?

I have written about the issue too many times on this blog. I wrote directly about the Orlando shootings at the Pulse Night Club. I live in Las Vegas and a little over a year ago I wrote about the horrible mass shooting that took place in my home town. The day after last Valentine’s Day I found myself writing about the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings in Parkland, Florida. To top it off I could be writing about several more shooting--Sutherland Spring, Texas; Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh; and, just a week ago in a night club frequented by college students in Thousand Oaks, California. I, for one, have had enough.

Last March, I joined with Shelly Shaffer and Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil in a book project that took on the issue. We recruited quite a few people in the English Education and in the YA communities to write a chapter around their expertise. We are happy to announce that the book is in print and the official release date is Dec. 15, 2018. It is entitled Contending with Gun Violence in the English Language Arts Classroom. If you find one of us at NCTE or the ALAN Workshop we will have fliers with a discount code. (or you can download it here) We will be highlight the book on the blog around the official release date.

Here is the image and a flier with the details on how to get the book with a discount.

For awhile now, Michelle Falter and I have been working on a two books about grief and death. It has been a labor of love. The contributors have been wonderful and the books are officially in the world on November 23, 2018, the day after Thanksgiving. Come on, it will be Black Friday, maybe you should consider buying a couple of books.

Most of the contributors will be presenting on their chapters at this Roundtable session at NCTE. The wonderful and dynamic Sharon Draper has agreed to be the keynote. Her name isn't in the program, so spread the word. It is an early session on Sunday morning. Make sure that you put it on your schedule.

Below are images of the book covers and a flier with the opportunity to get the books with a discount.

​I hope to see many of you at NCTE Convention and the ALAN Workshop. If I know you, I will be looking for you so that we can sit and chat a bit. If I don’t know you yet and you are there, please say hello. 

​Until next week.

YA literature covers almost anything you would like students to know about. I can't think about a topic that YA doesn't treat seriously in fiction and, in most cases, in non-fiction. This week, we turn the blog over to Jon Ostenson to expand on YA and War. A few weeks ago, Marshall George discussed this topic by focusing on WWII. In this post, Jon discusses YA and Vietnam.

In September I was at the Air Force Academy for a conference on war literature where I presented on depictions of war in young adult literature. At the end of the presentation, a young cadet made a comment about how all she has ever known growing up is living in a country that’s at war. Born just before the fateful events of 9/11, she has no memory of a country that’s not at war with terrorists and that’s not at risk of attack at home or abroad.

It was a striking statement that I still, nearly two months later, continue to ponder. It reminds me, first, that the young people in our society often bear the brunt of the military conflicts we engage in. And it suggests to me that war may be something that young people often think about, and not just in the abstract ways I did growing up at the tail end of the Cold War. These young people don’t have to be soldiers deployed to foreign countries to suffer the consequences of war (although some of them will find themselves there). Younger siblings watch older brothers and sisters deploy to combat zones; some wait at home anxiously, counting down the months of a high school friend’s deployment; children are caught in combat zones and suffer deprivations or even injury and death. At the very least, we all may see footage on newscasts and read newspaper and magazine reports.

Marshall George wrote recently on this blog about young adult literature dealing with World War II. In this post, inspired by my encounter with this young Air Force Academy cadet, I want to focus on more modern concerns about war as portrayed in young adult literature. We’re fortunate that many writers in the modern era of young adult literature have taken their readers seriously and demonstrated confidence in their abilities to handle complex representations of war. While they may not reach the same level of popularity as books written about orphaned wizards or hunky vampires, these writers and their books thoughtfully explore the complexities and ambiguities of war and its consequences for the young people caught up in it.

​Lai’s writing is spare, as is typical of verse novels written for young adults, and powerful. The emotional depth in the poems that describe the family’s difficult to decision to leave their home behind (and their soldier father) are memorable, and the descriptions of their flight on a Naval ship are vivid. Ha’s experiences adjusting to life in America are poignant as she faces prejudice and bullying as she tries to adjust to a new country, culture, and language. This is an important text not only because it’s so powerfully written but because it showcases a voice from Vietnam, not often included in books about this topic.

Finally, I’d like to showcase a couple of excellent non-fiction titles about war, in this case the Vietnam War, written for young adults. These are meticulously researched and carefully crafted so as to encourage critical examinations on the same complexities and ambiguities of war that the fiction titles explore. Professional layouts and some amazing photographs make them even more attractive to readers.

​Even before they are eligible to become soldiers, young people deserve to be invited to understand and make sense of the experiences faced by soldiers and those who love them. In today’s environment especially, as we engage in a seemingly endless global war on terror, the likelihood is strong that combat or military service will influence the lives of most young people in some way. And even for those who don’t join the military or experience the direct hardships of war, they deserve a chance to understand the consequences of war, both so that they might gain insights into the experiences of those who do serve as well as those innocents who are caught up in conflicts. They can develop empathy for those who suffer, and the insights gained from this literature can help them make wise choices as citizens who vote and run for office or serve in other civic ways. We owe it to these young people to put good books and stories into their hands. 

Jon Ostenson is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Brigham Young University. He can be reached at [email protected] 

​Until next week.