Between the Bookends: YA and Critical Collaboration

2/24/2016

I study how young adult literature is taught to preservice teachers at colleges and universities. As part of that endeavor, I look at how syllabi are put together. I first met this week’s guest contributor through her syllabus. Angela Insenga is an associate professor at the University of West Georgia and her syllabus was wonderful. She teaches YA literature by engaging students with books and popular culture. She was a presenter at the YA conference I hosted last summer and she does not disappoint. I know you will enjoy what Angela has to offer.

Between the Bookends: YA and Critical Collaboration
I have a storied history of not owning the right tool for the job at hand, yet I always manage to figure out a way to get the job done. No hammer? Use a big seashell. No decorative planter? There’s that shiny red soup pot I never use. No bookends? I could use two planters, gifted to me by my aunt. “Brinksmanship,” friends have said, clucking their tongues as I wield my “seashammer” with precision. I see my endless substitution as persistent resourcefulness, not recklessness. At present, those two planters sit behind me on top of my office bookcases. Between them is a long row of books “on deck.” These are texts I need to reread; books I may want to teach after reading them on those holiday reading benders; books that I will teach soon; and those that are germane to current research. But another way to describe this scene is to say that between the planters lies the most fulfilling aspect of the work I do as an English professor and teacher trainer: my YA. I may not always use the correct tool for less teacherly endeavors in my life, but I become more convinced with each passing year that advocating for YA by deploying it in learning spaces enables me to share the tool most apropos for the work my students have ahead of them. Age and content appropriate literature leads them and their students towards more sophisticated literacy. Said sophistication translates into lifelong learning and negotiation with ideas, both academic and civic. I sometimes reorganize this vital literature in purposeful ways for classroom use and share below a description of a new curricular strategy at work in my YA class.

Typically, I practice Dr. Joan Kaywell’s concept of bridging to the classics, wherein an instructor or literacy coach uses a piece of YA to aid students as they broach a more difficult, “canonical” text not necessarily written for them. In doing so, teachers can provide access to difficult language and syntax, The age-appropriate text may take up a similar concept or duplicate context or, importantly, may present an adolescent point of view in line with readers’ development. YA complements the classic during bridging. The texts I sometimes use when bridging include M.T. Anderson’s Feed (2002) and George Orwell’s 1984 (1949). I may, conversely, assign Ten Things I Hate About You (1999) to help students experience The Taming of the Shrew’s storyline in a current cultural context and to foreground the fact that two “new adult” women at the center of the play wrestle with narrow paternalistic social codes much like the teens in the film. I likewise discuss pairing with my YA students, again identifying the technique before asking them to read texts with similar central themes. Here, I may assign “The Most Dangerous Game” (1924) by Richard Connell or Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948) alongside the first book of Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games (2008) trilogy. Defining these well-known strategies for grouping literature in the classroom and then reading texts placed into these configurations provides my teachers in training with templates for planning along with experience of discussing the works at the collegiate level before also practicing distillation for secondary students.

The Common Core standards in English and Language Arts, adopted in my state in 2012, presented myriad challenges for educators and teacher trainers alike. One significant benefit of this body of competencies, however, is its inclusion of standards that mandate reading of literary and informational texts. The overt presence of the latter meant new curricular design in schools where classic literature dominated syllabi. And new curricula often meant new texts from numerous genres that speak to student experience. Additionally, the increase in the number of standards that require students to learn and demonstrate analytical rigor in critical thinking necessitated my institution of more strategy-based teaching to help student teachers enrich student abilities. To this end, I return to bookends as a structuring device for effectively teaching critical thinking while reading YA--thus, these are metaphorical, not the literal planters serving as bookends in my office. In the midst of a wealth of high-quality YA texts and in the time of Common Core and resultant curricular revision, I lit upon bookending as a concept that would allow me to delineate a space framed by two texts, each on an opposite side of a spectrum. I could, I reasoned, call that spectrum a historical epoch; a series of cultural references; a literary period; stages of life; the development of slang words; or label it with an evolving personal or political issue, depending upon the text choices or particular class goals. And bookending depends on several precepts. Reading and then discussing the text at each end of the spectrum is an imperative when bookending. But equally important is the teacherly work of creating the conditions under which students can collaborate as we encourage their thinking about the space between the two bookends. In this space, a teacher’s responsibility is to give form to the critical conversations about issues arising from the texts. In this space we may find confrontation and can stand on common ground. In this space we agree to contribute ideas, ranging from purely experiential to academic, depending on the situation at hand. We find that we, like the texts, work best when in dialog with another, when we are in the process of asking and answering open-ended questions. And because YA speaks to the profound and the mundane via adolescent experience, we can spend more time doing the work required for deep reading and critical thinking instead of focusing solely on ensuring comprehension.

I introduced “bookending” to my YA students last night with a good bit of help from a critical collaborator and kindred spirit, Ms. Stephanie Jones, a scholar now working at the University of Georgia. I met her at last year’s Young Adult Literature Conference at LSU and almost instantly knew we had to work together. My class began their study of Randy DuBurke’s and Greg Neri’s graphic novel Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty (2010) and will continue to discuss it in tandem with the second text in this pair, Jason Reynolds’s and Brendan Kiely’s galvanizing All American Boys (2015). Stephanie gave me the gift of Yummy when she referenced it in her presentation last year, so her presence was vital last night. Both of these books give voice to African American teen males’ brutal encounters with callous adults in positions of authority. Both illustrate the complicated social, economic, and cultural assumptions entrenched in the minds of those who experience and witness violence. Robert Sandifer, nicknamed Yummy because of his love for cookies, was a real 11 year-old boy from Chicago who finally found acceptance and, later, acclaim in the Black Disciples Nation because of the violence he perpetrated on the streets. The text focuses largely on a pictorial representation of the “boy hunt” that occurred over the course of three days in 1994 after one of Yummy’s bullets missed its intended target and struck 14 year-old Shavon Dean, killing her as she walked home while eating a bag of Fritos. Yummy’s own gang murdered him because they feared that his youth would be easy for law officers to exploit and that he would inform on them. Ironically, Yummy’s age is what made him and other shorties attractive to gang leaders, since at that time Chicagoan minor offenders were sent to juvenile hall for any crime and released when 21, often untrained and unprepared for anything but criminal activity. When this tangle of circumstance is teased out, we see a tale of two children lost in a system that inscribes them, a system in the process of wringing blood from bone and flesh in order to turn people into images that serve as reminders. Shavon is forever innocence lost, an angel gone too soon; Yummy is a cautionary tale, or as my student Morgan solemnly said, he’s “only a lesson.” With this text comes a responsibility to discuss historical, psychosocial, and economic systems in which residents of Yummy’s ‘hood are embedded. Ms. Jones’s fantastic work on the legacy of racial trauma in America provided us with a springboard into discussion about the ways in which Yummy was deeply affected by his place and time, how he was the product of a very long equation that never quite added up.

Stephanie’s query, “What are the events that created a Yummy in Chicago?” and another student’s question, “What about all of the Yummies to come?”, resonated deeply with me last night. In these questions and the resulting dialog, the class navigated the space between the bookends, even thinking back to before Yummy, back to, say, A Raisin in the Sun’s insidious residential zoning and the submerged threats politely delivered to the Youngers in an effort to “keep them in their place.” Their “place” is Yummy’s, after all, and they have worked and paid dearly to leave it behind. During her time with us last night, Stephanie also asked my students to examine original examples of “The Family Circus” cartoons, an allusion that readers of All American Boys will remember and my own students will encounter this coming week. She then asked us draw “Yummy’s Family Circus,” neatly connecting both texts’ central theme of displacement and isolation because of protracted social circumstance. We then had an opportunity to display our work for each other. This tactile and visual activity drew us into critical discussion of Yummy’s motivations and prepared us for Rashad’s use of “The Family Circus” as an ironic artistic touchstone.

I found myself drawn to my student Shelby’s drawing of Yummy’s world. In her iteration, she wrote the word “AGENCY” in neat block letters. And, as if the circle in which Bil Keane drew his world reminded her not of the folksy comic strip but of a road sign, she drew a black, diagonal line across it, striking out the word she had so carefully written. This image manifested Robert Yummy Sandifer’s life. He had no agency when he accepted a gun as a present from a Black Disciple, saying that he’d never gotten a gift before. He had no agency when he used that gun in an attempt to make a name for himself in his gang of loving “brothers.” His parents, both in constant trouble with the law, also did not possess a great deal of agency, once we investigate their own troubled backgrounds. And Yummy’s grandmother, who took care of up to 20 grandchildren, also had little to no agency outside of her threadbare home. And without a path toward agency--that seemingly abstract “thing” granted to those with privilege and rarely earnable if you have no status--we will encounter another story like Yummy’s, Tamir’s, Trayvon’s, Bland’s, or even Shepherd’s, Clementi’s, or Hawkins’s. Stephanie’s structured activities began opening us up to our own assumptions and experiences as well as to the vast legacy of cultural trauma the produced one 11 year-old boy’s violence and anger. We thus populated the space between the bookends with ideas large and small, visceral and expository. Our reading of All American Boys will continue to inform our discussion of the same issues we found in Yummy. Though two decades separate the texts’ tales, the similarities between them and the tunekt cultural occurrences surrounding them demand our passionate attention.

My YA students will bookend again in April when we study The Catcher in the Rye (1951) and The Bell Jar (1963). I imagine our discussions will center on expectations placed on young men and women at the beginning of the Cold War. Holden Caulfield and Esther Greenwood are literary kin, sharing separate journeys that put them in direct opposition to social mores in post-World War II America. In the space between these two novels, then, we will study the psyches that their shared socialization process produces. We will do this, I hope, to problematize and situate “deviant” behavior, to diagnose our protagonists, and to understand their utter desperation in a decade that gave us the suburbs, the classic American Dream, “juvenile delinquency,” the Corvette, the execution of the Rosenbergs, and the McCarthy trials. This sort of study, interdisciplinary by necessity, will take us into informational and media texts that will refine our understanding of the era and its designs on adolescents in--and out of--these novels. And, again, in the process we will learn how to meet governing agencies’ standards while creating the sort of engagement that results from reading age-appropriate literature and developing deeper reading and writing skills.

Putting texts into dialog and using pedagogical strategies to illustrate the interplay between them, inviting collaborators to the table to work alongside us in that space, and returning to the bookends that delineate a critical frame of reference have offered me exciting new teaching prospects in recent months. I am so keen on the idea of bookending that I’ve even devised my summer YA course’s reading list with it in mind. I wonder what you are thinking as you read through my ideas and consider the YA texts I have chosen. What texts do you bookend in your classes, YA or otherwise? What are your suggestions for additions? Maybe there are classroom strategies you use to foment discussion in the space between bookended texts? In the coming months of study and practice, I hope to find that bookending, like YA, is an entirely appropriate tool for the important work at hand. There should be no “seashammers,” red soup pots as planters, or planters serving as bookends in one’s teaching toolbox, right?

Thanks Angela. Angela can be contacted at [email protected].

If you are in the Las Vegas area, please consider joining us at our March 5th event described in the flier below.

Dr. Steve Bickmore
Creator and Curator

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

Dr. Gretchen Rumohr
Co-Curator

Gretchen Rumohr is a professor of English and writing program administrator at Aquinas College, where she teaches writing and language arts methods. She is also a Co-Director of the UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. She lives with her four girls and a five-pound Yorkshire Terrier in west Michigan.

Bickmore's
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Meet
Evangile Dufitumukiza!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogs to Follow

Ann Trousdale link

3/1/2016 06:14:34 am

Steve, this is brilliant. What an exciting and engaging practice.
Makes me want to dis-retire!

Taylor Smith

4/4/2016 09:10:35 am

The concept of bridging is a foreign concept to me. Bookending works such as "All American Boys" and "Yummy" are important in understanding the various and diverse aspects of the African American community in today's society and the challenges black youth face in America from various government and adult authorities.
Bookending works with these two works by highlighting the various aspects as stated before. But it also works by allowing students and young adult readers to compare and contrast the two works to see how Yummy responds and handles his environment as compared to Rashad; both encounter the authorities on counts of stealing, of which Yummy is obviously guilty and Rashad is innocent. Bookending these works and how black youth are expected to behave based on adult authorities in their respective communities shape how they respond to said authorities and adhere (or don't adhere to) social constructs such as the law. I especially enjoyed bookending these works not only because it gave me a better understanding of these two communities but also how it allowed me to understand what issues black teenagers face in America.

Makatelyn Shepherd

3/27/2016 12:10:54 pm

Out of all the years I have been studying English as a Major, the concept of bridging was a very new term for me when introduced in my Young Adult Literature class. I never knew there was a term to explain comparing, or in this case, bridging two texts. I do agree that this concept helps aid students in understanding a text that was not written specifically for them. Mainly because the first two texts we were asked to bookend were totally based on the lives of two male African Americans. I found this interesting because there is not one African American male within our YA class. This challenged us as students to not only accept a different genre, but to also engage in critical thinking about the two texts itself and the wide spectrum of dialog that bookending forces us to make. I do also believe that bookending has helped myself and students locate those spaces within a text that can be immediately classified as one of the many concepts that can be discussed with bookending.
The critical collaboration given to us by Ms. Jones was very memorable. Not only did she give insight on bookending with the text Yummy and All American Boys. She took the concept bookending and along with examples of injustice and social issues she explained how bookending also opens up other concepts such as racial trauma for example, like previously mentioned. The idea of making us draw our own adaptation of “ The Family Circus” as it related to Yummy made me understand the text so much more. It was interesting to see how everyone had different ideas to what the story meant or said to them. I do remember Shelby’s drawing because it was so simple and yet spoke so loud. I agree that it manifested Yummy’s life very well. This activity made me realize that no single person, or student, will ever have the same critical idea when it relates to a text. Which is what makes bookending so interesting to me.
Bookending can definitely range from large to small ideas, and even those ideas that may not make much sense at first, until discussion is opened. I am very grateful to have a professor that takes the time to chose the books we will read as a means of critical thinking rather than just comprehending. I have learned from reading and studying in the past that it is definitely true when students are forced to read based solely to comprehend, more than most will never truly comprehend the text as the author intended. Bookending is that concept that challenges the student to think critically and expand beyond the comfort zone of comprehension. I suggest and encourage students to remember the bookending concept when reading; it definitely helps with dissecting the text and understanding Young Adult literature a little bit more.

Holly Morton

3/27/2016 06:53:15 pm

Makatelyn, like you, I had never been introduced to this concept with such a specific name and purpose. While the idea of bridging and comparing texts has come up both in my professional and academic career, I had never been given such a clear intent for it. What you said about students never having the same critical idea really struck a chord for me. As a teacher, I think that it can be easy to get caught up in the temptation to have students get the "correct" answer in regards to the literature we read. However, it is so important that we allow students to engage with the literature in the scope of their own experience. This is just as important when it come to students being successful in truly bookending the texts with their own experience. What do you think the implications are when we, as teachers, are called upon to teach students the correct way to analyze literature? Are our good intentions at odds with the fact that we have to prepare them for standardized tests that do have "correct" answers?

3/27/2016 09:03:31 pm

Thank you so much Ms. Morton! I honestly believe the only way a student will correctly analyze a piece of literature is if the teacher correctly engages the student with all aspects of the text. As Dr. Insenga mentioned when Ms. Jones came to visit, we were asked to draw what we thought as an introduction to the bookending concept. As a fifth year college student I must admit, drawing does not get me as excited as it once did when in grade school, however such activities force students to think outside the box. Most teachers only consider the hands on teaching method to be strictly associated with arts & crafts and I have to disagree. Hands on could mean finding a different way to approach a text rather than the standard analysis questions you ask when reading any text for comprehension. Considering the many concepts introduced in YA, we have to think about who and what YA targets; young adults. I believe once teachers realize who the audience is meant for, only then will engagements of discussion reach new heights. From this student will remember discussion better when those test and the answers resent themselves.

Savannah Ballenger

3/28/2016 09:10:12 am

Makatelyn,
Like you I have never heard of the concept bookending until our class. Like you I also agree that this concept will help in aiding students in better understanding texts that was not written specifically for them. It is sad to say but before your mention of not having any African-American male students in the classroom, that I did not realize this fact. I had a hard time connecting to the two materials and thanks to Dr. Insenga's introduction and Ms. Jones lesson of book ending, it made me see examples of the injustice and racial trauma that exists in our society as well as others that like my not noticing in the classroom, of things that maybe we intentionally or unintentionally overlook in society. The concept of book ending makes these circumstances take a forefront in my mind and makes me really analyze the occurrences of the text.

Abbie Smith

3/28/2016 11:42:53 am

Makatelyn,
I also am new to the term "bookending." However, the concept itself is both logical and (in my experience) very effective. I think it is a great idea to bridge a classic with a more accessible YA text. Not only will bookending help students better understand the meaning of both the classic and the bridge text, but it will also help keep the students interested. Furthermore, when I was in high school and my teachers would practice this, I would find the classic much less daunting after I began reading it and realized the connections to the earlier bookend text.

Irisha Boyd link

3/28/2016 12:01:21 pm

Hello Makatelyn! Much like yourself, prior to being introduced to the bridging concept in our Young Adult Literature class, I had never been exposed to this concept before. The idea of reading novels with central themes but at opposite ends of the spectrum is an brilliant idea to get readers thinking about the space in between the readings such as the causes and effects, while requiring students to dissect the different text for analytical thinking. As you have mentioned, in our literature class there is not one single African American male (which I did not even notice as we were assigned the readings), therefore during the group discussions surrounding these readings, we were all sort of "forced" to place ourselves in the shoes of the victims (yes I am referring to Yummy as a victim) to analyze their feelings, actions, circumstances and overall life as a black male. Although aware of the battles that black males face living in a society where racism, police brutality, stereotypical perceptions and invisible boundary lines is still prevalent, "Yummy" and "All American Boys" put things into perspective for me. This is an awesome concept to implement when introducing students to concepts, materials and ideas that are new to them in which they have yet to be exposed to. The bridging concept along with class discussions definitely helps readers to gain insight into different perspectives, relate and connect themes, and brings awareness to unfamiliar circumstances, events and interactions.

Angela

3/30/2016 10:27:33 am

Some great points here. Remember, though, bridging is not the same as bookending.

3/27/2016 07:12:28 pm

As I've been considering the concept of bookending and the implications that it might have within my own classroom, I've been thinking of the practicality of being able to introduce this to my own students. This idea is definitely something that I want to introduce into my ninth grade literature class, but there are some roadblocks to being able to effectively do that. First of all, the set curriculum makes this more difficult in a high school classroom. I like the concept of bookending with non-fiction and shorter texts.Creating those connections to our longer literature allows the students to cover a myriad of material and standards all while deeply engaging with the concepts and themes that are important. As Dr. Insenga stated, the implementation of the common core standards begs for an approach to be taken in which students are asked to engage with both non-fiction as well as fiction texts. I'll have to agree that bookending is a more appropriate way to do this thank bridging. Another aspect of teaching using the bookending method that I wonder about is the notion of cross-curricular or cross-grade level bookending. I would be fascinated to hear about or even try ideas in which I was able to bookend materials from my class with the same concepts that might be taught in a history or science class at similar times. That's another thing that the common core standards emphasize and I think that it plays well with this concept. With a good deal of collaborative effort, I do believe that students could be introduced to concepts in ways that they are able to engage with both the literature and the world around them.

Overall, I find the notions of bookending to be much stronger in the common core element of education. This is definitely a concept that I will look to bring not only into my classroom, but into classrooms throughout my building

Hadley Newman

3/28/2016 08:49:51 am

Ms. Morton,
I absolutely agree with you that this would be a concept that I would bring into my classroom as a whole. I had never heard of cross grade book ending before however and find it both interesting as well as a challenge to the traditional. I also agree with you that sometimes the standards places on us as teachers make it very difficult to adequately be able to use this strategy, and yet I do agree that it would be helpful in terms of connecting short stories to longer works.

3/28/2016 12:08:08 pm

Book ending across the grade levels is a really great way to introduce new concepts. It's definitely something that I would say is contingent on a few factors. First of all, I would say that this is best done in a group that has the same standards. For example, grades 9-10 share the same Georgia Standards of Excellence in English. Because of that, it works really well to weave the texts that we read together. In ninth grade literature we read an abridged version of The Odyssey which we like to bookend with much more detailed instruction of the heroes journey in tenth grade world literature. The concepts that students learn in ninth grade come back and are explored in depth in their tenth grade classes. This does a couple of things: it allows us to focus more on reading comprehension and analysis with literature terms in the ninth grade and it allows our tenth grade team to take a more informed analytical approach. It works very well if you're at a school that does vertical planning, which I highly recommend!

Leah Mirabella

3/29/2016 05:50:17 am

Holly, I was thinking more last night about the nonfiction texts I encountered in my high school experience after our discussion in class. When reading MacBeth, my teacher bookended it with the Bill Bryson's, Shakespeare: The World as Stage. While this book is a biography, it delves into the mystery or maybe even "myth" of Shakespeare. It was extremely interesting, and the book was written in such a way that kept even those uninterested in Shakespeare's plays interested in his life story--or lack of one. We looked at all of the conspiracies surrounding the most famous playwright in history. We also watched Roland Emerich's film Anonymous. Bookending by including nonfiction texts does not have to be boring; instead, it can serve to add relevance to the fictional texts. It brings to life the dusty pages of novels, plays, and poems that came long before our students' lifetimes.

Irene Calvache

4/5/2016 09:38:31 pm

Leah, this makes me think of our class discussion about non-fiction texts, such as the article, in conjunction with Patricia Mccormick's Sold. Nonfiction texts can provide background information, solidity or relativity to what students read, rather than remaining as these foreign, abstract ideas put on paper. And you're right, it doesn't have to be boring, it can breathe new life, or illuminate clarity for what they read.

3/28/2016 08:53:31 am

The concept of book ending became a new one for me. I had never had someone show me a good example of book ending or making it work. I do feel it could be very handy when addressing a text that students make not be familiar with, much like when ms. Insenga speaks about 10 things I hate about you and the taming of the Shrew. I wasn't able to make a connection with a harder text until I found one I could relate to on a deeper level. This idea becomes one that I know I can use in my classroom when I begin my teaching career and also one that will allow me to help students to better understand concepts that may not be familiar. I feel that book ending come in especially handy in the context of a classic in relation to a group of people that may not care. It causes you to understand the roots to understand the whole

3/28/2016 09:21:35 am

Hadley,
I also feel like this concept is a great idea to incorporate in the classroom and should be introduced I feel around the high school level, when in my case a lot of the classics are taught. I totally agree that this can help students relate to a much harder text if accompanied by something that they can relate to on a deeper level. I like your mention of needing to understand the roots to be able to understand the whole. And like in Yummy and All American Boys, as in Ms Jones lesson, what had to take place for these works of literature to become a need to be talked about.

3/28/2016 12:34:49 pm

HI Hadley,
Within your post, I see that you mentioned bookending as a great concept for introducing classic novels to students that may not be interested in reading the material. I strongly agree with your thoughts here and believe that teachers should also incorporate group discussions along with this technique so that students are able to share their personal thoughts, perspectives and gain insight as to how others view and analyze the same readings which may differ from theirs. In another posting on this blog titled "Young Adult Literature Set in Urban Spaces" a studying educator mentioned that it may be challenging for teachers to grasp the attention of non-urban students living in rural and suburban areas when reading novels in which they cannot relate to. When I initially read this, I thought about the bookending concept and how Dr. Insenga implemented this concept when having us to read "Yummy" and "All American Boys". By providing books surrounding the same concepts and themes but from opposite ends of the spectrum, students are provided with various perspectives which allows more students to be able to relate to the readings. Although some students may not be directly affected by things going on in the world around them, it is still important that we as educators make a point to inform students of the lives, cultural practices racial battles, poverty and the invisible law of segregation that still exist. Overall, bookends is a wonderful concept to use for high school students to bridge the gaps between novels from different time periods, settings and authors which share the same themes and concepts.

Marla Williams

3/29/2016 10:42:35 am

Hadley,

I agree! I had also never heard of the concept of book ending, but I find it very interesting and see it being very helpful for me as I enter the secondary education environment. I feel that bookending is also a great way to integrate nonfiction texts into the classroom as we discussed a bit in class last night. Bookending is not only a great tool in helping the students connect with the texts, but it's also a great tool for teacher's to utilize in making time to cover all required Standards.

Nia Washington

3/29/2016 07:47:59 pm

Same! Book endings is new for me as well. I think book endings would have helped me a lot in the past and I know it could help students in the future. I think often times students (like me) read a series of books throughout the semester and never make a connection between them but by introducing the concept of book endings students would be able to connect common themes to each book, not making the readings so pointless. Book endings are also a great way for students to brainstorm their own ideas about common themes; this offers a student an opportunity to explore their own ideas about what book endings are and how they work.

4/5/2016 09:47:59 pm

Hadley,

Like you, I had never heard of book ending before either, but I, too, see that there is great value in using this to help students better understand concepts and themes. Indeed, there are many texts that, while may be "canonical", can be difficult for students to relate to, or perhaps dry language may hinder them from connecting or understanding the text and its themes at all. Incorporating YA texts, or even nonfiction texts can really help students delve deeper into their understanding of the material, even for students that, like you said, may just not even care. You say, "it causes you to understand the roots to understand the whole," and that is so true.

3/28/2016 09:16:41 am

The concept of book ending is something that I had not heard of before Dr. Insenga's class. In her blog post, the idea of book ending The Lottery and The Hunger Games is something that really interests me and I wish we had the chance to have had that as a part of our lessons. However, when we discussed the bookends of Yummy and All American Boys, she introduced a part of our society that I hear on the news, but do not have a personal connection with. Like I mentioned in our small groups the night Ms. Jones presented, my child is bi-racial and while I do not know what it is like to go through the struggles that African Americans have to endure, books like these help me to understand some of the struggles and situations others endure.

3/28/2016 10:42:29 am

I really like the idea of "bookending," especially when used to "bridge to the classics" as you mentioned. I think a lot of young readers struggle with the classics because of the difficult vocabulary and/or subject matter. However, when bridged with an easier, more accessible text, these students might appreciate the classic texts they read much more. I love the idea of connecting Seed with 1984 and "10 Things I Hate About You" with The Taming of the Shrew. While I believe that these classics are very important for students to read, I think it is also imperative for students to experience texts that are relatable to their lives. The practice of bookending classics with more modern YA lit is a wonderful idea to effectively bring both concepts into the classroom.

Brianne Strohbeck

3/28/2016 01:13:23 pm

Like you, Abbie, I find the practice of "bookending" very effective. It allows students to bridge the classics to more relatable texts. I especially enjoyed the link between "The Lottery" and The Hunger Games. This not only bridges themes but also genres--short story to YA novel. I plan to use this technique in my future classroom, and I belive my students will definitely benefit from this concept.

Jennifer Bolden

3/28/2016 06:07:26 pm

I agree with you Abbie. I have had trouble teaching Shakespeare to students. They have trouble with the subjects and vocabulary. If it were paired with something more modern, it would help their understanding of the concepts and help them relate more to the literature.

Jessica Shaw

3/29/2016 08:53:52 am

Abbie, I agree that the “classics” can be daunting to the young adult reader. I think it is imperative to make these texts more accessible to students by way of connecting them to books/films in which they are interested. The concept of bookending is brilliant in that in touches on both genres. It also paves the way for students to view films and other genres in terms of their literary value and contributions.

Tabitha Golden

3/29/2016 01:10:23 pm

Abbie,

I like the idea of bookending young adult literature to classics. This concept wasn't around in my high school days, and I believe that more students would have enjoyed and understood Shakespeare and others with this method.

3/29/2016 07:54:21 pm

Aaaah yes Shakespeare! I know when I was in high school I was very discouraged when reading Shakespeare because it seemed so dated, which did not strike up any interest in me or other students. I think comparing a very dated text like Shakespeare to something more modern would allow students to understand it a little more without having to look up what everything means. This is also a good way for teachers to see how critically their students are thinking. If students are making very surface level connections then it is the teachers job to step in and show students to look beneath the surface at what is not being told.

3/29/2016 05:38:04 am

While the official term "bookending" is new to me, I've come to realize that my teachers in high school and professors in college have definitely utilized this. I brought up in discussion last night about my 12th grade teacher bookending Heart of Darkness with The Poisonwood Bible. Heart of Darkness was extremely hard for me and my classmates to get through; The Poisonwood Bible helped bridge the gap for us. That text made Conrad's heavy and saturated classic something easily tangible when looked through the lens of The Poisonwood Bible. I remember looking at the discussions of "light" and "dark" in both text, and we also throughly discussed the imperialist philosophy surrounding the texts. In my Literature by Women class at UWG, my professor bookended The Vindication of the Rights of a Woman with Tina Fey's Bossy Pants (both nonfiction texts) to see how feminism has evolved over the years (or how it hasn't). She also paired The Babadook (a horror film) with The Handmaid's Tale to highlight the topic of motherhood and its relationship to identification. There are so many options when it comes to bookending, and it really challenges teachers to engage their students in a new and different way.

3/29/2016 07:36:04 am

Like many of you, the concept of bookending is new to me. However, for an aspiring teacher it is an exciting one because of its potentiality. I can recall being a high school student and not relating to the majority of texts we were reading in English class. This distance can be reconciled for future students through bookending. Disinterested readers, who may view classic texts as outdated and boring, may reconsider their value if teachers can connect their themes, content, characters, and plots with popular adolescent texts/films such as The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, Twilight, etc. Bookending also enables students to analyze ways in which literature, like history, repeats itself. Storylines and themes evolve through time however often involve similar tropes and representations. For example, in my 18th Century British Literature course, we recently completed Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. As a class we discussed similarities between this epistolary novel and the E. L. James’ modern-day trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey. One comparison is that the protagonist is a young, innocent, lower-class female who is entranced by a powerful, wealthy rake who desires her sexually. Therefore, bookending can accommodate students not only in the secondary classroom but also in the college setting.

Ashley Roberson

3/29/2016 01:02:10 pm

This is a new concept to me too. I have never experienced bookending in any secondary English class that I was in. There really is a problem, as you said, with students thinking the older texts are boring and not relateble. I feel this method would lessen this sentiment among students.

Steven T. Bickmore

3/29/2016 09:27:20 am

Thanks for the great string of comments.

Jasmine Day-Duncan

3/29/2016 10:03:36 am

Bookending is new for me. Like Makatelyn stated that she did not know that there was a tem for comparing two novels, I had no idea that there was a term for that either, until entering Dr. Insenga's YA Literature classroom.
Bookending is a great concept that pushes people, well it pushed me. Bookending pushed me to go beyond my tunnel vision while reading a novel and break it down more and to ask more questions. I remember the day that Ms. Jones came to the class and did a critical collaboration and it was one of the best teaching styles I had ever seen. They way she engaged us with the "bubble drawing" of Yummy's Family circle was very unique, I think because it opened up the window to see at that time in Yummy's life the trauma that he was subjected too. Her way of teaching bookending, as well as, Dr. Insenga's teaching challenged me to analyze in a different manner. Bookending helps bring to light all the things that were hidden, it helps you read between the lines.

3/29/2016 01:06:23 pm

Jasmine,

I agree that bookending really helps the reader to get past the surface level and dig deeper into the books and their value as a pair. The engagement with the bubble drawing of Yummy was interesting and I thought having students get up and move some really engages students as well. I think this would be great in an high school environment where students are often tired of trying to be still and sit at attention.

3/29/2016 12:57:03 pm

Bookending is a brilliant idea that I have just discovered in this very class. I've never been in any class where this was done, and I find that very unfortunate. I feel like bookending is something more educators should put into practice, because it is hard for kids to grasp literature if they feel they have no relation to it. This method of pairing two similar texts written during different periods would help students to understand themes present in books that are considered part of the canon. I hope to use this method and encourage others to use this strategy with their students.

Morgan Luellen

4/13/2016 07:57:07 pm

Ashley,

Hi! It is very unfortunate that such a useful tool has been buried for so long. However, I am grateful to apply this tool to my future classes. Book-ending is efficient and easy which is an super plus! This strategy is the evolution of simple compare and contrast.

3/29/2016 01:02:50 pm

In Dr. Insenga's class is the first place that I heard about bookending. As a nineties high school student many of the English teaching concepts are different from my experience. I only remember reading the classics along with an occasional film adaptation. I think the influx of young adult literature into the classroom is brilliant, and bookending is a great way to use the young adult books to tie into ideas from the classics. In the past, it seems, that the method of using two books always came with a compare and contrast essay. Looking at what is the same or different is an important element of examination; however, I feel that bookending goes much deeper than that. I really enjoyed the visiting professor Dr. Jones class. She was engaging and helped me to understand a new way of looking at Yummy by asking how did he get there.

Shelby

4/6/2016 10:05:03 am

Tabitha,

I also really enjoyed Dr. Jones' lecture. I also found it especially interesting and important that she had us consider the "before." Dr. Insenga talks about looking at the space between two bookended texts, but Dr. Jones also emphasized that sometimes we have to go back before even our first bookend in order to adequately understand the space in between.

Reanna Callahan

3/30/2016 08:19:54 pm

Thinking back to all the years that I have read books in classes I do not think any of my teachers ever used the technique of bookending and if they did use it they never clearly linked texts together in order for us to have better understanding. I think bookending is a marvelous technique. It really allows for the reader to link and to understand two different texts. I think if more teachers used bookendng techniques when reading complex novels then it would not only help the students to better understand but it would also help students to become better readers.

Randy Anderson

4/6/2016 08:16:07 am

My favorite thing about the concept of bookending is that it need not be applied in "official" capacity. Realistically, there isn't always time in that 90 minute Lit or ELA class to open up an newer text in order to expand upon an older one, but there are chances to use bookending to connect nonetheless. If there is that one or two students having trouble connecting to a work, bookending can be used in a conversational way to help them better understand. Not connecting to Hamlet? You've seen the Lion King, right?
The ideal situation is of course having the ability to introduce a new text to the whole class, but even in small doses bookending can be invaluable.

Shelby Hearn

4/6/2016 09:56:19 am

One of the most interesting things about our class discussions on bridging and bookending for me has been looking back on my own secondary English classes. Bridging was often employed in my classrooms (did anyone else watch _She's the Man_ during their Shakespeare unit?) but I can't think of a time where a professor chose to bookend two texts in the way we did with _Yummy_ and _All American Boys_. But I've found that this particular strategy is really valuable when discussing social issues in the classroom.

The key to this strategy is not so much the bookends themselves but the space left to explore in-between. I think if either of these texts were taught as stand alone pieces then students would miss out on valuable learning opportunities. It would be easy to address the issues present in _Yummy_ as things that happened two decades ago, but with _All American Boys_ as its other bookend you see how these issues have evolved and shifted, but there is no way you could say they have been solved.

4/6/2016 11:48:24 am

While bookending is a new concept to me and many of you I think this is a helpful tool for our future teachers of the world. This idea that two texts from two different eras, backgrounds, etc. can be paired together to compliment each others similar themes is brilliant! This also allows students to connect with certain texts that otherwise would be hard to understand due to its "outdatedness" or complex vocabulary or interpretation.

4/13/2016 07:52:13 pm

Nia,

I totally agree! This concept will continue to evolve and help not only students but educators as well. It forces students to think critically and do more than just simply compare to books. New ideas are always key and the book-ending technique will provoke these actions definitely throughout many classrooms.

4/13/2016 07:47:32 pm

I enjoy the book-ending concept because it will continue to evolve and provoke new ideas in Young Adult literature. As students and educators begin to practice this technique, new ideas will begin to surface because students from today and the future will be able to acknowledge theories that are different yet alike. Book-ending is truly efficient as this concept may forever be utilized throughout classrooms for students allowing educators to expand in a timely manor on certain texts they may really have limited time on. This technique allows students to gain a further understanding of these novels such as the structure or the framework present that these novels may share. Furthermore, book-ending does more than pairing but forces readers/students to witness and observe various familiar relationships by comparing and contrasting while initiating critical conversations throughout the classroom.

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