Current Young Adult British Literature: Student Choice and Engagement

I love this week's guest post. Katie Dredger adds to a growing conversation (thanks again Emily) about teaching YA during a study abroad experience. Katie offers a great description of allowing students choice in their reading while still guiding them in a direction that helps them learn about the country they are exploring. I would love to hear from others who have used young adult literature in study abroad experiences or in settings beyond the traditional college classroom.  

“I was telling this story . . . from my point of view . . . . and then one day, my editor said, “Rukhsana, why don’t you let Rubina, the older sister, tell the story because she’s a more sympathetic character’” (Kahn, 2010, discussing the children’s book Big Red Lollipop)

These sentiments embody some of the work that I attempt to do with students who choose to take Adolescent Literature. When readers critically analyze authors’ craft, and when story tellers look at situations from varied viewpoints, we move toward a more empathetic world. Traditionally, English majors working toward teacher certification are required to pass the course at my university, but this semester I had a different experience in that I had the opportunity to teach Adolescent Literature as an elective while serving as Faculty Member in Residence through James Madison University for a semester in London. I wanted students to embrace the dispositions of lifelong readers while in a new country. Another multifaceted objective was that students examine reading choices through the eyes of a young British reader, to choose a book to read, and to explicitly reflect on the characters that the authors chose to sympathize with. I stopped into the teen section at the local library in East Finchley in the Borough of Barnet to examine the shelves. I lingered in the teen section of Mr. B’s Book Emporium in Bath. I got lost in the Waterstone’s branch, formerly Dillons on Gower Street, on the University of London campus. I found the best vantage point of the large room that makes up Blackwell’s in Oxford. I encouraged my students to explore these and other bookstores, libraries, and internet sites including Book Trust by the Arts Council England. These college students chose a variety of books to read. Some are well-known: some are not. All caught the eye of at least one American college student while living in London. 

Students chose what they read with two parameters, 1) that it might appeal to adolescents today and 2) that it had some connection to our place, England. Here are some of the stories that we explored. Noughts and Crosses, by Malorie Blackman (2005), former children’s laureate of England, flips the narrative of race. Most notable may be the chapter wherein Callum, the white character, asked why he had never heard of historical figures who looked like him as the class studied Garrett Morgan (black inventor of the traffic light and the gas masks used by soldiers in World War I), Charles Drew (who pioneered blood banks), Elijah J. McCoy (inventor and engineer), Dr. Dale Hale Williams (the first to perform open heart surgery), and Matthew Henson (the first of a pair to reach the North Pole). This popular series is also available in graphic novel format.  

Another discovery of my students was Marcus Sedgwick’s Midwinterblood (2013). Sedgwick, a British author earned the Printz in 2014 for his telling of sacrificial love in varied spaces and people. This was intriguing to readers for the fantastical elements and its link to classic visual art. American author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s novel The War That Saved My Life (2013) was also a hit with the students in my course this semester. This novel, set in World War II era England, explores disability, war, friendship, sacrifice, sexuality, and family in a most accessible way. While nothing in my experience this semester speaks of a complete survey course, an exploration of current fiction that appeals to the youth in England would most obviously include J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2016) is a new, (if nearly inaccessible), show playing on the west end of London, so some of the students revisited their Harry Potter memories. In this depiction of the subsequent generation of Hogwarts’ wizards, Hermione Granger is cast as a black woman with Rowling’s full blessing. My students discussed race, racism, and the need for people to actively practice anti-racism. We could see ways that an author, actor, character, or director can bring sympathetic characters to an audience in effective ways. 

Other British authors that you may know intrigued these students. British author Nick Lake explores issues of race, survival, family, friendship, history, and slavery in the 2013 Printz winner In Darkness (2012).  Set in Haiti, gangster Shorty is trapped in the rubble of the 2010 earthquake as the history of a systemically racist cultural history swirls around him. On the lighter side, students discovered Cathy Hopkins’ Mates, Dates, and Inflatable Bras (2007) series for middle grade readers. Light-hearted and fun, Lucy dreams of her first snog while learning about friendship. Students also discovered Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (2008). Neil Gaiman is quirky, mysterious, and edgy. He explores the supernatural in his appealing story modeled after Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Also in graphic novel format, reluctant adolescent readers may love the gruesome opening scene. Libba Bray examines race, class, power, sensuality, and feminism in The Great and Terrible Beauty, set in a boarding school in Victorian England. Flipping the narratives of race, sexuality, settings, and history are ways that authors today are challenging young readers to question the status quo. 

​My students certainly missed titles that I might have chosen and it was difficult to give up control. I was concerned that the reading list didn’t have enough literary merit, or wasn’t representative of the large swath of human existence. I do hope though, that these students will be readers well beyond this course, and will continue to look closely at the ways an author chooses which characters are sympathetic to readers and whose stories are being told.    

An African proverb states that “until the story of the hunt is told by the lion, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Asking our readers to consider the authors, the narrators, and the sympathetic characters in the texts that they read can be a path to empathy. Readers explore stories, and authors can use their characters to flip the expected narrative to one that expands a worldview. I see this exercise as one that could be used in my course next semester when I return home. What happens when I allow students to choose books on their own, instead of giving a set reading list? How can we challenge the British Literature classrooms of the traditional high school senior year with new and engaging texts, used either as ladders to more classic literature or in their own right as ways to teach the skills and dispositions that our discipline requires? 

When I fell in love with British literature as a high school student nearly thirty years ago, I was mesmerized by Tess, Catherine, Jane, Desdemona, and Elizabeth Bennett. When I began teaching, I started to see how unsympathetic these young women were for many of my students and I looked for stories that would appeal to more of them. My supervisor at the time insisted that I teach British literature, but Othello was just a start when talking about issues of otherness. Looking to what real young adults are reading today is a great way that we can be leaders with our colleagues: by following our students. Exploring universal themes and authors’ craft can be done with appealing and engaging books that real teens are picking up today. Because “no story lives unless someone wants to listen” (Rowling, 2011), we must attend carefully what our students, and the characters that they might choose to read, are trying to tell us. 

References
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Kahn, R. (2010). Big Red Lollipop. Penguin USA.
Ratcliff, R. (2016, June). JK Rowling tells of anger at attacks on casting of black Hermione. The Guardian. Retrieved from 
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jun/05/harry-potter-jk--rowling-black-hermione.
Rowling, J.K. (2011). Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,  London Premiere.
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Inspiring Scholarship

Buehler, J. (2005). The power of questions and the possibilities of inquiry in English education. English Education, 37(4), 280-287.
Kittle, P. (2013). Book love: Developing depth, stamina, and passion in adolescent readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Gorski, P. C. (2008). Good intentions are not enough: A decolonizing intercultural education. Intercultural education, 19(6), 515-525.
Hayn, J. A., Kaplan, J. S., & Clemmons, K. R. (2016). Teaching young adult literature today: Insights, considerations, and perspectives for the classroom teacher. Rowman & Littlefield.
Groenke, S. L., & Scherff, L. (2010). Teaching YA lit through differentiated instruction. NCTE, National Council of Teachers of English.
Ivey, G. (2013). Developing an intervention to increase engaged reading among adolescents. In T. Plomp & N. Nievenn (Eds.), Educational Design Research: Introduction and Illustrative Cases, (pp. 235-251). Enschede: SLO, Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development.
Kaywell, J. F. (2000). Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the Classics. Volume 4. Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc., 1502 Providence Highway, Suite 12, Norwood, MA.
Kittle, P. (2013). Book love: Developing depth, stamina, and passion in adolescent readers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Miller, D. (2013). Reading in the wild: The book whisperer's keys to cultivating lifelong reading habits. John Wiley & Sons.
Lesesne, T. S. (2006). Naked reading: Uncovering what tweens need to become lifelong readers. Stenhouse Publishers.
Thomas, P. (2015). Beware the road builders: Literature as resistance. Garn Press.
Wilhelm, Jeffrey D. (1997) “You Gotta BE the Book”: Teaching Engaged and Reflective Reading with Adolescents.  New York: Teachers College Press.

Katie Dredger. is an assistant professor of Adolescent Literacy at James Madison University. She spent her public school teaching career in southern Maryland and earned her Ph.D. from Virginia Tech. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at kdredger.