Sharon Kane has been one most frequent contributors to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. It is great to have her posting again. Before you dive into her current post it is worth the effort to visit some of her earlier posts. They cover a range of topics and they can be found here (a post about waiting for award winners), here (YA about Ada Lovelace), here (about revisiting awards),  here (about space and time in YA literature), and one more about how her students respond to A. S. King's wonderful novel, I Crawl Through It.

In addition, Sharon will be one of the presenters at this year's UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. She was one of the presenters in the first group to visit UNLV in 2018. We hope you are making plans to visit us this year. See the flier below.

Thanks Sharon

Any student in my YA Literature class would tell you that I’m wild about literary awards, not only because so many authors are so deserving of acclaim, and not only because they draw attention to wonderful literature I might not have found on my own, but also because of their pedagogical potential.  I teach YA Lit in the fall, so I look forward each year to introducing my students to the National Book Award process, beginning in mid-September with the announcement of the 10 books chosen for the Longlist in the Young People’s Literature category. We watch book trailers; I gather copies from local public and school libraries; and I invite students to join me in my quest to read as many as I can by the time the list is halved in mid-October when the finalists are announced. We discuss books as we finish them, and we continue following the hype online, in anticipation of the live author readings on the eve of the ceremony where the winners are announced (also live) in mid-November. 

We also follow School Library Journal’s “Pondering Printz” blog, noting the intersection of some of the titles discussed there with those honored by the National Book Foundation, perhaps wondering why some of our own clear favorites are missing. Students commit to checking out the American Library Association’s Youth Media Awards when they are announced during the ALA’s Midwinter convention, even though our class will be over.

The requirements of my course include reading one YA text and one article from The ALAN Review and/or the weekly post on Dr. Bickmore’s YAWednesday blog each week. Students join ALAN, and the culminating assignment is to write a manuscript appropriate for The ALAN Review. (One former student, Derrick Smith, submitted his; “Bringing Fantasy and Science Fiction into the Classroom” was published in Winter, 2012.) In the fall of 2019, I collected drafts right before flying to Baltimore for NCTE, and sent students my “Editor’s Suggestions” during Thanksgiving break. So, when they came in for the last class on December 4 with their final manuscript in hand, they might have thought the course was pretty much finished.
​
Not quite.  I introduced them to the inaugural “ENGLISH 384 Literary Award,” and welcomed them as newly chosen committee members. Their job?  To write the titles of the 13 books they read for our course, rank ordered according to how worthy to win the gold medal they considered them to be. Since there was some choice during our middle weeks, individual lists contained different titles, making our job tricky. But students had at least heard others talking about all the books, so we did the best we could.  I emphasized that I was not asking them to rank the books according to extent they liked them, but rather according to literary merit (which I left undefined). Here are the books, or categories, we played with during the semester:

​Week 1.  The Nest, by Kenneth Oppel

Week 2. Goodbye Stranger, by Rebecca Stead

Week 3.  We Were Liars, by E. Lockhart 

Week 4. Jason Reynolds author study. Choices included the NBA finalist, Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks.        

Week 5.  WW II—Resistance theme. Nonfiction choices, including Phillip Hoose’s The Boys who Challenged Hitler and Patricia McCormick’s The Plot to Kill Hitler: Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Unlikely Hero, were popular, as was the graphic novel treatment of Bonhoeffer in Faithful Spy, by John Hendrix. The historical novel in verse White Rose, by Kip Wilson, was offered.          

Week 6. National Book Award Choice (selected from this year’s Longlist and a number of previous winners and finalists)    

​Week 7.  WW II—Escape theme. Choices included Deborah Heiligman’s Torpedoed: The True Story of the WW II Sinking of “The Children’s Ship,” Gavriel Savit’s Anna and the Swallow Man, and Ruth Sepetys’s Salt to the Sea, among others.          

​Week 8.  Neal Shusterman author study. The discovery of Scythe was a high point in the course; one student, Kaitlyn, came in with a scythe she had made from cardboard and foil as her response.  

​Week 9.  Ability/Disability/Difference theme. Readers could choose to read about characters facing physical challenges, in books such as Padma Venkatraman’s A Time to Dance, or emotional challenges in texts such as Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay and Laurie Halse Anderson’s The Impossible Knife of Memory and Shout. (Of course, all the books show the complexities that break down that artificial and misleading physical/mental dichotomy.)             

Week 10.  Romance theme—Students found love around the world as they read choices including When Dimple Met Rishi, by Sandhya Menon, and S.K. Ali’s Love from A to Z. They read about hardship, obstacles, and pain if they chose Sara Farizan’s If You Could be Mine, or Daniel Handler’s Why We Broke Up. And what could Walt Whitman be doing in a contemporary romance? We Contain Multitudes, by Sarah Henstra, supplied the answer.   

Week 11. Experimental Fiction. Before I gave book talks for A.S. King’s I Crawl through It, Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle, and Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap, I showed a visual of Andrew Smith wearing a t-shirt reading “Keep YA Weird.” Pet, a 2019 NBA finalist by Akwaeki Emezi, was chosen by some readers.             

Week 12.  New Adult Literature. Choices in this category targeting older teens and twenty-somethings included Elizabeth Acevedo’s With the Fire on High, where high school senior Emoni  juggles aspirations for a career as a chef with her responsibilities as a parent of a toddler. Cath, the college freshman featured in Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, is a character several students said would stay with them for a long time.  

​Week 13.  All the Crooked Saints, by Maggie Stiefvater.       

After students finished working silently to rank their books, I asked them to write a rationale for their top choice. My final prompt was, “Which character you met this semester has had the strongest impact on you, or will stay with you the longest?”
​
I divided the class into 2 groups so that we could work as committees of about 10 members, since a whole class committee would be unwieldy. One committee, with Michaela as the newly appointed chair, went out to the hall to deliberate.  They were told to come back when they had a Gold Medal winner and 2 or 3 finalists. I gave little direction in terms of how to proceed or what criteria to use. They would decide whether to work through discussion toward consensus, or to vote, or to find a unique formula.  I stayed in our classroom with the rest. 

Our group, Committee One, began by listening to everyone giving their top choice, along with a rationale. Here’s an example from Anna:

​Some students chose a book because the topic was timely and important; others talked about a book’s structure or style or language or characters. We noted how hard it was to compare middle grade books to those targeting older teens. Everyone listened respectfully to their fellow committee members; no one tried to pressure others into changing positions. Quite naturally, it seemed, some books that readers could agree on rose to the top, and our group was satisfied with this outcome:

Gold: E. Lockhart's We Were Liars

Silver: Jason Reynold’s Ghost; Kenneth Oppel’s The Nest; and Neal Shusterman’s Unwind

​In walked Committee Two.  They announced their decision: 

The Gold: Neal Schusterman's Unwind.

Silver: Awarded to The Nest by Kenneth Oppel and We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

So close! But my students have learned that there’s no such thing as a tie when it comes to literary awards. (This is not universally true, but did apply to all the awards we had studied.)  We could have, we would have, somehow eliminated one of our Golden choices, except………………………

The college clock struck seven.  Our class, as well as our course, was over. It was time for my wonderful, gold medal-deserving group of YA literature enthusiasts to disband.  I think they may have been relieved that the competition ended before any hearts were crushed with disappointment. We left the room, feeling like winners.
​
Special thanks to these passionate reviewers and award committee members: Alyssa, Michaela, Megan, Anna, Kaitlyn, Kim, Trent, Lizzy, Victoria, Matthew, Natalie, Alli, Jenna, Rasheed, Liz, Ethan, Sierra, David, Stephanie, Erin, and Marlana. 

Until next time.

Another week and another new contributor to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. I meet Kate Kedley a few years ago. I was immediately impressed by Kate's energy and complete engagement in activities that are important to their research. Kate spent several years in Honduras and is fluent in Spanish. This week Kate asks us to engage more directly in YA Literature that accurately address the immigrant experience.  Now, it is Kate's turn.

Last November, I acquired an advance copy of the now infamous novel American Dirt (Cummins, 2020) at NCTE in Baltimore; it was handed to me as I weaved my way through the hoard of teachers in the exhibition hall. I hadn’t heard of the book, and it soon sat on my campus bookshelf along with the other couple of dozen or so books I brought home. My students claimed some of the books, and thumbed through others, but American Dirt remained.  In December, I read a critique of American Dirt by author Myiram Gurba (@lesbrains) entitled Pendeja You Ain't Steinbeck, and then followed the ensuing controversy on social media.
 
The post-Gurba discussion can be with engaged with on NPR Latino USA, (and Vulture and The Guardian), and these sites are thorough in ways I won’t elaborate on here. Briefly, American Dirt is about a migrant fleeing Mexico and heading towards the US on top of La Bestia, the freight trains migrants ride on their way north through Mexico. Cummins was critiqued for her lack of research for the book, her naivete about Mexican Spanish and culture, and her glorification of violence in the main character’s journey, with some calling it "trauma porn." The conversation has called for more diversity in publishing, more solidarity with #OwnVoices authors, and more responsibility for (white, cisgender, heterosexual) authors in terms of researching and respecting marginalized characters or communities before writing them into books. Furthermore, the hashtag #DignidadLiteraria was used to call for more representation of Latino authors in the publishing industry.

Central American-Americans (@DichosdeunBicho) on social media brought up the very obvious, but nearly entirely ignored fact that it is Central Americans who travel on the dangerous train La Bestia ,and not typically Mexican migrants. Why is this so, and why is it so obvious?  Because Central Americans are undocumented in Mexico, and thus, are not allowed to travel there without prior permission; this is why the La Bestia exists – so Central American migrants can avoid the Mexican immigration enforcement for a two-thousand mile journey in Mexico, BEFORE they reach the US-Mexico border, where they then must avoid US immigration enforcement. 

How does this anecdote, coupled with the American Dirt controversy, relate to young adult literature?  I wouldn’t categorize American Dirt as young adult literature, except it was handed to me at the NCTE annual meeting, and it was labeled a “Grapes of Wrath for our time…” Thus, this text will be in secondary classrooms and in the hands of youth. At the end of this essay, I offer five alternative young adult texts that represent the realities of immigration written by authors in communities who migrate.

Through young adult literature, readers are exposed to #OwnVoices and other diverse texts and authors. With a book about immigration, young adults are reading a narrative to set alongside public discourses about migrant caravans and border walls. Are we, as teachers, educators, and readers of young adult literature, doing enough to ensure that youth are ALSO engaging with the way our government’s policies and social conversations impact real people on individual and personal levels? We can exchange American Dirt for a young adult title with a better representation of migration to the US.  We can curate diverse books for our classrooms, ask critical questions of our students, and challenge youth and ourselves to think deeply about immigration. This is all essential work by academics, educators, teachers, and students. What I would like to add to this conversation is how we can – as citizens of the world – broaden our applications of praxis through reading young adult literature. 

​Two weeks ago, I spent a Sunday afternoon with a family of twelve immigrants who live near me.  I have been close with their family for fifteen years, both those who live in Central America (I lived in Honduras for four years), and those who live in the US. Three of them rode on La Bestia. Five of them have no paperwork and are undocumented. Two have standing deportation orders, and work very hard at staying in the shadows. One of them had la migra (ICE) looking for them in January, and has been hiding in an alternative location since. None of them had heard of the #OwnVoices movement in young adult literature. Zero had read American Dirt or knew of the controversy about its publication. 

Our government officials and our institutions act boldly and decisively in order to deter, oppress, and marginalize immigrants and immigrant communities. As teachers of young adult literature, we should be offering diverse selections of young adult books, asking hard questions, engaging in difficult discussions.  But we also need to model praxis, or informed consciousness and collective action against social injustices, and should move beyond the four walls of a classroom, a careful selection of diverse books, or thoughtful questions. Young adult literature – as a political text in the classroom – should build a critical consciousness that is actively alive. We must engage and advocate in socially just ways with the people in our communities, especially those we read about in order to fulfill needs for a diverse curriculum. Our students, and readers of young adult literature, must learn that collective action is an essential part of a critical consciousness and an integral part of their identity-construction as a reader. ​

As long as there are Central American migrants tear-gassed on our border by our law enforcement, it isn’t enough to just read their stories. Class discussions and literature circles are a good start, but we also have a moral imperative to speak out boldly and act upon such injustices as ICE arresting hundreds of people last week in New Jersey, or an ICE agent shooting an immigrant in the face last week in New York.
 
How can we foster praxis through young adult literature? Ideally, readers would decide what praxis looks like for them in each setting, through a process of collective and responsible critical conscious-building.  Perhaps, after reading a book about immigrant experiences, readers might investigate school policies that could make the space unwelcoming to immigrant families, or plan a meeting with lawmakers about federal immigration law and advocate for sanctuary spaces. After engaging with LGBTQ young adult literature, perhaps readers will see and act upon a lack of gender neutral bathrooms in city buildings or in the school.
 
We must commit to making a connection between young adult literature and direct action upon social injustices. Our students’ identity as a reader must include a critical consciousness component, where reading prompts a critical understanding of a topic. This allows readers to build an active critical consciousness that works for and engages with the humanity of our communities.
 
Gracias al poeta Omar, mis hermanos Guato y G.L., y mi prima Grecia por la plactica sobre el tema

Until next time.
* Neither Kate nor I think American Dirt deserves any more undue attention when there are so many other, authentic options.

Dr. Kate Kedley can be reached at: ​kedley@rowan.edu

​En noviembre pasado, adquirí una copia de la novela que ahora tiene un nivel de infame, American Dirt (Cummins, 2020) en una conferencia de pedagogía y literatura; me la entregaron mientras caminaba entre profesores en la sala de exposiciones. No había escuchado del libro, y pronto se quedo en mi escritorio junto con las otras dos docenas de libros que traje a casa. Mis alumnos recogieron algunos de los libros, pero American Dirt quedo. En diciembre, leí una crítica quejada de American Dirt del autor Myiram Gurba (@lesbrains) titulada Pendeja No Eres Steinbeck, y luego busque la controversia que siguió en las redes sociales.
 
La discusión después lo de Gurba puede estar encontrado en NPR Latino USA (y Vulture y The Guardian), y estos sitios son exhaustivos en formas que no podría detallar aquí. Brevemente, American Dirt se trata de un migrante que huye de México y se camina hacia los Estados Unidos en la cima de La Bestia, los trenes que cargan los migrantes Centroamericanos en su camino hacia el norte. Cummins fue criticada por su falta de investigación para el libro, su ingenuidad sobre el español mexicano y la cultura, y su glorificación de la violencia en México. Algunos lo llamaron su libro "porno traumático". La conversación ha resultado en una llamada por más diversidad en las casas de publicación, más solidaridad con los autores de #OwnVoices, y más responsabilidad para los autores (blancos, cisgéneros, heterosexuales) en términos de investigación y respeto de personajes o comunidades marginadas antes de escribirlos en los libros. Además, el hashtag #DignidadLiteraria se usó para pedir una mayor representación de autores latinos en la industria editorial.
 
Los centroamericanos-estadounidenses (@DichosdeunBicho) en las redes sociales mencionaron un hecho muy obvio, pero casi completamente ignorado. Son los centroamericanos quienes viajan en el peligroso tren La Bestia, y no típicamente los migrantes mexicanos. ¿Por qué es así y por qué es tan obvio? Debido a que los centroamericanos son indocumentados en México y, por lo tanto, no son permitidos a viajar en México sin permiso; Esta es la razón por la existencia de La Bestia, para que los migrantes centroamericanos puedan evitar la aplicación de la ley de inmigración mexicana para un viaje de dos mil millas en México, ANTES de llegar a la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México, donde deben evitar la aplicación de la ley de inmigración estadounidense.
 
¿Cómo se relaciona esta anécdota, junto con la controversia de American Dirt, con la literatura para adolescentes? No clasificaría American Dirt como literatura para adolescentes, excepto que me dieron en reunión anual de NCTE, y fue etiquetada como "Las Uvas de Ira para nuestro tiempo ..." Por lo tanto, este texto estará en las aulas de secundaria y en los manos de la juventud. Al final de este ensayo, ofrezco cinco textos alternativos para adolescentes a leer que representan las realidades de la inmigración escritos por autores en comunidades que migran.


Con literatura para adolescentes, los lectores están expuestos a #OwnVoices y otros textos y autores diversos. Con un libro sobre inmigración, los adolescentes leen una narrativa para poner junto a discursos públicos sobre caravanas de migrantes y muros fronterizos. ¿Estamos, como maestros, educadores y lectores de literatura para adolescentes, haciendo suficiente para asegurar que los jóvenes TAMBIÉN se comprometan con la forma en que las políticas y las conversaciones sociales de nuestro gobierno impactan a las personas reales a nivel individual y personal? Podemos cambiar American Dirt por un título con una mejor representación de la migración a los Estados Unidos. Podemos seleccionar diversos libros para nuestras aulas, hacer preguntas críticas a nuestros estudiantes, y desafiar a los jóvenes y a nosotros mismos a pensar profundamente sobre la inmigración. Todo este es un trabajo esencial de académicos, educadores, maestros, y estudiantes. Lo que me gustaría agregar a esta conversación es cómo podemos, como ciudadanos del mundo, ampliar nuestras aplicaciones de praxis usando como herramienta la lectura de literatura para adolescentes.
 
Hace dos semanas, pasé un domingo por la tarde con una familia de doce inmigrantes que viven cerca de mí. He estado cerca de su familia durante quince años, los que viven en América Central (viví en Honduras por cuatro años) como los que viven en los Estados Unidos. Tres de ellos viajaron encima de La Bestia. Cinco de ellos no tienen papeles y son indocumentados. Dos tienen órdenes de deportación y trabajan muy duro para quedar en las sombras. Uno de ellos tenía a la migra (ICE) buscándolos en enero, y desde entonces se ha estado escondiendo en un lugar alternativo. Ninguno de ellos había oído hablar del movimiento #OwnVoices en la literatura para adolescentes. Cero había leído American Dirt o sabía de la controversia sobre su publicación.
 
Nuestros funcionarios gubernamentales y nuestras instituciones actúan con audacia y decisión para disuadir, oprimir y marginar a los inmigrantes y las comunidades de inmigrantes. Como profesores de literatura para adolescentes, deberíamos ofrecer diversas selecciones de libros para adolescentes, hacer preguntas difíciles y participar en debates difíciles. Pero también necesitamos modelar la praxis o la conciencia critica y la acción colectiva y directa contra las injusticias sociales. Debemos ir más allá de las cuatro paredes de un aula, y mas allá de una selección de diversos libros o preguntas reflexivas. La literatura para adolescentes, como texto político en el aula, debe construir una conciencia crítica que esté activamente activa. Debemos involucrarnos en una manera socialmente justa con las personas de nuestras comunidades, especialmente aquellas sobre las que leemos para satisfacer las necesidades de un currículum diverso. Nuestros estudiantes y lectores de literatura deben aprender que la acción colectiva es una parte esencial de una conciencia crítica y una parte integral de su construcción de identidad como lector.
 
Mientras haya migrantes centroamericanos atacado con gases lacrimógenos en nuestra frontera por nuestra policía, no es suficiente de solo leer sus historias. Las discusiones en clase y los círculos literarios son un buen comienzo, pero también tenemos un imperativo moral para hablar valientemente y actuar sobre injusticias como la migra que detuvieron a cientos de personas la semana pasada en Nueva Jersey, o un agente de la migra que le disparó en la cara a un inmigrante la semana pasada en Nueva York.
 
¿Cómo podemos hacer la formación de la praxis a través de la literatura juvenil? Idealmente, los lectores decidirían cómo es la praxis para ellos, a través de un proceso de construcción de conciencia crítica colectiva y responsable. Quizás, después de leer un libro sobre experiencias de inmigrantes, los lectores podrían investigar las reglas y normas escolares que podrían hacer que el espacio no sea amistoso para las familias inmigrantes, o planear una reunión con legisladores sobre la ley federal de inmigración y abogar por espacios de santuario. Después de comprometerse con la literatura LGBTQ para adultos jóvenes, quizás los lectores verán y actuarán ante la falta de baños de género neutral en los edificios de la ciudad o en la escuela.
 
Debemos comprometernos a hacer una conexión entre la literatura para adolescentes con la acción directa contra las injusticias sociales. La identidad de nuestros estudiantes como lectores debe incluir un componente de conciencia crítica, donde la lectura impulsa una comprensión crítica de un tema. Esto permite a los lectores construir una conciencia crítica activa que trabaja y se involucra con la humanidad de nuestras comunidades.

​Yes. Registration is open for the 2020 UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Literature.

​We are in our third year of a partnership with the Clark County School District and with scholars across the country. Many of those scholars will be coming for their third year in a row. Others attended the first year and have submitted proposals for this year. We are reviewing them now. The list of presenters will be revealed in two weeks. Stay tuned. 

You can check out who presented in 2018 at this link. (Some of them will be presenting again.) We did a slightly different format in 2019 that focused less on researching and more on teaching. You can check out that format at this link.

​The Summit has been fortunate to have a series of great Keynote authors. If you haven’t read the authors in the images below, click on the picture and pick a book right away. 

 Each year we grow and add new dimensions. Each year we have had a number of elementary teachers attended the summit. This year, in order to meet their needs and interests more directly, we are adding shadow events on Thursday, the research day, that highlights Children's literature. Teacher's can attend this day as a single event (see the registration options), but in reality don't you want to hear all of the authors?

Check out the 2020 Keynotes below:

This year for the first time there is a special price for current UNLV undergraduate and graduate students!
Email Dr. Bickmore (Steven.Bickmore@unlv.edu) for the special code.

For more information, bookmark and visit the 2020 UNLV Summit page often. In addition, you can always revisit this page!

​Until next time!

Once again, I am hosting some one I don't know very well, but whose knowledge and opinion I value. Celeste and I meet a couple of years ago and I have learned to pay attention. I added her to my group of program consultants so that I could use her advice as I planned the ALAN Workshop for last Nov. I love the topic she has selected. This award, along with the others that were announced last week, are important.

​Thanks Celeste.

Last week was the first time that the American Indian Youth Literature Award winners were included in the ALA Youth Media Awards announcement.

Prior to 2020, this biennial award has been celebrated at a separate awards ceremony. When I had the opportunity to attend the awards ceremony at ALA Midwinter (Seattle, 2019), it was held off site, at the main branch of the Seattle Public Library. While this celebration had a feeling of intimacy and connection because all in attendance were there specifically to uplift Indigenous youth literature, I looked forward to this award becoming a part of the very widely celebrated ALA Youth Media Awards. 

Being announced together with the ALA Youth Media Awards is so important because these particular awards are often a major influencing factor in how books become a part of curriculum and vetted for classroom use. Additionally, award winners see an increase in sales, and I imagine publishing houses across the country are crossing their fingers that their publications are chosen for one or more awards. As much as I know that there are always plenty of wonderful books that do not win awards because of timing, because of the make up of awards committees, or other reasons, I also know that winning one of these awards is a huge measure of success. 

This year, there were three AIYLA award winners. The picturebook award went to Bowwow Powwow: Bagosenjige-niimi’idim, written by Brenda J. Child (Red Lake Ojibwe), translated into Ojibwe by Gordon Jourdain (Lac La Croix First Nation), illustrated by Jonathan Thunder (Red Lake Ojibwe), and published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press in 2018.

The middle school award went to Indian No More, written by Charlene Willing McManis. Umpqua/Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) with Traci Sorell (Cherokee), published by Tu Books in 2019.

The young adult award went to Hearts Unbroken Written by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee) published by Candlewick Press in 2018.

“Do you like the Sea Hawks?”
 
But most of the questions fell into two main categories.
 
1.Inspiration: What inspired you to write this? Why did you give the characters the names you did? How did you come up with your ideas?
​
2.The Future: Will you write another book with Edie, the main character? Are you writing another book now? When will your new book come out? What happens after the end of the book?
 
The children asked some very repetitive questions about this sequel that is not actually planned yet. In fact, they were not asking but demanding that Christine continue Edie’s story, not taking Christine’s hopeful ‘maybe’ as an answer. I thought of a moment from Chimamanda Adichie’s much celebrated TEd talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” in which a reader stops her to tell her she must write a sequel and tells her exactly what should occur in the plot. Adichie says she is charmed by this reader feeling strong ownership of her story in a country where it was wrongly assumed that the people didn’t care to read very much. 

Finally, after yet another question asking if she will write a sequel, Christine finally relented and said “Yes, I will!” The children had convinced her. The room exploded into applause; the children cheered. Everyone was smiling.

I teach preservice teachers, and at the beginning of each semester, I ask students if they enjoy reading. The overwhelming answer is always, “No, but I did when I was a kid.” Watching the Reading Explorers engage with Christine with overflowing interest and enthusiasm, I tried to imagine the preservice teachers I work with as these children: eager, curious, and filled with the power of stories. I try to imagine schooling and curricula that doesn’t damage this love of reading, but nourishes it. I hope I am helping students in my classes to grow into teachers who re-learn to love reading, passing that love onto their future students. 

I know that meeting authors and illustrators, asking them all the questions, and getting close to their humanity, is a very important aspect of literacy education for everyone. However, even more important to me is uplifting Indigenous authors and illustrators, because voices in these communities historically have been and continue to be silenced. By reading, teaching, publishing, and highlighting awards for Indigenous literature for youth, we are giving voice to these incredibly important stories.

And by writing and publishing Indigenous literature for youth, authors and illustrators are inspiring and modeling for Indigenous youth that their stories are valid, necessary, and worthy of writing and sharing broadly.

As I was leaving the event at the library, the line was still long for Christine to sign the kids’ books. I walked out behind a child and parent and overheard their conversation.

“Dad, do you think I can be a writer someday?”

“Of course you can, honey.”

Until next time.