This week our guest contributors are Holly Riesco and Chris Goering. I have long admired Chris and his work. I am glad that he and Holly have decided to help out. Take a look.

Here are just a few ways we thought of to take advantage of the literacy of the moment in the classroom:​

• Invite students to read through the titles of the poems and find a few that they like as a team, a title that they can visualize through the language. Then, ask students to create an oral performance of the poem and practice performing it prior to a poetry slam event in the classroom. 
• Invite students to read through the first poems of each book. Then, as a team, they can create their own spoken word narrative poem based on a community experience, possibly even an injustice they see. They will recite and perform this poem as a team.
• Invite students to use TikTok, SnapChat, or Instagram to create videos that focus on performance of one of the poems from the book of their choice and convince the watcher to check out the rest of the book. In this instance, they are trying to interest their audience in the book. 

Until next week.

I never get tired of reading and preparing posts from Lesley Roessing. I learn so much from her and I stand amazed at how many books she manages to read. I am​ impressed by how she has a sixth sense about how to group them and talk about them in ways that are useful for teachers. I also like it when she talks about some of my favorites. She mentions a couple in this weeks post. I wonder if you can guess which ones they are?

I loved finding out about I Read Canadian Day! (@ireadcanadian) What a fun idea. I hope you take a few minutes to find out more about the events and that you join in by sharing some of your Canadian favorites with students, colleagues, and friends.

Thanks Lesley.

When I was a middle school and high school reader, I read American and British authors—mostly the dead-White guy classics, (with a few exceptions)—in school and, on my own, Michener, Stone, Baldwin, and some contemporary fiction and nonfiction, but still mainly American and British authors. Of course, this was just before The Outsiders and The Pigman heralded Adolescent Literature, also at that time written by primarily American authors. In college I majored in Comparative Literatures and finally read authors from around the world, mainly European, most in English translation, some in the home language.

In the last years I purposefully have endeavored to read and review diversely and encourage educators and librarians to introduce their readers to diverse authors and characters, diverse in not only ethnicity and race, but nationality, geography, religion, age, gender identification, sexual orientation, social-economic status, and physical and neuro-diversities. In other words, for readers to read to see themselves, their peers, and those they have not yet met in books and writing the books they read. 

And, as we think about World Literatures, what about Canada? When I read Canadian author Cheryl Rainfield’s post about “I Read Canadian Day,” I began thinking about my favorite authors, many of whom are Canadian.

The goal of “I Read Canadian Day 2021” is for children nationwide in Canada to read a Canadian book for fifteen minutes on February 17th.  The purpose of this event is to raise awareness of Canadian books and celebrate the richness, diversity and breadth of Canadian literature.
​
However, my goal is to use this celebration as an excuse to introduce YA Wednesday readers to some of my favorite Canadian YA authors and novels I have read in the last six years.

Eric Walters, a former teacher and social worker and a Toronto native, has published over 40 picture books and over 60 YA contemporary and historical fiction novels, short stories, and series. Walters has written about a wide variety of tween and teen characters, such as a singer, a mountain climber, a soldier, a football player, a basketball player, Alexander Graham Bell, a Bully Boy, a skateboarder, a graffiti artist, and a Cree boy. The novels take place in such diverse settings as Rwanda, the post-apocalyptic future, Tanzania, 18212 Ontario, 1915 Nova Scotia, zoo camp, a Rocky Mountain glacier, NYC, and the streets of Toronto. Topics which will generate important conversation among adolescents are PTSD, Holocaust, steroids, COVID-19, animal testing, peer pressure, friendship, homelessness, racism, and the events of 9/11. Walters’ novels have won more than 100 awards

We All Fall Down takes place on September 11, 2001, the day the students at Will’s high school were to shadow their parents at their workplaces. Ninth-grader William’s father John worked in international trade in the World Trade Center. At 8:46, shortly after arriving at John’s office on the 85th floor of the South Tower, they felt the force of an explosion. At 9:03, just before John, acting as fire warden for the floor, and Will were able to leave, the second plane hit the South Tower. Readers follow the father and son as they make the harrowing journey down 85 floors through heat and smoke, formulating split-second decisions and stopping to rescue and carry an injured woman, only to experience the collapse of the building as they reach the lobby. A quick but dramatic read, Eric Walters’ novel lets readers experience a close-up account of the day and the panic and fear and heroism of ordinary people as Will discovers another side of his father and John realizes how much time he has devoted to his job rather than to his family.

​The sequel United We Stand begins on September 12, 2001 when Will’s best friend’s father, a firefighter at Ground Zero, last seen as he climbed the steps of the North Tower, is missing. This is a book about friendship, loss, support, and the aftermath of the events of 9/11.

Deborah Ellis is an author,  feminist, and peace activist. She has traveled the world to hear the stories of children marginalized by poverty and conflict and has written over twenty novels, two series, and many collections sharing the voices of those she has interviewed: indigenous kids, Palestinian and Israeli children, Iraqi refugees, the kids of Kabul, military children, Sub-Saharan African children orphaned by AIDS, and kids who have been bullied. Ellis writes both fiction and nonfiction, winning at least seven different awards.

The Breadwinner is set in the early years of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Girls and women cannot go to school, the market, or play outside. After her father, a former history teacher, is imprisoned for having forbidden books, 11-year old Parvana disguises herself as a boy to become the breadwinner for her family. The Breadwinner is available in a prose version and as a graphic-novel adaptation of the animated film.
 
Parvana’s Journey, a story of survival and resilience, continues the tale after Parvana’s family has left home and her father dies. As Parvana journeys to search for her mother, sister, and brother, she is joined by other child war victims—an infant boy in a bombed-out village, a nine-year-old girl and her grandmother, and a boy with one leg. Working together and showing incredible daring and courage, they survive street life, hunger, violence, and land mines.
 
Mud City, the third book in the series, is the story of Parvana's friend, 14-year-old Shauzia, who escaped from Kabul and is living in a mud refugee city on the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan. She leaves the camp to try to make money on the streets of Peshawar, spends a night in jail, is temporarily taken in by Americans, but ends up back at the camp. Readers learn another effect of the war in Afghanistan through yet another spirited, resourceful adolescent girl who represents the hard realities of many of the girls living under the Taliban and the many people living in refugee camps.
 
My Name is Parvana completes the series in post-Taliban Afghanistan. The now-15-year-old Parvana has found her family, and they are running a school for girls. After the school is threatened—most likely by the Taliban, her mother is killed, and Americans bomb the school, Parvana is held on an American military base, suspected of being a terrorist. She stays silent during her harsh interrogations. Flashbacks fill readers in four years of the school. Independent and determined, Parvana escapes but returns to help a wounded American. She is finally rescued by a member of parliament, ending the series.

​Susin Nielsen writes picture books for children and middle grade and YA fiction; she has written for over 20 Canadian TV series. Nielsen has written six YA novels, as well as four novels for the Degrassi Junior High series and has won five awards.

Cheryl Rainfield, a native of Toronto, is the award-winning author of four YA novels, two fantasy Hi-Lo books, short stories, and essays. She writes “the books [she] needed as a teen and couldn’t find” and includes “strong-girl and LGBTQ characters into every book [she] writes.” 

Teresa Toten is the multiple-award-winning author of ten novels, one novel, The Taming, written with Eric Walters.

​Courtney Summers is a New York Times bestselling author of several award-winning novels. She has published seven YA novels, her first when she was 22. Her novels feature strong female characters.

​All the Rage
Romy was sexually assaulted by the sheriff’s son, the golden boy. No one believes the allegations of a girl from her side of town. By coming forward, she is bullied by her former friends. As rumors that other girls who knew Kellan have been assaulted or even missing, Romy has to decide how hard she will fight to be believed in a society where shame and silence often follow sexual violence. A compelling story that will cause both adolescent girls and boys to confront bias and societal norms.

​Sadie is a New York Times Bestseller and winner of over 50 awards and recognitions.

“Girls go missing all the time.” (15)
Nineteen-year-old Sadie Hunter’s younger sister was murdered, the sister Sadie loved with all her heart and raised from the time Mattie was born but especially after their mother left. Sadie is sure she knows who murdered Mattie—their mother’s ex-boyfriend who abused 10-year-old Sadie., and she takes off to avenge her sister’s death, following lead after lead, determined to track down Keith and kill him. And along the way she finds other victims—and other perpetrators.

Months later ,radio personality Wes McCray, the WNRK producer of the show “Always Out There” searches for Sadie, interviewing people who knew her, detectives in the towns Sadie traveled through, and those who came in contact with her during her quest, following leads and hunches. Wes becomes more consumed as the story that will become his serialized podcast develops.

Alternating chapters between “The Girls” podcast episodes with its in-person and phone interviews and Sadie’s first-person account from the day she left, readers learn about the strong, resilient, resourceful teen who grew up in poverty, unloved, bullied because of a stutter, whose only concern is avenging Mattie’s death and saving other abused children. 

​Karen Krossing grew up in Ontario and began her literary career as a proofreader and then an editor. She is now the author of seven novels and three upcoming picture books. And a writing instructor. Karen lives with her family in Toronto, on the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Anishinabeg and the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

E.K. Johnston, or Emily Kate Johnston, is from southwestern Ontario. She is the author of eleven novels ranging from fantasy to fairytale to sci-fi to realistic fiction, as well as having a career as a forensic archaeologist who has lived on four continents.

Exit, with it well-developed characters, gives reader plenty to consider. Hermione stands up for herself and all women when a reporter asks what precautions she could have taken and what advice she would give other girls to keep this type of thing from happening, and she replies, “If I was a boy, would you be asking me that?” (194). Most important, it made readers aware that there are many types of trauma. ​

​Lois Burdett a native of Ontario, wrote her Shakespeare for Kids series to introduce her elementary students in Stratford, Ontario, to the Bard and involve them in acting Shakespearean plays. Burdett rewrote Shakespeare’s plays as rhyming narrative poems so her young students could read and memorize them. Even though written for elementary students, these books can be included in secondary ELA classrooms, as I did, to provide students with overviews of the plays they will not be reading and as a preview to the play they will be reading and acting in class. These full-play-length poems can be employed as Readers’ Theater or as mentor texts for students re-writing the play they are studying as a narrative poem. 

A middle and high school teacher for twenty years, Lesley Roessing was the Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Georgia Southern University (formerly Armstrong State University) where she was also a Senior Lecturer in the College of Education. In 2018-19 she served as a Literacy Consultant with a K-8 school. Lesley served as past editor of Connections, the award-winning journal of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. As a columnist for AMLE Magazine, she shared before, during, and after-reading response strategies across the curriculum through ten “Writing to Learn” columns. She has written articles on literacy for NWP Quarterly, English Journal, Voices from the Middle, The ALAN Review, AMLE Magazine, and Middle School Journal. She now works independently—writing, providing professional development in literacy to schools, and visiting classrooms to facilitate book club reading activities and lessons. To support teachers and librarians in these challenging times, she posts daily strategies, lessons, and book reviews on https://www.facebook.com/lesley.roessing. She can be contacted through her Facebook Messenger.
 
Lesley is the author of five books for educators:

• Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core 
• Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed. The Sentences They Saved 
• No More “Us” & “Them: Classroom Lessons and Activities to Promote Peer Respect 
• The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension
• Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum
• and has contributed chapters to
  • Young Adult Literature in a Digital World: Textual Engagement though Visual Literacy
  • Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum
  • Story Frames for Teaching Literacy: Enhancing Student Learning through the Power of Storytelling (in press)

Until next week.

At last, I have landed a contribution from Chris Crowe. I have been following his career longer than he knows. When he really had no idea who I was, I had a phone call conversation about a one year appointment at his home institution, BYU, in mid 1990s. I had hosted student teachers every other year or so for more than a decade. I was asking about the required degrees need to get a full time job in higher ed. He explained about the need for a Ph.D as opposed to a Masters degree (which I had) which might allow me to serve as an adjunct or as a one year appointment. He was helpful and was one of the first to help me think about how to lay out a plan to move to a university. 

​Chris claims 44 years in education and I show up right behind him with 42. The balance between high school and university is different. The bulk of my time has been public education with a total of 26 years and 16 in higher education when I count the full time graduate work. 

Chris' advice has always been helpful and inspiring. I hope you enjoy his glance to the past as much as I have. Thanks Chris.

In one corner of my office sits a large, 4-drawer horizonal filing cabinet, a relic, in more ways than one, of my roots in the 20th century. It’s filled with all kinds of documents, including some long-forgotten files and manuscripts, stuff I rarely look at or think about.

The top drawer, however, is different because it contains all my notes, sample papers, photocopied articles, and syllabi related to what’s been the heart of my long (44 years!) teaching career: young adult literature.
           
​I spent my first 10 years in a high school classroom, and initially I had only brief brushes with YA books; they most often surfaced in the quarterly reading interviews I had with each student. As a traditional undergraduate English major, I had ignored book for kids and instead did what dutiful English majors were supposed to do back in those days: I read, and tried to understand, canonical works and other literary forms that had stood the test of time.
​
That changed in fall semester 1982 when I enrolled in English 591, a graduate course at Arizona State University taught by Ken Donelson. My file folder from that course resides in that top drawer of my filing cabinet, and it still has Donelson’s blue-ink ditto-copied syllabus, a daunting document that outlined his expectations and the required reading for the semester. He expected us to read and write about more than 30 books.

Back then, I had no idea that one day, my entire career would be tied to YA literature and that I’d be teaching classes very much like English 591. That top drawer now contains all the syllabi from the college YA literature courses I’ve taught since 1993, and I thought it might be interesting for this blog to review the reading lists in those syllabi to see how my course---and the field of YA literature---have evolved over time. I’ll start with Donelson’s 1982 course and then sample from my own course syllabi from 1993 to the present.

In addition to Literature for Today’s Young Adults, the textbook he co-authored with Alleen Pace Nilsen, here’s a partial list of the books Donelson required us to read back in 1982:
​
Football Dreams, David Guy
The People Therein, Mildred Lee
Hold Fast, Kevin Major
The Last Mission, Harry Mazer
A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich, Alice Childress
All Together Now, Sue Ellen Bridgers
A Place Apart, Paula Fox
Ordinary People, Judith Guest
Red Sky at Morning, Richard Bradford
Without a Trace, John Harris
Photographing the Frontier, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler
The Huntsman, Douglas Hill
Little Britches, Ralph Moody
Steps Out of Time, Eric Houghton
Dove, Robin Lee
Edgar Allan John Neufeld
The Truth about Fathers, Mary Ann Gray
Deathwatch, Robb White
The Chocolate War, Robert Cormier
Killing Mr. Griffin, Lois Duncan
Deenie, Judy Blume
A Day No Pigs Would Die, Robert Newton Peck
Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, M. E. Kerr
Lisa, Bright and Dark, John Neufeld
Confessions of a Teenage Baboon, Paul Zindel
I’ll Love You When You’re More Like Me, M. E. Kerr
The Pigman, Paul Zindel

Of these 27 books, only one, Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, has survived to the YA literature course I’m currently teaching. Twenty-three of the English 591 books were novels, and, surprisingly, four were nonfiction, suggesting that Donelson was ahead of his time in recognizing the place of nonfiction in the field. Diversity wasn’t something we talked about much in 1982, so it isn’t a big surprise that with the exception of Alice Childress, author of A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich, all the authors were white. Most of the novels we read could be described as contemporary realism or, as they were called back in those days, ‘problem novels.’ Fantasy is notably absent from the required reading list, though Donelson did require me to read three novels by British fantasy writer Peter Dickinson.

Three of the required books, All Together Now, The Chocolate War, and The Pigman, carried over from Donelson’s course. Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders were a nod to foundational books in our field, and the rest of the novels were relatively contemporary, including Crazy Horse Electric Game by a rising young star named Chris Crutcher. Three of the novels, The Shadow Brothers; Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry; and Moves Make the Man dealt with issues of race, but Roll of Thunder was the only book by an author of color. Card’s Ender’s Game was the only work of speculative fiction. ​

A nonfiction book leads the list! After a decade of teaching YA literature to undergraduate English majors, I recognized their (and my own) inherent bias against nonfiction. Russell Freedman and Milton Meltzer had been the stalwarts in YA nonfiction for a couple decades, but by 2004, NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award for nonfiction had been around for almost 15 years and the ALA’s Sibert Medal for informational had been established in 2001, and publishers, librarians, and some teachers had become enthusiastic promoters of nonfiction. Armstrong’s book was a great way to introduce my fiction-phile English majors to terrific narrative nonfiction.

Seven books roll-over into the 2004 required list, but that year’s list also includes new books that show an awareness of alternate forms: Whirligig’s non-linear story, Hesse’s lavish novel in verse, Myers’ multi-genre novel, Sachar’s threaded parallel plot, and Salisbury’s short story cycle/coming of age story. One of Gary Soto’s few YA novels, Buried Onions added a fine LatinX novel to the syllabus.

​Once again, the list of choose-one-by-these-authors is shorter than I remember (and I still don’t know why), but it contains three repeat authors and three authors new to the list: Hobbs, Mazer, and British author Westall:
​
Will Hobbs, Angela Johnson, Lurlene McDaniel, Norma Fox Mazer, Cynthia Rylant, and
Robert Westall

So what have I learned from pouring over these relics of my YAL teaching? First, that this is nothing like a comprehensive, scientific meta-analysis of my YAL course. I’ve not been able to discuss the evolution of assignments over the years, what I’ve kept and what I’ve jettisoned over the years, why I’ve done that, and what those revisions have yielded. I’ve not been able to share my students’ ratings of the books they’ve read each semester. I’ve not been able to share the development of course outcomes over the years. What I have learned---or at least been reminded of---is this: it has been a blessing to be involved in this dynamic, creative, meaningful field. My syllabi have reminded me that I still haven’t figured out the best way of teaching YA literature to English majors, but that with revision, I can at least keep improving the course.

I’ve also been reminded that sometimes I pity my English department colleagues who specialize in studying one (dead) author or in one (historic) era; they are brilliant scholars who have a locked case to work with. They know there will be no new texts to study, and that means that much of their work involves coming up with new, innovative ways to look at old texts and dead authors.

The dynamic nature of YA literature allows people like me to admire and be surprised by a constant flow of new texts while still trying to find new and exciting ways to look at new (and old) texts and living (and dead) authors. The files and the books that fill my office are reminders of a career that I have loved, and these relics---syllabi, books, files---are old and new friends.
​
All are pleasant reminders of my career in YA lit. 

​Until next week.

A couple of weeks ago I got a copy of Race Against Time: The Untold Story of Scipio Jones and the Battle to Save Twelve Innocent Men. I am always watching what Sandra and Rich have to offer. Wow! For me this was a "one sitting read" and once again I was stunned by what I didn't know.  

What a great book to begin thinking in a stepped up pace about YA literature during Black History Month.

But how did I get to this book?

For seven or eight years now, I have been reading everything I can by Rich and Sandra Neil Wallace. Oh, I was aware of Rich Wallace's early work in young adult literature. I was reading a ton of YA sports novels twenty years ago and Rich is a major contributor in that area of YA. If you don't believe me you should check out Wrestling Sturbridge or Playing without the Ball. 

Sandra's first YA novel was Muckers. Through some stroke of good fortune I received a copy. I became a fan and Sandra proved herself to be quite the diligent researcher. This well researched novel about an underdog football team that had no chance to win anything, let alone a championship grabbed my attention and my heart. Shortly, after reading this book I ran into Rich and Sandra at an NCTE conference. (Who can remember which year and which city?) Since then we have been talking, presenting together at conferences, and keeping in touch. ​

Then along came Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights. Without any exaggeration, I can say that this book changed by research and teaching trajectory. I have always been interested in YA books focusing on issues of race. class, and gender. I had been negligent in reading and focusing on YA nonfiction. Sandra and Rich changed all of that and I have been reading their work and the work of many others (too many to mention here) with great interest over the last five years.

When they provided me with an introduction to Jonathan Daniels, I was stunned. I should have known this story. I was around during the civil rights movement. I was a child of the 60s and 70s. I should have know this story. I should have known about this sacrifice. I loved my social studies classes, I paid attention to current events, I read newspaper. I grew up in an era of 3 tv stations and "arguably" more neutral presentation of the "news". At the same time, it seems, as we look back, that many, many worthy news stories were not covered or the events were brushed aside as too upsetting. (Of course, I might have rankled a few old timers with that comment, but wouldn't it be interesting to talk a look back at the coverage that some of the early protests and how they appeared in various news broadcasts and newspapers across the country?)

​I wrote about Blood Brother in my blog and continued to follow what they were doing. Sandra has had great success with several children's literature books along the way. Still they both keep working together. A couple of years ago I followed up by writing a blog post on Bound by Ice. Latter, my colleague, Paul Binford, and I presented with Rich and Sandra about this book and their research process at the Kennesaw  Children's and Young Adult Literature.

I wrote and told Rich and Sandra that I would be covering their new book in the blog, they sent me this starred review from Book list. (I wish my "starred" reviews counted, because this would certainly count.
​
Jan. 2021. 144p. illus. Boyds Mills & Kane/Calkins Creek, $18.99 (9781629798165). Grades 7-10. 323.
REVIEW. First published November 1, 2020 (Booklist).
​
This is a compelling account of how Scipio Jones, a formerly enslaved man and self-educated lawyer, dedicated five years of his life and his personal fortune to trying to save innocent Black sharecroppers from imprisonment and death in 1919 Arkansas, during the height of the Jim Crow era. These men had dared unionizing, and retribution was swift: the largest mass lynching in American history, homes and churches burnt, innocent people condemned to the electric chair. Jones literally risked his life to defend the men, wrangling their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The judgement, Moore v. Dempsey, evoked the Fourteenth Amendment and was the first time African Americans won a Supreme Court decision, resulting in the release of 75 prisoners and 12 men on death row. The action takes place at breakneck speed, accompanied by ample background information, period photographs, and appearances by the nascent NAACP, journalist Ida Tarbell*, and a young Thurgood Marshall. An epilogue, informative author’s note, copious bibliography, and detailed chapter notes help round out this testimonial of an often-overlooked landmark event in the early history of civil rights.
— Kathleen McBroom

*one fix in the review: Ida Tarbell should be Ida B. Wells-Barnett

The Supreme Court case of Moore v. Dempsey has dictated the interpretation of the 14th Amendment for nearly 100 years. It is pure lunacy that every child in an the American school system doesn't the details of the case it covers and that the argument was written by a black, southern attorney. This gap in our history books is a clear example of either the white washing of American history or a fear of giving credit to the contributions of Black Americans.

This wonderful book is quite short and easy to read, but do not let that fact lead you to believe it is simple. It is anything but. The book is densely packed with fact after fact and interesting narrative about Scipio Jones and the twelve men he saves from the electric chair.

Scipio Jones is an American patriot we should all know and teach to our children. 

Read this book!

Share with your preservice teachers and your students. 

In the meantime, I offer a few resources that will give you a small introduction to Scipio Jones and his work.

Scipio Africanus Jones: Resources

https://hardwicke.co.uk/black-history-month-scipio-africanus-jones/
https://abandonedar.com/scipio-africanus-jones-house/
https://arkansasblacklawyers.uark.edu/lawyers/sajones.html
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/jones-scipio-africanus-1863-1943/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scipio_Africanus_Jones
​https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2021/01/29/life-size-portrait-of-scipio-jones-proposed-at-namesake-post-office
https://hill.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=6557
​https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/jan/21/scipio-a-jones-20200121/?opinion

Until next time.