I have been keeping this blog every week since September of 2015.  There have been a couple of weeks that slipped by without post, but not many. I enjoy doing the work. It forces me to think about YA literature all of the time which keeps me reading, and reading, and reading some more. 

It also keeps me writing. I am unquestionably a reluctant writer. I am a horrible speller and what I call an elliptical writer. By that I mean, I sometimes times find that my hand--or fingers now-- can't keep up with my mind. As a result, I will read what I have written to find to out that I have left our a few words or sentence and jumped a head to the current thought. I have known that I do this since middle school. It can make reading my ideas a guessing game. Thank heavens, for computers and easier editing. In college, before the invention of the personal computer mind you, I wrote on paper skipping every other line, because I knew I would be editing and rewriting before I moved to the typewriter.

Yes, sometimes I still do it. Writing and editing for this blog has boosted my confidence, my fluency, and my willingness to share my writing with others. I am happy that a few people read it. I willing put my ideas out there knowing that there might be errors and/or that some of it might need to be fixed. I am okay with all of that. My mantra to pre service English teachers about writing instruction is: "There is not such thing as writing only rewriting." 

The real joy, however, has come from working with the guest contributors (The count is well over 100 now, are you interested?). I always learn something. I realize I can't read everything nor can I be an expert in every genre. I now know some one that I can go to for poetry, horror, romance, sci fi, or other categories I don't have the time to master. Some of these contributors have become dear friends and others have become writing partners. Four edited books have come about directly as a result of a blog post. Two were a result of a post by the wonderful Michelle Falter. She wrote about grief in a post connected with the Netflix premier of 13 Reasons Why (Focusing on the Wrong Things – A Defense of Jay Asher’s/Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why. We quickly moved forward with a book that became two.

The Third book was the direct response to a post I wrote about the horrible Parkland shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.  As most of you know, I live in Las Vegas and direct connects with several people who experience the concert shooting on Oct. 1, 2017.  I was anxious and tired of responding to gun violence. (One of those is among my selections below.) I worried about the tone. I took Mr. Rodgers' advice and looked for the helpers. I asked Gretchen Rumohr and Shelly Shaffer to take a look at it before I posted. Columbine, Sandy Hook, Aurora Colorado, Orlando, Las Vegas, and now Parkland. They gave good advice. A day later we collaborated through a video chat. A month later we had a book contract and, through the hard work of chapter authors, we had a published book by the end of the year.  

1.  Holden, Dear Holden; Your Influence Stretches On and On and Readers of YA Literature Thank You.

4. Blood Brother: An introduction to Jonathan Daniels 

6. Rereading the past and excavating the foundation: Cormier, Hamilton, Zindel, and Myers.

7. ​Remembering Julius Lester  Here we are at the fourth book. I have been interested in African American Young Adult Literature for the beginning of my career. I am especially interested in how these authors have been underrepresented. I know we are in a bit of growth spurt right now, but that wasn't always the case. You and look at one of the ways I have dealt with topic here. Shanetia Clark and I joined forces and started three book series that treats the impact of African American authors in three distinct periods--the late 60s to the early 1980s, then the 1980 up to 2000, then from the 2000 until right now. The first book, On the Shoulders of Giants, explores the work of the four stalwarts of the period. Two were mentioned above, Walter Dean Myers and Virgina Hamilton. Then here, Julius Lester, and the one not covered in these blog posts, MIldred Taylor. 

8. Makes Me Wanna Shut Up: Reconsidering how I used African-American Authors in My Classroom

9. ​​Nothing Gold Can Stay: Ness, Hinton, Frost, Shakespeare, and Yeats

11. Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Lonesome George Reminds about Science, Children’s Books, and the Classroom

Until next time.

Two of my great friends and colleagues at Vanderbilt University have a robust set of young adult resources for their pre-service and in-service teachers in their area on their own website. One of the great things about resources that we put out into the web is that they are available to everyone, not just the people who initially inspired us to build them. 

I put out a call to ask colleagues how they were doing and how they were coping with social distancing. One of the people who respond quickly was Emily Pendergrass. She mentioned that Melanie had just finished a list of YA books on Pandemic and Epidemic in real and dystopian contexts. 

I asked for permission to share it on Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday.

First--here is a link to their webpage: https://my.vanderbilt.edu/yabooklists/topics/pandemic-epidemic/

​Second, I love what they have done.

Below is the body of the text with a new introduction, a slide show of covers, and links to all of the books:

The words “pandemic” and “epidemic” are a scary part of our current reality.  A pandemic is a disease that is present across a country or the world.  An epidemic is the outbreak of a disease that spreads rapidly and hits a lot of people at once.  Long before our current pandemic of Covid-19, there were epidemics that effectives countries and continents—think of plagues and large scale flu outbreaks.
 
Young adult authors have written a lot of novels about epidemics that actually happened and imagined epidemics and pandemics in different time periods, societies, and planets.  Here are just a few of the ones that we have found.  Please let us know if you have others!   Contact us at e.pendergrass@vanderbilt.edu
​

A Death-Struck Year Makiia Lucier
The Eleventh Plague Jeff Hirsch
Fever, 1793 Laurie Halse Anderson
The Last Dog on Earth Daniel Ehrenhaft
Plague Michael Grant
At the Sign of the Sugared Plum Mary Hooper
The Way We Fall Megan Crewe
Chasing Secrets Gennifer Choldenko
Deadly Julie Chibbaro
The Plague Joanne Dahme
The Goodbye Season Marian Hale
Agnes at the End of the World Kelly McWilliams
The Treatment Suzanne Young
Pandemic Yvonne Ventresca
A Matter of Days Amber Kizer
The Program Suzanne Young
Conversion Katherine Howe
Love is the Drug Alaya Dawn Johnson
The Fear Charlie Higson
The Sacrifice Charlie Higson
Plague 99 Jean Ure
Virals Kathy Reichs
Peeps  Scott Westerfield
Seizure  Kathy Reichs
Fever Year: The Killer Flue of 1918 Don Brown
Breath Donna Jo Napoli
The Plague Tales Anne Benson
The House on Hound Hill Maggie Prince
Hero of Lesser Causes Julie Johnston
The Heaven Shop Deborah Ellis
Footprints at the Window Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
The Cure Sonia Levitin
Masque of the Red Death Bethany Griffin
Dance of the Red Death Bethany Griffin
I Am Rembrandts’ Daughter Lynn Cullen
The Sunbird Elizabeth E. Wein
All Fall Down Susan Geason
Suicide Notes from Dead Girls  Lynn Weingarten
Survive the Night Danielle Vega

intro

March is Women’s History month in the United States, a month when we commemorate and encourage the study, observance, and celebration of the vital role of women in American history. Given this, it seems only fitting to reflect on the ways female protagonists in middle grade and young adult literature shed light on women’s historical experiences across time and place.

​The Cambridge English Dictionary defines “herstory” as history written from the point of view of women, and giving importance to their experiences and activities. Reading fictionalized stories about historical women from their point of view can give readers different understandings of the factors, perspectives, and contexts that contributed to cultural and societal time periods and events. Reading stories about fictionalized women from different time periods can do the same.

In my own reading, particularly that within the mother-daughter book club* I’ve been a member of for the past seven years, there have been many books that have prompted me (and my teenage daughter) to study and celebrate the roles and experiences of women across time and space. Collectively, these books help helped me unpack the historical ways women have been positioned and that femininity has been constructed (and challenged). In our book club, our reading of these books served as a springboard for many rich discussions about the issues surrounding women both past and present. Because of these discussions, we’ve been prompted, as mothers, daughters, readers, and critical thinkers, to advocate for women’s voices and issues locally and globally.

​Of the over 60 books that we’ve read together in our book club, here are six books that invite readers, female AND male, into the worlds of their female protagonists. In these worlds, readers learn about particularities of certain time periods and cultures, the similarities of female experiences across historical contexts, and the capacity of women to show resilience and strength as they lament, speak out against, and work towards changing the gender constructions placed on them. Some of these books tell the stories of specific women and girls in history (nonfiction and fictionalized accounts) whereas others tell the stories of representative girls and women to a particular time period or social movement in history.
 
In the paragraphs that follow, I briefly summarize each book and share discussion questions that could guide a “Women’s History Month” reading of them.

These six books are just a sampling of the many amazing middle grade and young adult books that help commemorate and encourage the study, observance, and celebration of the role of women in history. In the comment section below, please list your favorite herstory books!​

*For the past seven years, our mother-daughter book club has gathered bi-monthly to discuss books, eat book-related food, and participate in book-inspired activities. I have written more about our book club with Gretchen Rumohr and Erica Hamilton here: Why Book Clubs Matter;  Reading and Challenging Constructions Together: Implications of a Mother-Daughter Book Club for Classroom Practice. 

Until next time.

From Steve: I still love my discovery of Berries Goodman by the Newbery Medal winning author Emily Cheney Neville. What? you don’t know this book? No time like the present to take a look. In middle school I fell in love with Louis L’Amour novels. The Sackett Brand is still fun to read, but reading these pulp westerns lead me to the works of A. B. Guthrie his novel of the mountain men--The Big Sky. I was a voracious reader and started checking out Moby Dick from the bookmobile when I was in middle school. Gregory Peck was Captain Ahab for me and not Atticus Finch, but it wasn’t until my early twenties that I got past the first few chapters. Today, it remains one of my favorite books. I had a similar experience with One Hundred Years of Solitude.  ​

As I think ahead to reading during the pandemic, here is what I plan to read:  Jumping off Swings, Educated, How to Make Friends with the Dark, Barely Missing Everything, The Walls Around us, Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All, and Blood, Water, Paint.  Is this list realistic?  Will it change as I get more recommendations or find that I can’t keep up with my administrative work and doorknob-disinfecting schedule?  Perhaps. But when you fall in love with reading, you always dream about your next date with a book.  ​

Can this period of time be an opportunity for “authentic” reading instead of a march through endless worksheets in an attempt to meet a set of standards? What if, as Antero Garcia suggests, we just spend some time healing? We understand that not every child or adolescent we work with will be carbon copies of who we are. They might not relish the time to read that they have been given. However, if the notion of school becomes even more artificial, more routinized--a mandated march through the standards, then haven’t we lost an opportunity to do something different? Something better?  Something that recognizes our common humanity and builds empathy?

Friends, this is an opportunity to model a CHANGE during this new normal. What would happen if we set aside the worksheets, the curriculum, the constant checking of social media, the noise, and simply buried ourselves in books?  What would happen if we encouraged students to do the same, in all subject areas? What would happen if we took Louise Rosenblatt to heart and decided that now was the time to frontload life events through literature?  I can see the emails now: ​

So--now we want to hear from you.  Help us generate a list of “must reads” during this time of isolation.  Please share your top three books in each category: Children’s Books, Middle Grade Books, Young Adult Books, and Screen Adaptations of Literary Works.  ​

Click here and share your choices:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeVEdPgUcMeMuDY4EGqCD-yHEEMY1j7H6kJbYfXi9fvwNMCuw/viewform?usp=sf_link 

When you finish, share the link widely. We will leave it open for a week and then share the results as quickly as possible.

​Until next time.

Most of us that work at universities are trying figure out how to teach online in ways that honor what we do. We care about our students, our programs, and our subject matter. In reality, most of us love books and slipping into imaginary worlds (even if they are dystopian settings slightly suggestive of our own current situations). 

Most of all, we are considering how to keep community. 

Here are a few questions to consider.

1. How do we do this if all assignments are asynchronous?
2. How long do we hold classes if we do synchronous meetings? Is it appropriate to maintain classes for the same length of time? Some of us have smaller graduate classes where we might imagine trying to do this. 
3. How can we continue to promote reading while social distancing?
4. Is it now time to teach our students about OVERDRIVE and LIBBY so they can access books if libraries close?
5. Do we acknowledge and deal with internet deserts?
6. Can students in YA classes do more projects and self-selected reading around certain topics?
7. Is it a time to reinvent book clubs in virtual spaces?
8. Can we catch up with our reading by reading books from award lists that we missed in the past?
9. What about starting a book club with your children--those at home or those who have moved away?

This morning I read a short piece by Antero Garcia. I have known for awhile that he is smart than I am. He gave voice to some of the concerns I have with more clarity.  You should check it out. Perhaps, instead of just canceling school, we should cancel instruction, tests, and the short sighted perceived goals.

My university has spring break from March 16 through the 22nd. We are to be prepared for online instruction of some kind on the 23rd. (Some flexibility to forego Monday and Tuesday classes). I emailed my faculty senator, my deans, and our college faculty chair. I suggested that they are implying that we work and forget our spring break. I asked if there had been any consideration for having students take two weeks while faculty take one week to care for ourselves and our families during this time social unrest. Then, let us have a week to prepare our course work. No, that hadn't been considered that they indicated. Essentially, they agree, but implied that we soldier on, that we do our best, that we think about our students. 

Well, I think my suggestion does that. In fact, as educators we should stand up for correct pedagogy and for stepping back instead of rushing forward. 

My labor union instincts what to rise up. Those who manage teachers always want us to do what they deem to be correct even when we might think otherwise.  Let's remind ourselves how much testing schools have slipped into and how we use it to measure the quality of schools instead of considering "real" growth of students.  For example. students might be behind at the beginning of the school year by several grade levels in reading. Then the teacher makes several levels of progress, but doesn't quite reach grade level. Has the teacher been successful? Of course, but by the results of the tests, the school and the teacher will still indicate a failure and receive an inadequate rating. Thus while the student, the teacher, and the school have experienced success the report will indicated that they have not. 

Are we in danger of trying to maintain a false educational experience to keep things normal, especially when they clearly are not?

I offer the following ten past posts from contributors to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. Perhaps, they will help answer some of the questions I have posed and perhaps others that you have been asking as well.

1. My first  selection is a post by Michael Macaluso. Michael and his wife Katie are a pair of young scholars worth listening to at almost every opportunity.  In this post, Michael discusses diverse literature. 
​
Reading Word and World… with Diverse YA Literature

2. Next, I turn to one of my colleagues and valued writing partners, Gretchen Rumohr. Alas, I should have spend last Friday presenting with her at the MCTE. Gretchen channels Penny Kittle and Book Love as inspiration for a YA Methods course.

Beyond How We Were Taught: Using "Book Love" to teach YA Literature Methods

3. This post is one of the older ones from 2016 when I hadn't quite figured out how to label everything in a consistent way. This post is by Angela Insenga.  Angela is an expert at mingling popular culture and YA. I believe this is the first post she wrote for the blog.  
​
Between the Bookends:  YA and Critical Collaboration

4.  My own children loved doing mutligenre projects associated with their reading and their popular culture interests. They worked with topic stimulated by The Giver and by the blockbuster movie the Titanic. I jumped at the chance to host how my good friend, Mary Warner, approached this with her students in a YA course.

Discovering (Rediscovering) Karen Hesse’s Witness and Its Multi-genre Potential

5. I constantly find myself thinking about cross curricular activities. This is quite easy to do with the Social Studies. One of the first to write a post addressing this connection was Paul Binford. In this post he suggest activities associated with Out of the Dust.
Before the Dust Settles!

6. ​In one of the questions above, I put forth the suggestion of reading past award winners or books from the short lists that you may have missed in the past. Lisa Scherff has been a member and a chair of the Walden Award committee.  Here she writes about her experience and provides some valuable insight.  

​Lisa Scherff Explains the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award

7. I am just guessing, but I am assuming that some of us are reconsider our summer travel plans. I know that is happening for us. We had hoped to visit my daughter and her family--hurrah for grand kids!-- in Scotland. That seems to be off the table.  In this post, Katie Dredger talks about teaching YA on a study abroad program. Katie has some great ideas and maybe we can take a vicarious YA reading trip.
​
Current Young Adult British Literature: Student Choice and Engagements

8. One of my YA heroes is Marshall George. I have been reading his work long before I meet him. Since meeting him, I have never been disappointed by a conversation. In fact, during this social distancing, I should probably give a call.  Marshall reminds us that YA comes in a variety of genres. While your children and adolescents are at home taking on their own studies, parents and other care givers need not worry about reading that might be narrow. Every genre is available and Marshall provides some direction.
 
​The Sometimes-Forgotten Genres in Literature Written for Adolescents and Young Adults: Short Stories, Essays, and Poetry

9.  One of the most prolific contributors to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday is Lesley Roessing. I hope some of you are sitting around with some prolific readers. Following on the heels of Marshall's suggestions, I hope you will look at Lesley's post on MG and YA verse novels.  

​30+ MG/YA Verse Novels for National Poetry Month: Engaging Reluctant Readers, Enriching Enthusiastic Readers, and Appreciating Story, Form, & Language by Lesley Roessing

10. One final post from Lesley. Again, I love YA literature that connects us to History.  Among these ten po sts are several that connect to history. I hope that some of your readers will love the books connecting to an historical event. After reading, I hope they are prompted to do some research and make some connections that will lead them to other books and other topics. I would argue that the best learning comes when adolescents are engaged in something that interest them for more than a few minutes. 

 Learning History through Story by Lesley Roessing

Above are ten excellent post from among over 200 post. If these post don't meet your particular need check out the contributor's page and find one that does. When you do, share the post with others.  As educators we are in this endeavor together. Let's keep discovering and sharing together.

Until next time.

This week we have a newcomer to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday, Brady Nash. He is going to discuss audio books. I have been using audio book a lot more lately. My doctor's says I need to exercise, but I have bad knees --so swimming or bike riding seem to the options. I try to ride the stationary bike between 45 to 60 minutes a day. Perfect time for an audio book. 

Brady starts with T. S. Eliot and the Wasteland. It reminded me of when I was new to Milton and went into the stairwell at the university library so I could read it aloud in an attempt to focus and pay attention. Later, I was in an intense Shakespeare class. We were reading about 12 to 15 plays over the semester. I discovered recordings by the BBC that had the Royal Shakespeare company reading the parts. Headphones and three or four hours helped Shakespeare plays that were new to me come completely alive. 

As Teri Lesesne is found of suggesting--it is time to value reading with our ears.
​
Thanks Brady. Take it away. 

To understand and inhabit the world of a text, readers need to be able to simulate a sensory world from the text (Gee, 2001); they need to see and hear the world indicated by the words. And as part of this, readers hear the words and sentences represented by texts, particularly when reading in an alphabetic language like English in which words and sounds are so closely linked. Listening to the text happens first externally, as readers listen to parents, teachers, or other more advanced readers, and later, internally, as readers listen to the internalized cadence of sentences or simulate the sounds of a novel in their minds. Listening is one form of envisioning text, a habit of mind practiced by readers, and a strategy that can be taught (Bomer, 2006). We can get better at listening through practicing and through hearing models of texts enacted by readers in person or through recordings.

Audiobooks, performed versions of printed texts such as novels, can be used as tools to support and extend reading practices. As readers listen to audiobooks, they gain models not only for the sounds of words and being portrayed, but also how they might be performed or enacted. As students hear more readings, they add to the available cache of ways they can imagine a text sounding as they internally simulate the cadence of sentences and the sounds that make up the worlds of texts. This can help students build reading fluency and improve comprehension, particularly when students move between printed texts and audiobooks (Johnson, 2014).
​
In my own English classroom, I have used segments from audiobooks as a regular part of classes. They serve not only as bits of text in themselves, but as mentors to students as they hear the language of books in their heads. And they can lead us to discuss the sentences or, when there is some musical embellishment or added sound effect, we can discuss the ways in which the world of the text sounds. I’ve also used audiobooks to introduce the idea that students reading together in groups can be creative in their performances or discuss the sounds they heard internally. Often, I would hear them negotiating over sounds in the text, discussing how one student or another heard it. As they had these discussions, students were building rich virtual worlds around text as they practiced imagining it one way or another. Sometimes, during book talks, students would produce little segments on their own, adding a bit of digital audio composition to their work together. 

Below, I discuss several young adult audiobooks that have brought their source texts to life by explicitly taking advantage of the audiobook format, using the affordances of sound to add to the original texts. They do so in different ways, and there is, of course, no one way in which sound might augment or support a reading experience. Below, I highlight 4-5 young adult audiobooks that have stood out to me in the past several years. I focus my discussion of each on the ways in which the producers and narrators have brought to life the text. This list is by no means complete. It does serve as a starting point for thinking about the particular affordances of audiobooks and providing a few examples that teachers might explore for use in their own classroom.

In addition to adding dimensions for understanding or discussing individual texts, inviting audiobooks into the classroom allows for broader discussions about the nature of meaning, communication, text, and story in today’s media saturated society. Stories told using sound are nothing new, coexisting with and perhaps predating written stories by thousands of years. They are, however, gaining additional prominence and attention as digital platforms meld the mediums and modes that have existed separately for the last several decades (Kress, 2003). Teachers looking to invite critical thinking about new literacies can support their own and the students’ exploration of multimodal texts through audiobooks. And any of us, student, teacher, or just interested listener, may find one more avenue by which we can enjoy stories, just because we love stories.​

Until next time.

This weekend Shelly Shaffer, Gretchen Rumohr, and I were the keynote speakers at the MCTE 2020 Spring Conference.  We were thrilled to be invited and relish the opportunity to talk about our work on teaching about gun violence in the  English Language Arts classroom.

We have a ton of information that we built into a website so that the attendees would have easy access to our notes and and a semi organized collection of resources to use with other teachers and their students. One of the questions teachers seem to ask about are the books. How many books are out there? Which ones are about school shootings? Are there some that are generically about gun violence? Are there short stories? What about nonfiction? What about the ones by our favorite authors?

We, of course, think that ELA teachers should be reading as much as possible. The best books to recommend are the ones are the ones you know well. Next, is know where to look for books and for reliable reviews of those books. After that we hope you are teaching your students how to look for themselves. Don't we all hope that the students we work with will love reading the way we do? We hope they are eagerly looking for books that call to them. Then, they can find an abundance of books on any topic they are interested.

Below is a slideshow of books that we have gathered that are connected guns in a variety of ways.

A couple of years ago I was introduced to Briana through another colleague. Briana was interested in writing for the blog. We talked a bit and she was on the schedule. I have always enjoyed her topics. In fact, after reading the draft of her first post, I was struck with how much it reminded me of my own experience working on a farmer. She was writing about the US and Mexico border and how it connects with immigrant experiences and how they are represented in YA literature. You can read it here. Last year she wrote about Manga as classroom counterculture. She was writing well beyond my expertise. Take a couple of minutes to check it out here.

Once again, she taken on a topic that is beyond my expertise.  She has connected current events with Queer YA Literature and the #MeToo movement. I love the books she mentions, but she does a better job than I could have with the analysis and connections she makes. Thanks Briana.

This past week, the public finally received a verdict in what has come to be known as the case that sparked the #MeToo movement. Harvey Weinstein was taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs, facing up to 29 years in prison. Even though Weinstein was acquitted of some of the most serious charges, many considered Weinstein’s conviction a victory; as a powerful Hollywood mogul, there was no doubt that Weinstein had been evading accountability for decades, and like so many others, had been quite successful at doing so. And for the first time, a high-profile predator was held responsible despite the very real “messiness” of the cases: the complications that often destroy otherwise strong sexual assault cases—victims’ complex personal histories, difficulty in reconstructing details of their trauma, and continued contact with the assailant even after the abuse—were not enough to distract jurors from the facts central to the case.
 
Post-verdict, a rash of news articles with headlines like, What Now? and What have we Learned? surfaced in popular publications like the New York Times and Washington Post. I find myself slightly annoyed by society’s tendency to collapse decades and more than 80 public accusations (in the Weinstein case) into this type of headline. The testimonies of the survivors were so complex, and I like so many other women know that #MeToo will not end with one verdict, one case, or one conviction. As actress Mira Sorvino notes, “Together we have and will continue to make change in the laws as a culture, as this is just a drop in a wave of justice to come for predators and survivors everywhere." But, it’s more than that. It’s about lives; families and individuals struggling to heal from trauma. 

​Like many women, I have spent lots of time listening to #MeToo survivors on the radio, on TV, and in both fiction and nonfiction. I read perhaps the most talked about #MeToo novel, Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson. I followed it up with The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed so I will not discuss them here, other than to say that these books have contributed greatly to the conversation. The stories I heard from survivors in all these forms of media not only helped me to feel validated in my own experience; they also pushed me to think about the varied ways people experience assault. I also learned that when it happens to LGBTQ people, it does not necessarily count as assault under the law in many parts of the world. I realized that within the LBGTQ community, sexual assault, and assault in general is underreported. Poverty, race, and other factors, of course, can also play a significant role. 

Tarana Burke, the activist and founder of #MeToo, once noted, “...I think it will be a disservice to people if we couch this conversation in about what happens in Hollywood or what happens in even political offices.” The #MeToo movement was founded on marginalized voices (those of black women, specifically), and marginalized voices continue to be important for shaping the contours of debate about sexual assault prevention both nationally and internationally. As teachers, it’s important to highlight all voices, and especially marginalized voices when we consider the true impact and future of #MeToo. 

​There is a lot to talk about in this novel, especially in terms of the intersections of race and gender identity. There are also issues of addiction and grief. Konigsberg does a beautiful job weaving these throughout the novel without these vital topics becoming too overwhelming or seeming stereotypical. When Max is raped during his first homosexual experience, he does not realize that it was rape (by definition) until nearly 150 pages later when he is in a healthy relationship with Jordan and having flashbacks. As readers, we are guided through the process of Max coming to his realization. For high school readers, I think his journey is a particularly valuable part of the text, as Max has to face his trauma head-on, and it is treated realistically. Victims of sexual trauma often experience just such a delay in processing their experiences.

Both novels have scenes that are difficult to read, because of violence, trauma, and sexual content. Some students may find these parts difficult, depending on their own experiences or sensitivity to these issues. More importantly, these scenes need to be contextualized by the teacher, noting that while there is sexual violence, this is actually not the focus of either book. In the end, both are love stories, with characters that are your average high-schoolers in so many ways, living lives centered on what you would expect at that age: relationships, friends, and hobbies.
 
It’s also important to explore the very different ways in which the victims confront their abusers. In The Music of What Happens, Max actually confronts his rapist more than once after the incident. He talks to both of his parents who are, for the most part, supportive and offer to find him help. His partner stays with him through it all, and it seems as if their relationship will stay on-track. On the other hand, in Kaleidoscope Song, Neo’s experience affects nearly all areas of her life, and eventually causes her to lose almost everything. Neo’s environment, inclusive of her conservative parents and her community's view of LBGTQ people shape her experience. It is clear that it would be impossible for her to directly confront her rapist, let alone take him to court, though she does confront him in other ways that are powerful.  

These books elicit a range of powerful questions as well, some of which are answered by the text and others which are more ambiguous. In my own classroom (now at the college level), I am a fan of high-order thinking questions, and I have my students answer some of mine and think of their own. Some that would fit well in discussions of these texts include: 

​These types of questions are not only meant to give the reader a much broader view of #MeToo (beyond the headlines), they are also meant to elicit empathy, to see the life surrounding the victim, something not always present in court transcripts and testimony. The stories told by Max and Neo make the reader think about the many variables surrounding rape and sexual assault, moving beyond simple, fixed definitions and easy solutions. This varied range of thoughtful representations alone is extremely important, adding complexity to the often black-and-white (or victims-and-villains) approach to issues of sexual violence that we encounter in the media and in popular culture. 

Until next time.