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Looking Back at Some of My Old Posts and Picking Some Favorites

3/24/2020

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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.
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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.  
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The fourth book is addressed below and is the first in a series of three. The others are almost done, I promise.

The net growth for me has been rewarding. Over the last five and a half years there have been over 100 posts by me, over 175 post from guest contributors that I have edited, 8 peer reviewed articles, 6 book chapters, and  6 edited books, and three more in the pipeline. It has been productive and has helped me focus on my teaching and research of YA Literature. I have produced more writing in this time than I ever imagined that I would produce in a life time. In fact, when I left my high school job to began a job at LSU, I told my colleague if I am back in three years, it will have nothing to do with the weather, the food, the community or my colleagues. It will simply mean that I can write sufficiently to meet the academic requirements. You see how easily the fear of writing can raise it ugly head even in a seasoned English teacher who loves literature. Imagine how our students might feel. Thankfully, I made it through, but not without the help of my wife--a much better writer and an academic, co-authors, and colleagues who were encouraging and supportive.

The posts selected below are some of my favorites and some of them have lead to other projects.  I have tried to limit the introduction to each in the hope that you will follow the link. In each case I do provide a cover image or a video that relates to the post's content.


Enjoy and share widely, if you have a favorite post I would love to hear about it. Thanks for reading.
1.  Holden, Dear Holden; Your Influence Stretches On and On and Readers of YA Literature Thank You.
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2. YA Textbooks to add to your shelf and share with students, teachers, and librarians
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3. Say His Name!
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4. Blood Brother: An introduction to Jonathan Daniels 
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5. Talking about Chris Crutcher, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Banned Books.
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6. Rereading the past and excavating the foundation: Cormier, Hamilton, Zindel, and Myers.
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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. 
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8. Makes Me Wanna Shut Up: Reconsidering how I used African-American Authors in My Classroom
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9. ​​Nothing Gold Can Stay: Ness, Hinton, Frost, Shakespeare, and Yeats
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10. Shakespeare and YA literature: Some Promising Novels for a Beginning
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11. Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Lonesome George Reminds about Science, Children’s Books, and the Classroom
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Until next time.
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YA Literature about Pandemic and Epidemic Events by Emily Pendergrass and Melanie Hundley

3/23/2020

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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:
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YA Literature about Pandemic and Epidemic Events

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
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Pandemic / Epidemic

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
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Herstory YA Literature to read together during Women's History Month by Deborah Van Duinen

3/18/2020

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Herstory YA Literature to Read together during Women's History Month
​by Deborah

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.

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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.
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​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.
​Catherine Called Birdy - 1290 England: This historical novel in diary format by Karen Cushman (1994) tells the story of Catherine, the 14-year-old daughter of an English country knight who rebels against the accepted women’s roles and rights of her day. She has been promised in marriage to an old, rich knight whom she despises. Readers grow to love Birdy and all the ways she reflects on the (limited) options in her life. In our book club discussion about this book, we explored the following questions:
  • How often do we, as women, compromise our beliefs because of societal or cultural expectations and norms? 
When do we, as women, exercise our agency? How might women be “caged” today? 
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Blood Water Paint - 1610 Italy: Joy McCullough (2018)’s book, written mostly in verse, is the fictionalized story of the painter Artemisia Gentileschi. After her mom dies, Artemisia must decide, at age twelve, to either live as a nun or grind pigment for her father, an artist. She decides to grind pigment and in doing so develops her artistic skills. During a time period when men just took what they wanted from women, Artemisia must decide whether to live in silence or speak the truth. Discussion questions that extend from this story:
  • What does the author say about women’s place in society in both 1600s Rome and the world today?
  • What are the costs that Artemisia must pay for speaking her own truth?
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The Birchbark House - 1847 United States (Lake Superior). In her first novel for young readers, Lousie Erdrich (1999) tells a story through the eyes of the spirited, 7-year-old Ojibwa girl, Omakayas. Readers follow Omakayas and her adopted family and their surrounding community through four seasons in the span of a year, including when a historically documented outbreak of smallpox occurred on the island. Two questions to discuss after reading this book: 
  • How are Ojibwa women’s roles similar or different than in other cultures?
  • How do Old Tallow and Two Strike challenge traditional definitions of feminity?
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Uprising - 1911 United States (New York): Margaret Peterson Haddix (2014)’s historical fiction novel revolves around the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that killed 146 immigrant workers. The story, told in alternating points of view, focuses on three young women from different walks of life whose lives intersect because of the shirtwaist workers’ strike and the development of the women’s suffrage movement. Discussion questions from this story could include:
  • How do the three different character perspectives offer new insights into women’s issues: the fervent union sympathizer (Bella), the desperate immigrant (Yetta), the wealthy girl with suffragist leanings (Jane)?
  • What information does the story give us about the women’s suffrage movement and about labor laws in the United States?
  • What contemporary issues surrounding women might prompt us to take social action?
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Letters From Rifka - 1919 United States (New York): The main character in this book by Karen Hesse (1992) is Rifka, a young Jewish girl who escapes from Russia with her family to America because one of her brothers is wanted by the army. The story consists of a series of letters from Rifka to her cousin Tovah who remains in Russia. In these letters, Rifka documents her experiences and chronicles her wonderings, dreams, and hopes. This story prompts readers to consider:
  • What were the cultural constraints placed on girls during this time period?
  • How does Rifka show determination, strength, and hope to those around her and herself? 
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Claudette Colvin: Twice Before Justice - 1950s, United States (Alabama). Philip Hoose’s (2009) National Book Award-winning nonfiction book based on interviews tells an in-depth account of Claudette Colvin, an activist and pioneer in the civil rights movement yet not nearly as well known as Rosa Parks. As a 15-year-old teenager, Claudette refused to give her bus seat to a white woman nine months before Rosa Parks did. However, Claudette was dismissed by community leaders and not celebrated in the ways that Rosa Parks was.
Questions to explore with this book include:
  • Why is Claudette significant for the Civil Rights movement?
  • Do you think Claudette was mistreated by the black community? Why was she mistreated? How? What do you think the Civil Rights movement should have done differently with respect to Claudette?
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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.
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Spreading our "Book Love": Reading and Sharing in a Time of Social Distancing

3/16/2020

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Even in the midst of social distancing, Gretchen Rumohr, Shelly Shaffer, Steffany Maher and I continue to work on a project. We are in a routine of meeting through Zoom every Monday for an hour or so in the hopes that we will  coordinate our efforts and make some progress. Today, we became acutely aware that we had a different level of stress and we wonder how others are handling the situation. We wondered about "forced" schooling and what that might mean for reading.

Then, like what happens on many Mondays, we had an idea. With praise to Penny Kittle, we borrow the term "Book Love." 
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Reading has Mattered in Our Lives

During the coming weeks, many of us will likely be staying home due to a national pandemic. Many of us--teachers and professors--may be transitioning our content online or making other adjustments in order to meet student learning outcomes. In many ways, we are participating in something we never signed up for nor did we anticipate such a scenario.  In most cases, we are changing the rules of what we promised we’d do when we met our students. It’s jarring, and it feels forced. It begs the question: What does it mean to force educational practices in artificial ways upon our students, our children, and our grandchildren? Alternatively, what does it mean to be authentic in our current struggles and model coping strategies for our students?

Upon reflecting about what it means to be staying at home during a national pandemic, at our core, we recognize the power of reading. We all have childhood memories of reading. We can name books that we read over and over, books that led us to other books, and books that we finally fell in love with after multiple attempts. 
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.  ​
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From Steffany: I fell in love with reading as a young girl when my mother would read to my three sisters and me at night before bed. The first book I remember vividly was one from The Sugar Creek Gang series, and when she finished reading it to us, I decided to reread it to myself. Reading books my mother read became a habit, and later in my latchkey-kid life, I would randomly pick up my mother’s novels and begin reading wherever her bookmark was. I’m pretty sure she never knew this, or she may have chosen her books a little more carefully.
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I still remember the excitement of turning the hallway at my elementary school and seeing the RIF (Reading Is Fun) tables set up.  I knew they meant that I would leave school with a brand new book that day. In first grade, it was an
Encyclopedia Brown book.  In fifth grade, a Scott O’Dell.  In middle school, I started The Sword of Shannara Trilogy after picking up my mother’s copy one day, and thus began my love for fantasy/sci-fi.  I devoured those books throughout middle school and made the leap to Stephen King’s The Shining in 8th grade.
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​I was lucky to have a high school teacher who was ahead of her time and allowed us to read whatever books we chose and write short summaries of them.  While we still read Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar, I also steadily made my way through every book Stephen King had written.  It wasn’t until I became a high school teacher and started my graduate work that I began reading young adult literature.  I found myself connecting to books in a whole new way, as I would consider how I might teach them while I was reading.

And then when my own daughters began reading YA, I connected in a new way again.  After my oldest daughter read 
Winger, she implored me to read it so we could talk about it. It wrecked me, and we cried through our talk. Together, we anxiously awaited Andrew Smith’s sequel, Stand Off. This has become the culture in our home--we find a book we adore, or that makes us so angry we cry, or that causes us to fall in love all over again, and we share it, and we talk about it (and most likely cry), and then we talk about how we can make a difference.  Powerful books like The Hate U Give and I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter and Speak: The Graphic Novel. 
These are the books my girls and I pick up, read, and share with one another. These are the books I share with my preservice teachers, and then they read other YA books that interest them, and we discuss what moves us to empathy and action. These are the books I want to share with the world--books that move readers to tears and to work toward change. 
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From Gretchen: I grew up with a mom that brought me to the library every Saturday.  Will I lose street cred with my fellow YA scholars if I say that I grew up on a steady diet of Sweet Valley High and Christopher Pike?  That while I had an active out-of-school reading life,  I didn’t read anything I was assigned to read in high school (which I’ve detailed in a separate blog post)? At any rate, I will never forget reading The Handmaid’s Tale as a college undergrad. I was so invested in Atwood’s narrative that I thought:  how am I even allowed to drive to the store? to read? to have my own thoughts? I found my thoughts wandering back to Atwood when reading The Nowhere Girls. When I taught high school, I hadn’t yet discovered YA literature for my own use--so I loved “adult” authors like Anita Shreve, Robert Morgan, and Wally Lamb (...what a missed opportunity, I think. But better late to this YA game than never.)  Graduate school brought endless discovery through a graduate-level Harry Potter class: here was a community of readers and writers who were doing legitimate academic work on middle-grade/YA literature. Here was a class that grounded YA in the classics, yet recognized the power of a series to help students learn more about their lives.
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Some of the most inspiring intersections between my love of reading and my teaching have been when my students discover “the” book--the book that turned them into real readers, the book that made them look for similar books or similar authors, the book that they wanted to share with the world.  Books like Ghost and Everyday and Salt to the Sea are easy recommendations for reluctant readers, and the payoff--the joy they radiate upon rediscovering reading--will carry them far into their own teaching lives.
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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.  ​

Gretchen has an Ambitious List. What does Yours Look Like?

From Shelly: Unlike some of my colleagues (above) that have strong reading memories from their childhood, I remember reading, but I don’t remember specific books. I know that my mom recommended books to me as a child, like The Secret Garden and Heidi. Those were some of my mom’s favorite books growing up, so she shared them with me, but none of the books from my childhood had a lasting impact on my reading identity. I was in school during the 1980’s and early 1990’s, so young adult novels were being published at that time, but I don’t remember having access to these books in my school. 

My strongest reading memories are actually as an adult reader and teacher of young adult readers as a middle school teacher. I remember reading Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson for the first time and being floored that Melinda had to endure her pain alone, without help from her friends or family. I wondered, “How can they all be so blind to her pain?” and “How can they not see the changes in Melinda?” This book really touched me because her silence reminded me of my own. Another book that changed my life was Identical by Ellen Hopkins. That book was one of the first I had read that explored sexual abuse in such a way. Ellen’s book told my story. It made me see myself more clearly than I had before, and I knew that I would never be the same. 
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There are books that we can read at certain times in our lives that speak our stories in a way that nothing else can. I have had several other books touch my life at certain times in my life, or that are important to me because they touched a student’s life. Trying to provide books to meet the interests and needs of the students in my classroom was important to me; thus, I began to collect YA books-as many YA books as I could-knowing that I had students in my classroom that needed access to these books. And, as I added books to my classroom library, I read them all. I read my first school shooting book, Give a Boy a Gun by Todd Stasser, while I was still teaching eighth grade in Mesa, AZ. This book was recommended to me by one of my students--who was usually a non-reader. He loved this book, and I had to find out what had attracted him to this book. I was fascinated that there were books that tackled such a difficult topic in our lives. I began reading every book related to school shootings that I could find (See link to my YA Wednesday blog). When I read Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan after my teenage son’s coming out, I learned about his life and imagined what life could be like for him in an ideal world. I read Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, and I learned about my cousin’s anorexia and her personal struggles through the main character, Lia. There are so many more books that have touched my life in important ways. I cannot choose favorites,but rather I remember books because of the experience they provided me at the time when I read that particular book. ​​
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What can We do While We Stay Home?

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: ​
Dear student, please set aside your math homework and read An Abundance of Katherines instead. If you feel like it, let me know what you think of it. Let me know what you thought of the math in the book. Let me know what you learned about love. Or not!  You don’t need to tell me anything about the book. Just keep reading.    

Or: 
 

Dear student, in lieu of gym class, take a well-spaced walk outside and then read Tradition. If you feel like it, let me know how it made you see others differently, or how it made you reflect on your own relationships. Let me know what you learned about athletic culture.  Tell me how often you resonated with a character. Or not! You don’t need to tell me anything about the book. Just keep reading.    

Or:

Dear student, instead of reading Julius Caesar, read Unpresidented.  If you feel like it, let me know what it taught you about our current political system.  Reflect on the meaning of leadership. Share some of your questions about the current administration, and of the upcoming election.  Or not! You don’t need to tell me anything about the book. Just keep reading.    

Our public libraries may be closed, but we know that library cards still work for Libby, Hoopla, and Overdrive.  We can listen to audiobooks while we rake leaves (six feet apart from others), load the dishwasher for the millionth time, and wash our hands.  We can read e-books as we drift to sleep, the glow of the screen not unlike our under-the covers, covert childhood reading by flashlight. We can make popcorn on the stove and watch screen adaptations of our favorite books with our families.  We can harness the healing power of books as we navigate this crisis.

We Want to Hear from You!

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.
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Are You Going Stir Crazy? Let's Revisit Teaching and Reading YA in an Era of Social Distancing

3/15/2020

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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.

Ten Post to Reconsider
Expanding Options as We Teach and Advise from a Distance

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.  
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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.
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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.
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Listening to the Story World with YA Audiobooks by Brady Nash

3/11/2020

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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.
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Thanks Brady. Take it away. 

Listening to the Story World with YA Audiobooks

The Wasteland was a struggle for me the first time I tried to make my way through. I spent hours seated on the counter at a diner in Washington Heights struggling to put together any kind of meaning from a text that seemed to switch topics every line. And I was a good reader too. I had a degree in English from a pretty good school. But it wasn’t until I was offered the suggestion to listen to the text in my head as if flipping through stations on a radio dial that it finally started to click. When I started to listen like that, I could hear the voices. I could make the mental switches between narrations that I needed to hear in order to start creating in my mind something comprehensible, something meaningful. When I listened to the poem rather than trying only to process it logically, I could at least start to understand. And then I began to create a context for the poem, I began to make my own sense of it, to interpret and make meaning from a text that could finally live inside my mind in a sensory way.
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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).
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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.

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Acevedo’s bestselling novel in verse tells the tale of a young woman growing up in New York City developing her identity as a writer. Acevedo is an accomplished spoken word poet, and seeing videos of her work inspired me to check out the spoken version of her novel. It wasn’t until I listened to the audio rendition that I realized that Acevedo’s printed novel only represents one portion of the text’s power. In this audiobook rendering, Acevedo herself delivers the lines as she intended them, in the bold style of a spoken word poem. While the internal representation of a written work is always a production that is created in collaboration between a reader and a text, it may be safe to say that there is still value in hearing the author’s version of the sound of the text, particularly when the text is saturated with a genre and a medium that is linked inherently to sound, that is so focused on the sound and delivery of words. For those unfamiliar with spoken word poetry, it is safe to say that the audiobook rendition of Acevedo’s recent smash hit may completely change their reading of the text entirely.
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Link to the audiobook

Feed by M.T. Anderson

​M.T. Anderson’s Feed was published in 2002, four years before Facebook’s news feed feature was launched and six years before the release of the iPhone. The novel takes place in a future in which computers have been installed in nearly everyone’s brain, and advertisements jump in and out of our thoughts without our control. Information searching, online shopping, movie watching, and personal communication all take place within people’s heads. Littered throughout the novel are snippets of commercials, television shows, and other information that come through “the feed,” as it’s called. In the audiobook rendition, these snippets are fully produced texts, with sounds, music, and readings that provide a full parody of the media culture they are satirizing. The audiobook is able to deliver in the medium the novel is working to evoke. In the process, these modernist inserts are made more accessible to readers, who must simulate the full sound of the text in order to understand them. Moreover, the interruption of the narrative with the sound of a commercial or television clip mirrors the interruptions that the characters experience in their thinking because of the feed, adding an additional experiential layer to the audiobook that is only hinted at in the original novel. 
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link to audiobook

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

​Ari and Dante, as many of my students and teacher friends call it, is a story about two Mexican American teenage boys living in El Paso who develop a close friendship at the tail end of high school, and slowly learn to face their increasingly intense feelings for one another. While the audiobook version of Saenz’s modern classic is not decorated with additions like music or sound effects, it is rendered beautifully. Read by Lin Manuel Miranda, of Hamilton and In the Heights fame, this audiobook does something wonderful with the pacing and spacing of the novel. Ari and Dante takes place in and around El Paso. Those of us who have spent much time in the west Texas landscape in which the book takes place know the vast distances, the silences that create the backdrop for the novel. But these silences are not just in the setting. They exist in the pacing of Ari’s narration, in his reticence to share his feelings, and in his relationship with his father, a quiet and reserved man scarred by the traumas of war. Miranda’s narration brings these spaces, these silences to life. He allows for long pauses to represent the spaces of the page, and uses these spaces to bring the emotions of the two protagonists to life. As a bonus, fans of Miranda’s musical work may have an additional avenue by which to enjoy the text.
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link to audiobook

Sadie by Courtney Summers

​In Sadie, West McCray, the host of a crime podcast, follows the trail of Sadie, a missing teenager whose sister was murdered the year before. The narrative switches between the host, whose story is told via a simulated podcast, and Sadie, who narrates her experiences in first-person. There are two main voice actors to narrate the story: Rebecca Soler as Sadie, and Dan Bittner as McCray. The stutter that inflects Sadie’ speech, a challenge for her as she acts as both bounty hunter and detective on her quest to avenge her sister’s death, is brought to life in the audiobook; Soler performs Sadie with vulnerability, power and dignity. Moments that are harder to represent in print, such as the pauses when Sadie attempts to get out words - represented by “___” in the novel - are brought to life powerfully by Soler, who creates sounds in her throat to represent them. West McCray’s segments are presented as a fully produced podcast with music, copyright claims, different actors appearing as the people West interviews for his show, and all of the trimmings that make a podcast a podcast. The audiobook style mirrors the style of true crime podcasts like Serial or Atlanta Monster. In this sense, the audiobook format seems particularly appropriate for the contents of Sadie, as it includes the actual medium which the printed novel is intending to evoke. 
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link to audiobook

Conclusion

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.
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MCTE Spring Conference 2020 (#mct2020)

3/8/2020

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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.

YA books about Guns (and maybe a few that aren't YA)

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Going beyond Weinstein with Queer #MeToo YA by Briana Asmus

3/4/2020

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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.

Going beyond Weinstein with Queer #MeToo 

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. 
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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. 
​This week I had the pleasure of reading two new YA books that speak to experiences of sexual assault within two very different queer communities. The first was The Music of What Happens, by Bill Konigsberg, which tells the story of Max and Jordan, two high-school seniors each with their own struggles and delights. The narrative structure of this novel provides excellent development for both characters as the chapters alternate between Max and Jordan, so that as readers we often get the same story from each of their distinct perspectives. In this way, the characters continue to build and become more complex as the novel goes on, and as we see them grow through the eyes of each other. 
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​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.
​The second book was Kaleidoscope Song by Fox Benwell. Set in Khayelitsha, South Africa, the novel is narrated by Neo, a high-school senior who is obsessed with music, and, is in love with Tale, a local singer. A lot is changing in Neo’s life as she is struggling to realize her dream of being involved in the music industry,  As she comes to know herself, she falls in with a local queer community. She quickly learns that in her hometown, it is not safe to be alone at night as a woman, let alone be out as a queer person. Neo comes to realize just how dangerous it can be in one horrific moment. Benwell does a wonderful job describing the setting through Neo, who both knows her limitations and pushes against them when she can. Poverty, religion, and violence all play a part in this novel, and students may be especially interested to consider how gender identity can be impacted by the social acceptance in a different environment. In addition, music lovers will appreciate the discography in the back of the text, which could be played while reading. 
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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: 
  • In what way does access to support systems play a role in one’s experience of sexual violence?
  • How does (race, gender identity, orientation) play a role in the lives of the victims, and the abusers?
  • How do feelings or perceptions of one person’s control over another human come into play?
  • How important is it for a confrontation to take place? What counts as a confrontation?
  • How does a person’s social circle shape their experience of a traumatic event?
  • How is the experience of trauma shaped by status (socioeconomic, or other)?
  • What (if any) bystander intervention is represented in the text?  
​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.
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    Dr. Gretchen Rumohr
    Chief Curator
    Gretchen Rumohr is a professor of English and department chair at Aquinas College, where she teaches writing and language arts methods.   She is also a Co-Director of the UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. She lives with her four girls and a five-pound Yorkshire Terrier in west Michigan.

    Dr. Steve Bickmore
    ​Creator and Curator

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

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