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Registration is open for the virtual Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature!  Plan on April 21, 2023, 8:30-5:30 CST.  

Don't worry, it is easy to find.  Just go to YouTube and search for Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday.

Register here!

New Adult (NA) Literature Helps Readers Look Ahead to College, Careers, Relationships, and Active Engagement in Life after Adolescence by Dr. Sharon Kane

3/15/2023

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​We welcome Sharon Kane back to YA Wednesday today!  Dr. Kane is a professor in the School of Education at the State University of New York at Oswego.  She is the author of
Literacy and Learning in the Content Areas: Enhancing Knowledge in the Disciplines (2019, Routledge) and Integrating Literature in the Disciplines (2020, Routledge). A new book, Teaching and Reading New Adult Literature in High School and College (2023, Routledge).  


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New Adult (NA) Literature Helps Readers Look Ahead to College, Careers, Relationships, and Active Engagement in Life after Adolescence by Dr. Sharon Kane
I’m always saddened when I hear parents, teachers, or students themselves talking about senioritis as if it were an inevitable condition in teens who have met most of their graduation requirements and are just biding time until they get out of high school. Senior year is a perfect time for librarians, teachers, and/or community volunteers to organize courses or book clubs where participants read New Adult literature, aimed at readers between the ages of seventeen and mid-twenties. As students count down the months and weeks before they begin their post-high school life, they can benefit from reading fiction and non-fiction relating to college academic life; early career exploration; new, changing, and deepening relationships; and civic responsibilities that are part of what some call adulting. At the same time, they can relish the pleasure of reading and the great conversations that happen when people come together over books.

One of the major stresses of senior year for many is the college application process, followed by the period of hoping for acceptance while fearing rejection. We can introduce our students to literary friends who have been through this scenario. Here are a few.
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Rising senior Felix Love, in Kacen Callender’s Felix Ever After (2020), is participating in an art program in hopes of winning a scholarship to Brown University. Besides that pressure, he’s dealing with continuing identity and relationship issues. He knows he is Black, queer, and trans. But unfolding events cause him to realize aspects of his identity are more nuanced than he realized. In Kelly Loy Gilbert’s When We Were Infinite (2021), five Asian American high school students, bound together by friendship and music, make a pact to go to the same college. What could go wrong? Well, for one thing, Beth is accepted at Juilliard, while Jason is not. Beth narrates the story of how the five friends grow, change, heal, stretch, and ponder identities as the year progresses. 
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Liz Lightly, in Leah Johnson’s You Should See Me in a Crown (2021), has high ideals; she wants to study medicine and be in a college orchestra. But when the scholarship she was counting on doesn’t materialize, her only option seems to be to join the competition to be prom queen (yuck!), the winner of which will be awarded a $10,000 scholarship. Charming As a Verb (2022), by Ben Philippe, features Henry, who desperately wants to attend Columbia; he and his immigrant father have both worked so hard to make this goal a reality. But when his college interview doesn’t go well, worry takes over. His intense classmate Corinne becomes a huge part of Henry’s emotional, social, and ethical learning curves during his final semester of high school. 
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New Adult literature can also address the needs and interests of college students. I designed and taught a course on NA literature that was restricted to incoming first-year students. We began with Fangirl (2013), by Rainbow Rowell, where students met Cath on her first day of college, then followed her through freshman year. Some readers identified with Cath; others found her annoying. The story helped us to talk about topics including anxiety; academic integrity; abuse of alcohol; roommate issues; changing relationships with parents as students become increasingly independent; college friendships and romances; and more. We went on to meet other literary college students, such as Marin in Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay (2019). Her story opens at the end of her first semester, when all other students have left for semester break but Marin is staying in the dorm. Readers quickly realize that Marin is in trouble, and they take in details that help them figure out why she left California for New York by herself; why she hasn’t contacted her former lover and best friend; and why she is now seemingly in a severe depression. This story provides opportunities for students to learn about mental illness and to discuss ways to handle situations when their own lives or those of their friends are in turmoil. 
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There are numerous books featuring college students navigating various challenges. In Required Reading for the Disenfranchised Freshman (2022), by Kristen R. Lee (2022), Savannah, who had hoped to attend a nearby historically Black college, finds herself as a scholarship student at an Ivy League school, where she encounters microaggressions as well as overt racist behavior from the day she moves into her dorm room. Did she make a mistake, pursuing her mother’s dream instead of her own? This book could be paired with Every Body Looking (2021), by Candice Iloh, a novel in verse narrated by Ada, who does enroll in a historically Black college. She struggles in her Accounting class, which she neither understands nor cares about. She seems not to care about her new job, or her beginning relationship with a young man. So what does she care about? What will make her happy, and feel true to herself? Readers watch Ada as she watches another young woman dancing; she finally meets Kendra, and attends dance classes with her. Ah….
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We know that college is not for everybody, so we need to make books available to our students who wish to defer college, perhaps to travel; or to find opportunities to learn new skills and grow through a job. In Teaching and Reading New Adult Literature in High School and College (Kane, 2023), I offer one text set filled with titles having to do with a gap year, and another with books about food-related careers (some involving college, some not). In I.W. Gregorio’s This Is My Brain in Love (2020), Jocelyn and aspiring journalist Will create a business plan and investigate marketing and advertising strategies to try to save Jocelyn’s family’s Chinese restaurant. As they learn to appreciate each other’s cultures and cuisine (Chinese and Nigerian), they fall in love. Arsenic and Adobo (2021), by Mia P. Manansala, delivers a food-related mystery. Lila is helping her Tita Rosie try to save her floundering restaurant. Her former boyfriend Derrick, a food critic, is trashing the restaurant with bad reviews—until he dies while eating at Tita Rosie’s place. Lila becomes the prime suspect, and must investigate the murder herself, since the police are too busy pinning the crime on her to find the real killer. The novel offers plenty of romance, along with vivid descriptions of food and drink. 
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College doesn’t last forever. What comes after that? I recently read Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (2022), where we come to love characters who have successful careers in video game development. The story demonstrates creativity, collaboration, and changing relationships as Sadie, Sam and Marx mature through their post-college years. 

I devote one chapter of my book to NA literature dealing with changing relationships during the late teen years and the twenties. One text set offers books involving fake dating (which can usually lead to deeper reflection on what can make romantic relationships authentic, healthy, and mutually satisfying). Another features literature about how family dynamics change when New Adults leave home for college or new locations. One book that fits both lists is Alexandria Bellefleur’s Written in the Stars (2020). Elle, who has a job as a horoscope reader/writer and astrology-related app creator, is fake-dating Darcy, referred to by Elle’s mother as the actuary. It seems to Elle that her mother reduces everyone to their profession, and she imagines that her mother must think of her as Elle, the disappointment. The novel explores parental pressures and expectations while simultaneously showing two young women who learn to appreciate each other’s strengths and to love without judgment. 

There are many more examples of New Adult literature that can be matched with readers in their teens and twenties who are looking for pleasure reading and/or books that will help them stretch, navigate difficult situations, find purpose, explore identities, and find support as they and their circumstances evolve. You can find more book talks in my YAWednesday post of March 30, 2022, The Value of the Youth Lens when Reading YA. And great new NA books are being published all the time, such as Anna-Marie McLemore’s Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix (2022). The Author’s Note explains, “I wanted to write Jay Gatsby as a transgender young man making an increasingly infamous name for himself in 1920s New York…. I wanted to write Daisy as a Latina lesbian debutante who passes as white and straight …. I wanted to write Nick Carraway as a Mexican American transgender boy who falls in love with the mysterious boy next door ….” (unpaged). 

New Adult literature is a category that will continue to grow. We readers, whether teachers, librarians, students, recent graduates, or others, can continue to grow too, as we revel in the great books inviting us into the world of the New Adult. 

References

Bellefleur, Alexandria. (2020). Written in the Stars. Avon.

Callender, Kacen. (2020). Felix Ever After. Balzer + Bray.

Gilbert, Kelly Loy. (2021). When We Were Infinite. Simon & Schuster.

Gregorio, I.W. (2021). This Is my Brain in Love. Little, Brown.

Iloh, Candice. (2021). Every Body Looking. Dutton Books.

Johnson, Leah. (2021). You Should See me in a Crown. Push.

Kane, Sharon. (2023). Teaching and Reading New Adult Literature in High School and College. Routledge.

LaCour, Nina. (2019). We Are Okay. Penguin Books.

Lee, Kristen R. (2022). Required Reading for the Disenfranchised Freshman. Crown Books.

Mansansala, Mia P. (2021). Arsenic and Adobo. Berkley.

McLemore, Anna-Marie. (2022). Self-made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix. Feiwel & Friends.

Philippe, Ben. (2022). Charming as a Verb. Balzer + Bray.

Rowell, Rainbow. (2013). Fangirl. Saint Martin’s Griffin.

Zevin, Gabrielle. (2022). Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Knopf.



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The March Madness Method Part Two: Teaching A Group Read of Sports Novels by Dr. Christian Gregory

3/8/2023

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​We welcome back Christian Gregory for his second in a two-part series!  Dr. Gregory is an Assistant Professor at Saint Anselm College, teaching courses for preservice teachers in methods, pedagogy, the graphic novel, and Young Adult Literature.  He has written chapters on the history of both YAL and the graphic novel and published in 
English Journal, English Education, the Journal of LGBTQ Youth, and the  International Journal of Dialogic Pedagogy. His research interests are diversifying the canon, dialogical theory, and queer studies. 
The March Madness Method Part Two: Teaching a Group Read of Sports Novels by Dr. Christian Gregory
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Life Inside and Outside the Arena

Last week I laid the groundwork  for discussions which focus both on the sport and the overlay of intersectionality, be it gender, race, or sexuality. If boxing and sport are narratives indicative of the larger narrative of life, then I ask students to consider how these issues within the sport may intersect with the larger systemic oppression such as racism, sexism, or homophobia, offering a series of questions to elicit student thinking: 

  • How might you apply these tropes to the characters you are tracking in the novel? 
  • Do they use their innate skills to navigate their way through the sport and the world to success? 
  • Do they bob and weave to avoid the challenges that face them? 
  • Or must they endure the adversary face-first with some degree of tension and difficulty? 
  • Last, since many YA novels that focus on gender, race, or sexuality as well as the sport, consider how these issues may intersect with the sport, and how those identities may create obstacles due to any form of systemic oppression such as racism, sexism, or homophobia.  

For writers of YAL, this sport story can offer the form of analogy.  Does the game and fight inside the arena (or playing field or court) rest in concert or contrast to the lived experience of the protagonist? Is the sport a refuge from the turmoil of home and life? Is it merely and extension or micro-replication of the larger issues at hand? Even Starr in The Hate U Give cannot escape microaggressions on the court, even in a friendly practice game with friends. Inviting students to consider the two realms, the real and the field, against one another can help students refine elements of contrast and analogy. For if the two realms operate in contrast, then the sport serves as some comfort, the team or teammates, a second family; in contrast, if coordinated, then the play on the field is merely a microcosm of the larger injustice in the world. 

Focusing on the Coach-Athlete Dyad 

Another mode to invite discussions would be to have students consider the relationship between the coach and athlete. Nikolajeva (2010) writes notably about aetonormativity, or the idea that behind every confused youth is the wise elder offering the benefits of adult norms and normative behavior. This application may, of course, apply not only to parents but also their high school equivalents: teachers and coaches. Petrone, et al. (2015) uses this as one of the framing questions for the Youth Lens. Adapting this to sports books, one may examine some of the archetypes of coaching. Two modes can be traced through the varied styles of Indiana’s Bobby Knight, who would famously badger his athletes and famously threw chairs; and, in contrast, UCLA’s John Wooden, who knew the players personally, acted as parentis in loco, offering a more laid back, encouraging, positive style. This may provide an initial entry into any given coach model. Take for example the sadistic coach in The Chocolate Wars, who abuses his position of power in coaching new quarterback, Jerry Renault.  This is what CJ Pascoe (2007) has defined as hegemonic masculinity, or the type gender practice that in its construction of hierarchy supports gender inequality.
 
The 3+1Cs Model of Coaching

Archetypes and methods of coaching have been examined by in several articles, most notably by Jowett and Shanmugam (2016), who developed the notion of the “3+1C Model” within the coach-athlete relationship. Four features make for success: closeness (trust, respect, care and support); commitment (the capacity to form and continue a close bond to ensure performance); and complementarity (which involves the responsiveness and openness and a degree of shared behaviors); and coorientation, the extent to which the coach and athlete share “common ground” and imaginatively see one another’s perspective.  

With this framing in mind, students can examine the relation between the coach and team or coach and protagonist. What might be the level of trust? What is the coach’s investment in the success of each athlete? What features constitute this dyadic relation? Collaborative? Competitive? Such a discussion can move across narratives, and students will be able to share their evidence from each work at hand. One note for teachers is that YAL and fiction in general is often predicated on conflict, and it may be that coaches or teachers are forces of antagonism rather than support.  Still, students in considering this 3+1C model may pull from both the world of the novel and their own lived experience or knowledge of the coach-student relation. 

Distant and Wide Reading Across YA Sports Reads

By providing a common frame or lens, the class can operate more as a kaleidoscope of responses across the genre. In this way, the classroom operates to comb the field of YA rather efficiently in classroom discussion. New Critics would have the teacher center one text, typically a canonical text, and consider the formal operations within that text, such as setting, theme, symbols and allusions. But this March Madness Method is more akin to Moretti’s distant reading (2010), which moves across large sets of texts rather than within a given text.  YAL is ideal for this distant, mad reading.  As we know, YAL breaks the canon and useful reading lenses provide the necessary method to track tropes across a variety of texts. Mad? Yes. Necessary. Absolutely.  Gratifying? Moving across a dozen or so of texts in one class feels closer to sociological-literary studies. In my classroom experience, students are more likely to read books they select on topics of interest to them. The resulting discussion feels like exponential work, as we cover over 12 books in one discussion. Moreover, the lateral investigation across texts feels gratifying for students. It values breadth. Yet the precision of though in considering the sport-coach-athlete relation, even in light of their own experience seems to invite an engagement of analysis, a subjectivity of response, that often goes undervalued. Here, the Madness Method provides both breadth and emotional depth to discussion. ​

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References

Buehler, J. (2016). Teaching reading with YA literature. NCTE

Nikolajeva, M. (2010). Power, voice, and subjectivity in literature for young readers. Routledge. 

Jowett, S., & Shanmugam, V. (2016). Relational Coaching in Sport: Its psychological underpinnings and practical effectiveness. In R. Schinke, K.R. McGannon, & B. Smith (Eds), Routledge International Handbook of Sport Psychology. Routledge.

Moretti, F (2000). Conjectures of World Literature. New Left Review. 

Oates, J.C. (1985). “On Boxing” New York Times.

Oates, J.C. (1987). On Boxing. Harper Collins.

Pascoe, C.J. (2007). Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. University of California Press.

Petrone, R, Sarigianides, S.T. and Mark A. Lewis. (2015) The Youth Lens: Analyzing Adolescence/ts in Literary Texts. Journal of Literacy Research (46)4, p. 506-533.


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The March Madness Method Part One: Teaching A Group Read of Sports Novels by Dr. Christian Gregory

3/1/2023

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​Christian Gregory is an Assistant Professor at Saint Anselm College, teaching courses for preservice teachers in methods, pedagogy, the graphic novel, and Young Adult Literature.  He has written chapters on the history of both YAL and the graphic novel and published in
English Journal, English Education, the Journal of LGBTQ Youth, and the  International Journal of Dialogic Pedagogy. His research interests are diversifying the canon, dialogical theory, and queer studies. 
The March Madness Method Part One: Teaching A Group Read of Sports Novels by Dr. Christian Gregory
I am an assistant professor at a small liberal arts college in New Hampshire with a large proportion of student-athletes. Of the 1,900 or so students on campus, the college has estimated that 42% of the population are either on a team or play on some intramural sport.  And, of course, the college, just one hour out of Boston, resides in the halo of the New England Patriots, the Boston Bruins, and the Red Sox. In a recent class I taught, I gave students the option of designing a short graphic novel chapter.  Knowing my class population of student-athletes, I offered the option to render a sports game into graphica. Many returned to their favorite football game by the Patriots, reviewing the footage for stills they could use to shape the narrative for their final project. Needless to say, March isn’t the only month for sports madness at a small college in New England. 

Responsive to this population of fans and athletes, I have adjusted my curriculum accordingly. In my course Adolescent Literature, I have been inspired by the work of literacy scholars who trumpet the need for student book selection, which they deem essential for engagement, literacy, and student success (Buehler, 2016). For the instructor, this “savy and strategic matchmaking” (p. 87) is key; yet for some classrooms, teachers may not wish to sacrifice the benefits of collective discussion for small group reads.  How then can we allow for student choice while inviting topical conversation?

My response is March Madness pedagogy. I invite students team up for reads in teams of two, three, or four, and select book of interest to them within an All Sports Read (See list of possible titles for your classroom next week, in Appendix I). I do suggest a curated list by the instructor. Last year, I provided titles I thought offered diversity of race, gender, sexuality and culture.  Each student was allowed to select from the curated list, and no student was allowed to read alone. This program of study was to ensure another reader of each title in class: to both encourage completion and bolster discussion in small groups. Small group reads in middle and high school are nothing new in curriculum, but whole class discussions on topic may be less so. Were a classroom teacher to take this on as a practice, an all-sports read, I would like to offer a pedagogy that respects the differentiation of titles while embracing common themes. 

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Consider the Essence or Ontology of the Athlete

One way to invite students into small group discussion is to focus on the athlete and their relation to the sport or their identity as an athlete. I offered my students an introduction to the two opposing ontologies of noted boxers, Muhammad Ali and Jake LoMatta. Joyce Carol Oates (1985) offers that even sports have their own narratives: “Each boxing match is a story, a highly condensed, highly dramatic story--even when nothing much happens: then failure is the story.” 

In her book On Boxing, an elaboration of the NYTimes article, Oates highlights the modes and ontologies of several boxers. Two of her descriptions have forever remained in my memory: Muhammad Ali and Jake LaMotta. Each entered matches with a distinct philosophy of the fight, positions suggestive and emblematic of world views. The first, Jake LaMotta entered the ring with the understanding that he would outlast any opponent. As he fought, he became less and less interested in dodging any punch that came his way; instead, he was simply able to endure the throws and jabs of his opponent. He trained for and felt that he could simply outlast his adversary and endure any more pain. 

By contrast, Ali was a fighter who predicated his boxing on finesse, on the bob and weave and his capacity to never be hit in the face. Famously he claimed, “My face is so pretty, you don’t see a scar, which proves that I’m the king of the ring by far.” LaMotta accepted the hit took the punishment; in stark contrast, Ali agilely dodged it. 

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My point here is to present two manners of being of the athlete in sports: one based on the endurance of great pain and the other, based on the extraordinary skill and bravura of it all. I present the students with these images of the face of LaMotta and Ali, each a registration of one’s relation to pain in sport: how one might endure it and how one might avoid it altogether. In my mind, I compare Michael Jordan, Simone Biles, Tom Brady, the Olympic women’s soccer team, and imperturbable mountain climber Alex Honnold to the skills of Ali – a sort of transcendent technical skill that leaves spectators in awe.

By contrast, I offer other extraordinary talents who, while succeeding, nonetheless, endure either physical or psychic pain to succeed. I think of Hall of Famer Mike Webster of the Pittsburgh Steelers, who was known to endure great hits on the field; or Colin Kapernack, who suffered more psychic offences, and Serena and Venus Williams, who like Kapernack, faced racial battle fatigue in the face of systemic oppression, but unlike him, had to contend with the intersectional oppression of sexism. By offering such examples, teachers invite students to judge the protagonist-athletes in their works as demonstrative of one or both of these modes of existence. 

Of course, since novels are predicated on conflict and grief, students may situate their main character with LaMotta ontology. Certainly, the YA classic novel, The Chocolate War features a main character who endures the physical beat down on and off the football field.  Yet instructors may easily point to other figures, such as Kareen Abdul Jabar, who seem to skillfully manage the conflict on the court with ease, while suffering the blows of systemic racism off.  

Next week, I will focus on ways that teachers can guide discussions which focus both on the sport and the overlay of intersectionality, be it gender, race, or sexuality.  Come back for Part Two!


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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.

    Co-Edited Books

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    Meet
    Evangile Dufitumukiza!
    Evangile is a native of Kigali, Rwanda. He is a college student that Steve meet while working in Rwanda as a missionary. In fact, Evangile was one of the first people who translated his English into Kinyarwanda. 

    Steve recruited him to help promote Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media while Steve is doing his mission work. 

    He helps Dr. Bickmore promote his academic books and sometimes send out emails in his behalf. 

    You will notice that while he speaks fluent English, it often does look like an "American" version of English. That is because it isn't. His English is heavily influence by British English and different versions of Eastern and Central African English that is prominent in his home country of Rwanda.

    Welcome Evangile into the YA Wednesday community as he learns about Young Adult Literature and all of the wild slang of American English vs the slang and language of the English he has mastered in his beautiful country of Rwanda.  

    While in Rwanda, Steve has learned that it is a poor English speaker who can only master one dialect and/or set of idioms in this complicated language.

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