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April is Poetry Month and I Tried to do My Part.

4/29/2020

1 Comment

 
I love poetry. I don't know if I read enough poetry. I certainly don't write about it enough, that is for sure. I appreciate the challenge of writing poetry during April promoted by Sarah Donovan and others.  With my current agenda, I just have to much work to do. I didn't want risk such a commitment. (Plus, it still terrifies me.) I did dedicate myself to the idea of reading poetry and sharing a poem each day through social media. I am just one day shy of finishing that challenge for the third year in a row (the last poem in this post is a sneak peak at tomorrow). I am sharing all of my choices in today's post. A few have been pulled out for easy reading. 

Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday has been a friend to poetry and  especially poetry in a YA context. I have pulled a few URLs for some of the past posts that have shared poetry, including what I posted last year at the end of the month and post that pays tribute to Bob Dylan upon winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. 

I hope you take a minute to read a poem. 

I hope you also revisit some of the older posts and add a book of poetry to your "To Be Read List." The authors of these post include: Lesley Roessing, Padma Venkatraman, Sylvia Vardell and Janet Wong.

1. http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/30-mgya-verse-novels-for-national-poetry-month-engaging-reluctant-readers-enriching-enthusiastic-readers-and-appreciating-story-form-language-by-lesley-roessing
2. http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/verse-novels-for-national-poetry-month-by-lesley-roessing
3. http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/better-and-verse-by-padman-venkatraman
4. http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/poetry-for-young-adults-finding-sharing-writing-by-sylvia-vardell-and-janet-wong-and-a-nod-to-bob-dylan
5. http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/saying-goodbye-to-april-and-a-month-of-poetry

My Poetry Selection for April 2020

Day 1: Gerard Manley Hopkins   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44404/thou-art-indeed-just-lord-if-i-contend
Day 2: Robert Frost   https://allpoetry.com/The-Silken-Tent
Day 3: T. S. Eliot  https://poets.org/poem/love-song-j-alfred-prufrock
Day 4: W. B. Yeats  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43291/sailing-to-byzantium
Day 5: William Wordsworth https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52299/nuns-fret-not-at-their-convents-narrow-room
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The Silken TentShe is as in a field of silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightlest bondage made aware.
© by owner. provided at no charge for educational ​
Day 6: Elisabeth Bishop https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=32380
Day 7: Mary Oliver  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=39535
Day 8: Gwendolyn Brooks  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/25174/the-children-of-the-poor
Day 9: Langston Hughes https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47559/mother-to-son
Day 10: May Swenson https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=29965
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The Children of the Poor Launch Audio in a New Window
BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS
1
People who have no children can be hard:
Attain a mail of ice and insolence:
Need not pause in the fire, and in no sense
Hesitate in the hurricane to guard.
And when wide world is bitten and bewarred
They perish purely, waving their spirits hence
Without a trace of grace or of offense
To laugh or fail, diffident, wonder-starred.
While through a throttling dark we others hear
The little lifting helplessness, the queer
Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous
Lost softness softly makes a trap for us.
And makes a curse. And makes a sugar of
The malocclusions, the inconditions of love.

2
What shall I give my children? who are poor,
Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,
Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand
No velvet and no velvety velour;
But who have begged me for a brisk contour,
Crying that they are quasi, contraband
Because unfinished, graven by a hand
Less than angelic, admirable or sure.
My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device.
But I lack access to my proper stone.
And plenitude of plan shall not suffice
Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone
To ratify my little halves who bear
Across an autumn freezing everywhere.

3
And shall I prime my children, pray, to pray?
Mites, come invade most frugal vestibules
Spectered with crusts of penitents’ renewals
And all hysterics arrogant for a day.
Instruct yourselves here is no devil to pay.
Children, confine your lights in jellied rules;
Resemble graves; be metaphysical mules.
Learn Lord will not distort nor leave the fray.
Behind the scurryings of your neat motif
I shall wait, if you wish: revise the psalm
If that should frighten you: sew up belief
If that should tear: turn, singularly calm
At forehead and at fingers rather wise,
Holding the bandage ready for your eyes.

Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Children of the Poor” from Annie Allen (New York: Harper & Row, 1949). Collected in Blacks (Chicago: Third World Press, 1991).
Source: Blacks (Third World Press, 1991)
Day 11: John Keats https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44481/on-first-looking-into-chapmans-homer
Day 12: Edwin Arlington Robinson https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44985/villanelle-of-change
Day 13: Anne Bradstreet https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43698/by-night-when-others-soundly-slept
Day 14: Maya Angelou https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46446/still-i-rise
Day 15: John Donne https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44131/a-valediction-forbidding-mourning​
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On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
BY JOHN KEATS
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Day 16: William Carlos Williams https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=20222
Day 17: Wilfred Owens https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47393/anthem-for-doomed-youth
Day 18: Walt Whitman https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45478/vigil-strange-i-kept-on-the-field-one-night
Day 19: Ezra Pound https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/12588/middle-aged
Day 20: Phyllis Wheatley https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45467/to-a-gentleman-and-lady-on-the-death-of-the-ladys-brother-and-sister-and-a-child-of-the-name-avis-aged-one-year​
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Anthem for Doomed Youth
BY WILFRED OWEN
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
      — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
      Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; 
      Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
      And bugles calling for them from sad shires.


What candles may be held to speed them all?
      Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
      The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Day 21: George Herbert https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44360/the-collar
Day 22: Robert Lowell https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47694/skunk-hour
Day 23: H. D. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46541/helen-56d22674d6e41
Day 24: Sylvia Plath https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2
Day 25: Randall Jarrell https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48392/eighth-air-force
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Helen
BY H. D.
All Greece hates   
the still eyes in the white face,   
the lustre as of olives   
where she stands,   
and the white hands.   

All Greece reviles   
the wan face when she smiles,   
hating it deeper still   
when it grows wan and white,   
remembering past enchantments   
and past ills.   

Greece sees unmoved,   
God’s daughter, born of love,   
the beauty of cool feet   
and slenderest knees,   
could love indeed the maid,   
only if she were laid,   
white ash amid funereal cypresses.


H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), “Helen” from Collected Poems 1912-1944. Copyright © 1982 by The Estate of Hilda Doolittle. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: Collected Poems 1912-1944 (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1982)
Day 26: Theodore Roethke https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43330/my-papas-waltz
Day 27: Phillip Levine https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=29412
Day 28: Wallace Stevens https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43431/the-idea-of-order-at-key-west
Day 29: Robert  Penn Warren https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47705/evening-hawk
Day 30: Sharon Olds https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=36723
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After Making Love in Winter by Sharon Olds
At first I cannot have even a sheet on me,
anything at all is painful, a plate of
iron laid down on my nerves, I lie there in the
air as if flying rapidly without moving, and
​slowly I cool off—hot,
warm, cool, cold, icy, till the
skin all over my body is ice
except at those points our bodies touch like
blooms of fire. Around the door
loose in its frame, and around the transom, the
light from the hall burns in straight lines and
casts up narrow beams on the ceiling, a
figure throwing up its arms for joy.
In the mirror, the angles of the room are calm, it is the
hour when you can see that the angle itself is blessed,
and the dark globes of the chandelier,
suspended in the mirror, are motionless—I can
feel my ovaries deep in my body, I
gaze at the silvery bulbs, maybe I am
looking at my ovaries, it is
clear everything I look at is real
and good. We have come to the end of questions,
you run your palm, warm, large,
dry, back along my face over and
over, over and over, like God
putting the finishing touches on, before
sending me down to be born.


Sharon Olds, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her volume Stag’s Leap, is famous for her deeply emotional and open poems about personal and family life.
Until next time.
1 Comment

Jennifer Nielsen Is Having a Cover Reveal Quiz and I am Helping.

4/26/2020

40 Comments

 

We have a winner!

Jennifer Nielsen Is Having a Cover Reveal Quiz
and
​I am Helping.

You can jump to her website at this link for more details.

I have the 11th Question!

#11. Decode this: REFUSE THE ARCHER.
(Hint: Use the title of this book, if you know it!)

If you have an answer, send it to me the comments. 

Jennifer is waiting for the correct answer! 

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When Jennifer has all of the answers, the cover will be revealed and we will have a winner. Will it be you?

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Jennifer A. Nielsen is the New York Times Bestselling author of The Ascendance series, and award-winning historical novels, RESISTANCE, A NIGHT DIVIDED, and WORDS ON FIRE, among other titles. She lives in Northern Utah with her family.

BOOKS BY JENNIFER

Historical Fiction (Standalone)

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The Traitor's Game Series

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Mark of the Thief Series

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Ascendance Series

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Underworld Chronicles

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40 Comments

MEMOIRS for Reading and Writing by Lesley Roessing

4/24/2020

3 Comments

 
Once again we have a remarkable post from Lesley Roessing. I am always amazed at how many books Lesley seems to have under belt. If you need a great resource, I really think you should communicate with her. She has posted so many times it is hard to keep up. Take a minute and browse the Contributors page for her posts.

MEMOIRS for Reading and Writing by Lesley Roessing

Memoir is writing that matters—for a variety of reasons. Because memoir is, in essence, narrative nonfiction, it contains elements of both narrative and informational writing and provides an effective way to bridge the gap between these two types of writing—and meet multiple state standards. In addition, one of the most important reason writers can write is to discover who they are and to reflect on the people, places, items, and events that made them the adolescents they are today and the adults they will become. The end of the school year—especially this particular year—lends itself to time to reflect.
 
As we hunker down in our homes, surrounded by family, we can transform time with relatives into memoir research as our students look through family albums and communicate with relatives and friends.  And writers can practice another type of research, experiential research, as they reflect on their personal experiences. As writers learn about themselves while “researching” and writing their memoirs, memoir writing becomes inquiry—and memoir writing becomes a journey of self-discovery.
What does memoir writing have to do with reading and MG/YA literature? As I discuss in Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), reading memoirs provides mentor texts for writing memoirs. As readers read about people, places, objects, and events which are meaningful to published memoirists, they can notice and note how the memoirists write about these topics, using memoirs are mentors for their writings. In Bridging the Gap, teacher models, student examples, and reproducible charts are provided for this work.

As an added bonus to meeting multiple state standards, memoirs bridge the gap between fiction and informative texts and compels the application of diverse reading strategies. 
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​Memoirs appeal to all readers because they are available at all reading levels and lengths; on all topics from dancing to sports to survival and resilience; in many formats, including prose, free verse, graphic, multi-formatted, and even as rhyming poems. Memoirs are written in first and third person, and can be humorous, poignant, and enlightening. Readers can together read whole-class memoirs, participate in memoir book clubs or memoir essay clubs, and read self-selected memoirs individually. In addition to memoirs, there are novels, such as Front Desk, that closely follow the author’s life, and there are biographies written in the style of memoir in that they focus on a particular part of a person’s life or particular events based around a theme and emphasize personal experience, thoughts, feelings, reactions, and reflections rather than facts.
 
Below are memoirs which I have recently read and reviewed and also memoirs read by my own middle grade students and in secondary classrooms where I have facilitated memoir units which include memoir reading.

Memoirs

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​Anderson, Laurie Halse. Shout. Penguin Young Readers Group, 2019.

When I think of Laurie Halse Anderson, writer, I think of well-told important stories—whether contemporary or historical, memorable characters, critical messages. When I think of Laurie Halse Anderson, person, I think of hugs, compassion, empathy, attention, and action. Now when I think of Laurie Halse Anderson, poet, I will ruminate on the power of words, the rhythm of words, the lyricism of words.
 
In this free verse memoir Anderson generously shares her life—the bottomless depths and the highest peaks—all that made her the force she is today. A challenging family life and the rape that “splits open your core with shrapnel,” clouds of doubt and self-loathing…anxiety, depression, and shame,” leaving “untreated pain / a cancer of the soul / that can kill you.” (69)
 
But also there were teachers, librarians, and the tutor who taught “the ants swarming across the pages” to form words and meaning, the lessons learned from Greek mythology, the gym teacher who cared enough to inspire her to shape-shift from “a lost stoner dirtbag / to a jock who hung out with exchange students, / wrote poetry for the literary magazine / and had a small group of …friends to sit with at lunch.” (88) and her home in Denmark which “taught me how to speak / again, how to reinterpret darkness and light, / strength and softness…redefine my true north / and start over.” (114)
 
She describes how the story of her first novel Speak found her and shares the origin of Melinda, “alone / with her fear / heart open, / unsheltered” (162)
 
Part Two bears witness to the stories of others, female and male, children, teens, and adults, connected through trauma and Melinda’s story, the questions of boys, confused, having never learned “the rules of intimacy or the law” (181) and the censorship, “the child of fear/ the father of ignorance” which keeps these stories away from them. Anderson raises the call to “sisters of the march” who never got the help they needed and deserved to “stand with us now / let’s be enraged aunties together.” (230)
 
And in Part Three the story returns to her American birth family, her father talking and “unrolling our family legacies of trauma and / silence.”
 
Shout is a tale of Truth: the truths that happened, the truths that we tell ourselves, the truths that we tell others, the truths that we live with; Shout is the power of Story—stories to tell and stories to be heard.

​Engle, Margarita. Enchanted Air: Two Cultures, Two Wings: A Memoir.
 
Through this memoir in verse, the narrative of Engle’s childhood as a Cuban-American growing up in LA during the 1950-60’s, readers can experience the challenge of children torn between cultures and, and learn about the Cold War. When the revolution broke out in Cuba, Engle’s family fears for their far-away family in Cuba, a family they can no longer visit. Then, the Bay of Pigs Invasion creates hostile US/Cuba relations. I learned more about Cuban history, the Cuban Missile Crisis. and Cuban-American relations from this memoir than from my history courses as I lived through the times with young Margarita.
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​Engle, Margarita. Soaring Earth. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2019.

I eagerly read Engle’s second memoir, a continuation of Enchanted Air which covers the years 1966-1973. For me, this was more reminiscing, than learning, about the lifestyle and events. As a reader of about the same age of young adult Margarita and possibly geographically crossing paths at some point, I am quite familiar with that time period.

Engle depicts a feeling of duality as she longs for Cuba, home of her “invisible twin,” now that travel is forbidden for North Americans.

Readers witness firsthand the era of hippies, an unpopular war, draft notices, drugs, and Martin Luther King’s speeches and assassination, riots, Cambodia, picket lines, as they follow 17-year-old bell-bottomed Margarita from her senior year of high school to her first university experience, fascinating college courses, books, unfortunate choices of boyfriends, dropping out, travel, homelessness, homecoming, college, agricultural studies, and finally, love.

At one point young Margarita as a member of a harsh creative writing critique group says, “If I ever scribble again, I’ll keep every treasured word secret.” (31). Thank goodness she didn’t. This beautifully written verse novel shares her story—and a bit of history—through poetry in many formats, including tanka, haiku, concrete, and the power of words.

Ogle, Rex. Free Lunch.

On the first day of middle school Rex Ogle arrives at school with a black eye and his name in the Free Lunch Program registry.
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As Rex lives through a year of avoiding being hit by his mentally-unstable mother and her abusive boyfriend; taking care of his little brother; sleeping in a room with only a sleeping bag; having his one possession—his Sony boombox, a present from his real dad—pawned; surviving a teacher who treats him as “less than;” and moving to government-subsidized housing in full view of the school, he still feels the responsibility to help his mother. When his friend Liam steals some candy at the grocery “because [he] can,” the cashier asks to see Rex’s pockets, and Rex learns the double standard for the wealthy and the poor.
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When his friends all join the football team, Rex has no one to sit with at lunch. But finally, Rex makes a new friend at school, Ethan, a boy who may have seems a “total weirdo” at first but turns out to be a good person and true friend and have his own family problems, and Rex’s teacher learns to admit and face her own prejudices. Rex comes to the realization that “Mom didn’t sign me up for the Free Lunch Program to punish me. She did it so I could have food….Things are not as black and white as I thought. Maybe some things are gray, somewhere in between.” (188) As Ethan tells him, “…no one has a perfect life. There is no such thing as ‘perfect.’ It’s just an idea.” (195).

However, some lives are indeed less perfect. About 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty threshold. Forty-three percent of children live in households which earn less than necessary to cover basic expenses (NCCP). And Rex Ogle, author, was one of them; Free Lunch is his personal story.

Free Lunch, and other novels and memoirs about children affected by poverty, are necessary additions to classroom and school libraries so that readers can see their lives and the lives of their peers reflected and valued through story. 
​Nelson, Marilyn. How I Discovered Poetry. Dial Books, 2014.
 
Growing up through the Fifties, Marilyn Nelson tells her story through fifty sonnet-style free-verse poems. Each poem has a location and year as readers follow Marilyn through her childhood on her quest to become the poet she is today.
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Ms. Nelson’s father was one of the first African American career officers in the United States Air Force, and as a military child, Marilyn moved frequently, literally crossing the country, from Ohio to Texas to Kansas to California to Oklahoma to Maine, experiencing the country, sometimes the only black student in an “all-except-for-me white class.” Readers can identify with the universal childhood experiences she shares, but there are also incidents driven by race and the time period providing history that we can learn from this memoir.
 
This is a memoir of beginnings and endings and the search for identity and changing expectations—our own and that of others—in a confusing, sometimes hostile, world. It is about language and cloud-gathering and discovering poetry and the power of words. ​
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Yang, Kelly. Front Desk.

Front Desk’s ten-year-old Mia moves to the head of my “Strong Girls in MG/YA Literature” list as she becomes an activist and champion of those who cannot, or will not, stand up for themselves [“You don’t get it, kid. I’ve been fighting my whole life. I’m done. It’s no use fighting—people are gonna be the way they’re gonna be” (105)], teaches others the wrongs of prejudice and injustice, and forms a community from her neighbors, patrons, and fellow immigrants.

Mia and her parents emigrated from China to the United States for a more “free” life. In China her parents were professionals; in America they feel lucky to find a job managing a motel. But the owner, Mr. Yao, is unkind, unjust, cheap, and prejudiced. He reduces their salaries until they are working for lodging and a life of poverty. And while this is a novel about Mia who manages the front desk and helps her parents temporarily hide other Chinese immigrants who have been mistreated, it is really a novel of culture, prejudice, bullying, community, and, most of all, the power of writing. “It was the most incredible feeling ever, knowing that something I wrote actually changed someone’s life.” (218)

In America there are two roller coasters, and people are born to a life on one or the other, but Mia and her friend Lupe, whose family came from Mexico, have decided to break that cycle. Although bullied in school and warned by her mother that she will never be a “native” English writer, Mia develops her writing skills to help Hank gain employment after a wrongful arrest, free “Uncle” Zhang whose ID and passport were being held by his employer, share her story with her teacher and classmates, and finally persuade friends and strangers to take a chance on her family.

Mia is a representative of the “nearly twenty million immigrant children currently living in the United States, 30 percent of whom are living at or below poverty.” (Author’s Note). As such, this book will serve as a mirror for many readers, a map for others looking for ways to navigate young adolescent life, especially in a new culture, and as a window for those who will learn empathy for others they may see as different. Author Kelly Yang also shares the autobiographical elements of the novel in her Author’s Note.
​
Front Desk, with its very short chapters and challenging topics would be a meaningful and effective 10-minute read-aloud to begin Grade 4-7 daily reading workshop focus lessons. I would suggest projecting Mia’s letters since they show her revisions as she seeks to improve her language skills and word choices.

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​Thrash, Maggie. Honor Girl: A Graphic Memoir. Candlewick Press, 2015.
 
Honor Girl is, as the title states, a graphic memoir, a format which is gaining popularity.
 
Honor Girl is about a summer of discovery and identity. Maggie spent every summer at Camp Bellflower for girls. A typical Southern adolescent, she is a fan of the Backstreet Boys and awaiting her first kiss.  However, this summer, the summer she is fifteen, she unexpectedly falls in love with a female counselor, surprising herself and questioning her sexuality as she experiences new, complex emotions. This is an honest coming out story, and the simple art style of this memoir supports and adds to the story. 
​Sones, Sonya. Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy. HarperTeen, 1999.

I first met Sonya Sones when she talked about how she came to write about the topic of this memoir, her sister’s mental illness, in verse and heard her read some of the poems, Through free verse, the author captures the highs and lows of her thirteenth year, from “My Sister’s Christmas Eve Breakdown” to her fantasy of coming “To the Rescue” to the heartbreak of her “February 15th” birthday spent in the hospital visiting her sister to the joy of spending “Memorial Day” alone with Father to finally playing scrabble “In the Visiting Room” after her sister’ situation and her family’s adaption to it had become somewhat “BETTER.”
 
When I read selected poems aloud to my students, I wished they could see the line breaks—I frequently refer to Sones as the Master of Line Breaks—and reading aloud, I would pause a microsecond shorter than a comma, so my students could feel the poetry.
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Ten student memoir favorites, some newer, some older:  

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Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Sarah Crichton Books, 2007.
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Davis, Sampson, Jenkins, George, and Hunt, Rameck. We Beat the Streets: How a Friendship Pact Led to Success. Puffin Books, 2006.
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Davis, Sampson, Jenkins, George, and Hunt, Rameck. The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream. Riverhead Books, 2003.
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Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. Nancy Paulsen Book, 2014.
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DePrince, Michaela. Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2014.
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Hamilton, Bethany. Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board. MTV Books, 2006.
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Krosoczka, Garrett J. Hey, Kiddo. Graphix, 2018.
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Mah, Adeline Yen. Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter. Dell Laurel-Leaf, 1999.
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Rawl, Paige. Positive: A Memoir. HarperCollins, 2014.
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Santiago, Esmeralda. When I Was Puerto Rican. Vintage Books, 1994.
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Telgemeier, Rania. Guts. Scholastic, 2019.

Memoir Collections

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​Lerner, Sarah. Parkland Speaks: Survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas Share Their Stories. Crown Book for Young Readers, 2019.

On the first anniversary of the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, I read the writings of the survivors of that unspeakable event. In this “yearbook,” students and teachers share their stories of grief, terror, anger, and hope, and honor those who died through narratives, letters, speeches, free verse and rhyming poetry, and art. As the editor, MSD English and journalism teacher Sarah Lerner, writes, “Watching my students find their voices after someone tried to silence them was impressive…. It was awe-inspiring. It was brave…. They turned their grief into words, into pictures, into something that helped them begin the healing process.”
 
“[The news] keeps coming in,
It doesn’t pause
Or give you a break. It keeps hitting you
With debilitating blows, one after the other,
As those missing responses remain empty,
And your messages remain unread.” –C. Chalita
 
“We entered a war zone.…I came out of that building a different person than the one who left for school that day.” –J. DeArce
 
“Somehow, through the darkness, we found another shade of love, too
 something that outweighed the hate and swept the grays away.
 A love so strong it transcended colors, something so empowering and true it couldn’t be traced to one hue.” – H. Korr
 
“I just don’t want to let go of all the people I love,
 I want to continuously tell them “I love you” until
 My voice is raw and my throat is sore” – S. Bonnin
 
“I invite you [Dear Mr. President] to learn, to hear the story from inside,
Cause if not now, when will be the right time to discuss?” –A. Sheehy
 
A look into the minds and hearts of those who experienced an event no one, especially adolescents, should ever expect to encounter as they share with readers in similar and disparate circumstances across the globe.

​Ehrlich, Amy, ed. When I Was Your Age, Volumes I & II: Original Stories about Growing Up. Candlewick, 2012.
 
A collection of short funny, poignant, exciting memoirs by twenty well-known MG/YA authors, including Avi, Francesca Lia Block, Joseph Bruchac, Susan Cooper, Paul Fleischman, Karen Hesse, James Howe, E. L. Konigsburg, Reeve LIndbergh, Norma Fox Mazer, Nicholasa Mohr, Kyoko Mori, Walter Dean Myers, Howard Norman, Mary Pope Osborne, Katherine Paterson, Michael J. Rosen, Rita Williams-Garcia, Laurence Yep, and Jane Yolen. The authors also explain why they chose a particular memory as the basis for their memoir. Stories focus on events, people, places, or objects, and, in that way, lend themselves to serving as mentor texts for different types of memoir writing.
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​Gurtler, Janet, ed. You Too?: 25 Voices Share Their #MeToo Stories. Inkyard Press, 2020.
Teens should realize that no young person—female or male—should be subject to sexual assault, or made to feel unsafe, less than, or degraded. Twenty-five YA authors share personal stories of physical and verbal abuse, harassment, and assault—from strangers, acquaintances, and family members. Included in this volume are stories of trial, loss, shame, and resilience and, most important, acknowledging self-worth. These essays illustrate to adolescent readers that there is no “right” way to deal with trauma; each survivor has to find their own way of processing and surviving trauma. This book will not only provide a mirror, sometimes unexpectedly, for some readers and a window for others, helping to build empathy, but will offer a map for many readers. This is a book that needs to be read and discussed by young women and men and the adults in their lives. Some familiar authors of diverse cultures who share their experiences are Eileen Hopkins, Cheryl Rainfield, Patty Blout, Ronni Davis, Nicholas DiDomizio, Andrea L. Rogers, and Lulabel Seitz.
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​Brock, Rose, ed. Hope Nation: YA Authors Share Personal Moments of Inspiration. Philomel Books. 2018.
 
Contemporary adolescents are dealing with a variety of issues and feelings of powerlessness in a complex world that sometimes feels hopeless. Twenty-four YA authors speak to teens through poetry, essays, and letters of hope in this nonfiction collection. They inspire readers by sharing difficult childhoods and obstacles and experiences they overcame. Readers will appreciate the personal stories of authors of their favorite novels, such as David Levithan, Julie Murphy, Angie Thomas, Nic Stone, Libba Bray, Nicola Yoon, Jason Reynolds, and I.W.Gregorio.
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Thomas, Annie, ed. With Their Eyes: September 11th: The View from a High School at Ground Zero. HarperTempest, 2002.  

​“Journalism itself is, as we know, history’s first draft.” (xiii)
With Their Eyes was written from not only a unique perspective—those who watched the attack on the World Trade Center and the fall of the towers from their vantage point at Stuyvesant High School, a mere four blocks from Ground Zero, but in a unique format. Inspired by the work of Anna Deavere Smith whose work combines interviews of subjects with performance to interpret their words, English teacher Annie Thomas led one student director, two student producers, and ten student cast members in the creation—the writing and performance—of this play.  
The students interviewed members of the Stuyvesant High study body, faculty, administration, and staff and turned their stories of the historic day and the days that followed into poem-monologues. They transcribed and edited these interviews, keeping close to the interviewees’ words and speech patterns because “each individual has a particular story to tell and the story is more than words: the story is its rhythms and its breaths.” (xiv) They next rehearsed the monologues, each actor playing a variety of roles. Although cast members were chosen from all four grades and to represent the school’s diversity, actors did not necessarily match the culture of their interviewees. They next planned the order of the stories to speak to each other, “paint a picture of anger and panic, of hope and strength, of humor and resilience” (7), rehearsed, and presented two performances in February 2002.
 
With Their Eyes presents the stories of those affected by the events of 9/11 in diverse ways. It shares the stories of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, special education students, an English teacher, a Social Studies teacher, the School Safety Agent, the Building Coordinator, a dining hall worker, a custodian, an assistant principal, and more, some male, some female, some named, others remain anonymous. Written as a play, readers are given a description of each character. Read and performed as a play, readers will experience the effect of Nine Eleven on others, actual people who lived that day and persisted in those days that followed, sharing their big moments and little thoughts. With Their Eyes was written with the thoughts and pens of a school community.

​Perkins, Mitali, ed. Open Mic: Riffs on Life Between Cultures in Ten Voices. 2013.

Growing up "different" in the local culture is what the authors share in Open Mic—the stories, or “riffs on life,” of being culturally different. This is a book that should be in every MS/HS classroom, preferably a copy for every student to read, a collection that will generate important conversations about race and culture and fitting in, perhaps readers choosing a selection to read and discuss in small groups. Written in a variety of formats—graphic stories, free verse, and prose—and in first and third person perspectives, memoir and fiction (or maybe fictionalized versions of memoir) by ten different authors, many who will be recognized by adolescent readers, there are stories that will appeal to all readers and are necessary for many adolescents. Many are hilarious; editor Mitali Perkins explains that humor is “the best way to ease…conversations about race” (Introduction), and all are enlightening. Truly, this is a collection of stories that serve as mirrors, maps, and windows.
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​Mazer, Anne, ed. amzn.to/2VRrLxQGoing Where I’m Coming From: Memoirs of American Youth. 1995.

These fourteen memoirs about immigration and bridging cultures, are set in Watts, Hawaii, New York, Boston, Cleveland, San Antonio, NJ, the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, the San Joaquin Valley, and rural Alabama. These stories of identity and self-discovery were written by such diverse authors as Luis Rodriguez, Ved Mehta, Thylias Moss, Naomi Shihab Nye, Lensey Namioka, and Gary Soto.
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​Winchell, Mike. Been There, Done That: Writing Stories from Real Life. Grosset & Dunlap, 2015.
Winchell, Mike. Been There, Done That: School Dazed. Grosset & Dunlap, 2016.

 
In these two unique memoir collections, popular authors show how and where they get stories. Each author shares a real-life experience and the original fictional short story that event inspired. Stories, relatable to readers everywhere, are divided into topics, such as dealing with peer pressure, putting others first, regret and guilt, change, morning school routines, class projects, and the dreaded school bus ride. Memoirists include well-known MG/YA authors Kate Messner, Julia Alvarez, Linda Sue Park, Lisa Yee, Alan Sitomer, Varian Johnson, Bruce Coville, and Meg Medina.
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Biography-Memoirs


Bryant, Jen F. Feed Your Mind. Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2019.

“If you can read, you can do anything—you can be anything.”—Daisy Wilson

Frederick August Kittle Jr., the son of a white German baker and Daisy Wilson, a black single mother who left school after sixth-grade, cleaned houses, and taught her four-year-old Freddy to read, overcame racism and poverty to become a Pulitzer prize-winning playwright.

Freddy left school when prejudice from classmates made it evident that he, the only black student, was not welcome in Central Catholic High and teachers at the public high school doubted his writing genius. Besides his mother, only Brother Dominic had faith in him, “You could be a writer.”

Freddy educated himself at the Carnegie Public Library though the works of such black writers as Hughes, Dunbar, Ellison, and Wright and the conversations of the Hill’s tribal elders—“warriors who survive in this hard world.” His job as a poet, and later as playwright, was “to keep [these voices] alive” though a collage of black characters from the Pittsburgh that never left him.
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Through Jen Bryant’s verse biography, readers follow Freddy Kittle’s daily life as he grows into August Wilson, influenced by black writers and collage artist Romare Bearden and supported by fellow playwrights. Feed Your Mind, a picture book for readers of all ages, but particularly MG/HS, is hauntingly illustrated by Cannaday Chapman and includes a Timeline, Selected Bibliography, and list of Wilson’s plays.
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​Burkinshaw, Kathleen. The Last Cherry Blossom. Sky Pony, 2016.
 
All wars have two sides, but, as Winston Churchill said, “History is written by the victors.” Through history books and archives our students learn only one point of view, but we must disrupt the narrative with tales from the other side.

When our students study World War II—the war in Europe and the war with Japan, it is crucial that we help our students to see all perspectives and bear witness to the experiences of others. They need to learn that actions and decisions of governments have effects. One of those actions by the United States in 1945 was the bombing of Hiroshima, employing the first atomic bombs.

Through author Kathleen Burkinshaw’s poignant story, based on her mother’s childhood in Japan, readers can gain empathy and understanding for those innocent victims of war. This is the first-person narrative of 12-year-old Yuriko, her family members who are inundated with family secrets and shifting relationships, her neighbors who are sending their boys off to war, and her best friend. Through this important and well-written story, readers are introduced to Japanese culture, experience the strain of family secrets, and observe the war from the Japanese perspective. Not only a story of war, The Last Cherry Blossom is the story of family, heritage, and relationships.
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​Shabazz, Ilyasah and Magoon, Kekla. X: A Novel. Candlewick Press, 2015.
 
This fascinating novel, or fictionalized memoir, of Malcolm X could have been titled “Before X” since it covers the time before Malcolm Little became Malcolm X or as written in the Author’s Note, “[it] represents the true journey of Malcolm Little, the adolescent, on the road to becoming Malcolm X.” (352)

Co-written by one of his daughters, Ilyasah Shabazz with one of my favorite writers, Kekla Magoon, X covers the years from 1931 to 1948 (the year Malcolm went to prison), focusing primarily on his teen years in Boston and New York City.

The reader experiences the significant influence of Malcolm’s father, a civil rights activist, and his mother who kept the family together after his father’s death, or murder, despite severe poverty until she was taken away to a mental institution and the children were divided among foster homes. The story also demonstrates the powerful influence of a high school teacher who, despite the fact that he was a top student and president of his class, told Malcolm that he could not aspire to be a lawyer and should aim for a profession as a carpenter. Taking that advice to heart, Malcolm drops out of school and renounces his father’s principles.

The timeline fluctuates from past to present which may be a little challenging for some readers; it might help to write in Malcolm’s ages next to the dates for readers. This novel is definitely for mature readers as teen Malcolm becomes involved in drugs and sex although there are no explicit depictions.

Through this well-written and an engaging text, the reader observes the changes Malcolm undergoes as he moves from a family life in Lansing, Michigan, to the influences of big-city life in the Roxbury and Harlem jazz neighborhoods of the 1940’s; from being Malcolm Little to signing first time he signed his name, on a letter to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Muslim leader, as Malcolm X. The extensive 6-page Author’s Note takes the reader through Malcolm’s transition, or “awakening,” during his prison experience. 
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​Powell, Patricia Hruby. Loving vs. Virginia: A Documentary Novel of the Landmark Civil Rights Case. Chronicle Books, 2017.
 
Loving vs Virgina is the story behind the unanimous landmark decision of June 1967. Told in free verse through alternating narrations by Richard and Mildred, the story begins in Fall 1952 when 13-year old Mildred notices that her desk in the colored school is “ sad excuse for a desk” and her reader “reeks of grime and mildew and has been in the hands of many boys,” but she also relates the closeness of family and friends in her summer vacation essay. This closeness is also expressed in the family’s Saturday dinner where “folks drop by,” one of them being the boy who catches Mildred’s ball during the kickball game and “Because of him I don’t get home.” That boy is her neighbor, nineteen-year-old Richard Loving, and that phrase becomes truer than Mildred could have guessed.

​On June 2, 1958, Richard, who is white, and Mildred marry in Washington, D.C., and on July 11, 1958 they are arrested at her parents’ house in Virginia. The couple spends the next ten years living in D.C., sneaking into Virginia, and finally contacting the American Civil Liberties Union who brings their case through the courts to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The documentary novel brings the story behind the case alive, interspersed with quotes, news headlines and news reports, maps, timelines, and information on the various court cases, and the players involved, as the case made its way to the Supreme Court.
 
Students can learn history from textbooks, from lectures, or more effectively and affectively, through the stories of the people involved. Novels are where readers learn empathy, vicariously living the lives of others.
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​Crowder, Melanie. Audacity. Philomel Books, 2015.
 
Many of the same issues appear throughout history, wearing different masks; oppression, intolerance, and mistreatment of refugees have not ended, and we still need people unafraid to stand for their own rights and those of others. Audacity relates the true story of Clara Lemlich, a Russian Jewish immigrant with dreams of an education who sacrifices everything to fight for better working conditions for women in the factories of Manhattan's Lower East Side in the early 1900's. Lyrically related in verse, the use of parallelism and the purposeful placement of the words is as effective as the words themselves.
 
The novel includes the history behind the story and a glossary of terms, a wonderful "text" for a social studies class. Readers not only learns the story of Clara Lemlich but experience the trials of the factory workers in NYC’s garment district and the obstacles Clara surmounted as she fought to organize the women to fight for their rights. Through the story of Clara Lemlich, a Russian Jewish immigrant who sacrifices her education to fight for the rights of factory workers on Manhattan's Lower East Side in the early 1900’s, readers will learn about the struggles which led up to the Triangle Factory fire.
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​Engle, Margarita. The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba’s Greatest Abolitionist. HMH Books for Young Readers, 2013.

The story follows feminist Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, known as Tula from 1827, from when she tells us that “Books are door-shaped portals…helping me feel less alone” to 1836 where she begins the first of her books to spread her hope of racial and gender equality.

As a girl, Tula reads in secret and burns her writings as reading and writing are unladylike. A13 she is nearing the age of forced marriage, and her grandfather and mother make plans to barter her for riches. The reader follows Tula through Engle’s beautiful verse as she writes plays and stories to give hope to orphaned children and slaves; refuses not one, but two arranged marriages; falls in love with a half-African freed slave who loves another; and at last independent, moves to Havana to be healed by poetry and plans the writing of “a gentle tale of love,” a story about how human souls are “free of all color, class, and gender,” an abolitionist novel written by the real Tula to spread her hope of racial and gender equality.
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Picture Book Memoirs

​To introduce a memoir unit or for more challenged readers, such English Language Learners, picture book memoirs may be a good fit and a bridge to longer memoirs. Patricia Polacco’s numerous memoirs work well with adolescent readers.
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Oral Memoirs

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In Bridging the Gap, I discuss how it can be effective, before writing, to listen to an oral memoir and ask students to list what makes it a "good" or "effective" memoir. They then can create a class list to refer to when writing memoirs or critiquing memoirs that they  read.

Seinfeld, Jerry. Halloween.  Little, Brown and Company, 2002.
One oral memoir that works in classrooms of all ages is Jerry Seinfeld's "Halloween" (adapted into a picture book). Mr. Seinfeld shares Halloween experiences that are common to us all: the badly fitting costumes, being made to wear a coat over the costume (at least for us Northerners), trick or treating as a teen, and he ends with a reflection, the hallmark of memoir writing.
 
When working with adolescent writers, teachers can share a memoir from NPR's "Snap Judgment such as “The Garbage Man” about an adolescent’s first day at a new school.
 
One hilarious oral memoir I especially love and use with adolescents and adults is Carmen Agra Deedy's TED Talk "Spinning a Story of Mama".

Memoir Clubs

With all the varieties of memoirs, this genre easily lends itself to Memoir Clubs. Full-length memoirs can be grouped for book clubs by format—prose, genre, or verse or each club could read a different format; by topic, i.e., sports, dancers, writers; by theme, such as resilience, immigration, mental illness; by cultural of memoirists; by time period; or other categories. Essay memoirs, in an author’s collection, such as Gary Soto’s  A Summer Life, or in a collection of memoirs by different authors, such as the collections listed above, each memoir club could read one memoir. Other types of Memoir Clubs can be organized around picture books or memoir-type biographies.
 
Memoir Clubs directions, strategies, and ideas for comparing/contrasting memoirs with other clubs or for club presentations to the class are described in Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum. 
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A Slide Show of all of the Memoirs

                                                                                   ----------------------
A middle school and high school teacher for twenty years, Lesley Roessing is the former Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project at Georgia Southern University (formerly Armstrong State University) where she was also a Senior Lecturer in the College of Education. In 2018-19 she served as a Literacy Consultant with a K-8 school and now works independently, writing, providing professional development in literacy to schools, and visiting classrooms to facilitate reading and writing lessons. She can be contacted at lesleyroessing@gmail.com or through Facebook Messenger.
 
Lesley is the author of
  •  Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically & Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core; 
  • Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed. The Sentences They Saved; 
  • No More “Us” & “Them: Classroom Lessons and Activities to Promote Peer Respect; 
  • The Write to Read: Response Journals That Increase Comprehension;
  • Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs across the Curriculum
  • and has contributed chapters to Young Adult Literature in a Digital World: Textual Engagement though Visual Literacy; to Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum, and to the upcoming Story Frames.
 
Lesley served as past editor of Connections, the award-winning journal of the Georgia Council of Teachers of English. As a columnist for AMLE Magazine, she shared before, during, and after-reading response strategies across the curriculum through ten “Writing to Learn” columns. 
Until next time.
3 Comments

Book Clubbing via Google Meet, or There Is Always a Time for Hope by Leilya Pitre

4/22/2020

4 Comments

 
This week's post deals with book clubs within a pre-service class and follows on the heels of the post written by Kelli
Sowerbrower. Her post focuses on how high school students define YA literature. Kelli's post doesn't deal directly with clubs, but many of the students who wrote participate in a book club at Kelli's school. Here, Leilya Pitre, one of my former doctoral students, provides a glimpse of how her students have incorporated  online book clubs as they have moved to online learning as part of the COVID-19 quarantine measures. I am excited about how she has outlined her YA course. I know that I am going to be moving some of these ideas into my courses.

Book Clubbing via Google Meet, or There Is Always a Time for Hope

This post was initially planned as a thematic approach to exploring young adult literature with the preservice English teachers, and then COVID-19 happened. First, we heard some distant news about people in China, and then Italy was hurt with staggering numbers of those who contracted the virus. Now it is in our house – the USA,—and daily updates of the numbers of infected and those who lost this battle are frightening. Thus, this entry still remains thematic, but is devoted to resilience, love, and hope—things that keep us going.
When I developed a course on exploring adolescent experiences in literature in December, I chose a dozen of novels that were published in chronological order, from The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, 1945) to The Music of What Happens (Konigsberg, 2019). There was no specific, thematic order in mind. The plan was to let each student select a novel and lead a class discussion on it. So we read a novel a week, explored it through discussions in class, and completed a project, which my students could later employ in their own teaching. For example, we created a Character Web and a Theme Development Map with The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, 1945), a Tree Activity with Speak (Anderson, 1999), a Novel in Sticky Notes with Freaky Green Eyes (Oates, 2003), Daily Masquerade Project with American Born Chinese (Yang, 2006), and Picking up the Pieces Activity with Hate List (Brown, 2009). If any of the readers are interested in these projects, I can email you the description and instructions, and you may modify it for your students. 
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Since we are not in our regular classroom, Randy, this week’s novel presenter, emailed me the day before our Google Meet class session and suggested to “treat it more as a general book club type.”  Before our class meeting, he shared with me the presentation notes entitled “The QuaranTEAM Meeting” (you gotta love this boy’s sense of humor) and outlined the general rules for our Book Club. Explanations aside, they boil down to these four:

  • Let others answer first.
  • Make connections between comments.
  • Occasionally direct questions toward quiet people. 
  • Don't feel obligated to get through all the questions. 

It seemed like nothing major, but I greatly appreciated the very act of thinking about how to accommodate each of the classmates. Being respectful, keeping an open mind, and being free to express thoughts goes without saying in my classroom space.  
This week’s reading was The Memory of Things (Polisner, 2016), and, to my preservice teachers, it didn’t seem accidental. It is a story about the heartbreaking events of 9/11 that shook the world and changed it forever. The novel begins in Manhattan as a high school and thousands of new Yorkers are evacuating from the attack over the Brooklyn Bridge. The main character, a 16-year-old boy, spots what he thinks is a bird at first. Throughout the novel, we follow the story of two teenage narrators, Kyle and H, who found themselves and each other in the midst of a horrific tragedy trying to survive and cope with unthinkable trauma. 
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In a Forum response to the novel, prior the class discussion Reagan, one of my students wrote: “I don’t think we could’ve read this novel at a better time. Though we aren’t dealing with a terrorist attack, we are all currently experiencing a global pandemic. Much like 9/11, our country has never seen an enemy like this.” Echoing Reagan, Dominique expresses the same idea, admitting that “reading the novel, I could not stop myself from comparing it to the situation going on right now. There are many differences between the coronavirus pandemic and the terrorist attack, but something that the two catastrophic events share is the anxiety and uncertainty caused by them.” We all can relate to these feelings.

Responding to Dominique’s entry, Hannah’s comment demonstrates how we too, much like Polisner’s characters, have to adapt to the changed reality: “While the quarantine may not seem as immediate or terrifying, it is certainly impacting our world in ways we never expected, and we are having to alter our daily routines, similar to the ways the characters did in the story.”

Moving from the Forum discussion to a Book Club format via Google Meet, Randy led the session beginning with his peers’ first reaction to the novel. Most of them are 21-24 year-old young adults, who do not remember or have vague memories about September 11 of 2001; nonetheless, there wasn’t anyone who didn’t connect with the novel and its characters. For Louisianans, connections are easy to make—here we are frequently weathering heavy storms, hurricanes, and some are still dealing with a historic flood of 2016, which left thousands of families homeless. The locals know firsthand what a tragedy is. They also know how strong, caring, loving, and resilient our communities are. If you haven’t heard about the Cajun Navy yet, click on the link. (There is also documentary film produce for the Discovery channel.) You will see that our people will drop everything and rush to help the others who have it tougher at the moment.
My preservice teachers quickly noticed how Polisner’s The Memory of Things accentuated people’s nature to unite in times of trials, how New Yorkers came together to honor people who were lost, people they did not know, by hanging pictures and lighting candles. Strangers sympathetically smiled to each other through the heavy air filled with dust and ashes. Hannah also believes that “this book was written to show the resilience and perseverance of humanity to continue moving forward and to not forget tragic events, but to grow from them and to grow together.” 

It was that immediate connection and relevancy that drew my students’ attention to this YA novel. They wanted to discuss Kyle and H’s experiences because they felt they too encountered pain and loss in their own lives. Everyone could add something to what Caitlin shared: “I have had several tragic things happen. I watched one of my grandfather’s fade from this world because of Alzheimer’s. I helped take care of my grandmother after he passed until she passed from cancer five years later. We flooded in 2016. I watched my Aunt die from complications with Leukemia. Just like Kyle and H, I had to learn how to deal with all those losses.” This conversation steered towards emotional trauma, which might be invisible, but not less destructive than a physical wound.

Discussing trauma and how to heal, Reagan notes that “there is no rule book for something of this magnitude,” continuing: “That is why we have the trauma bonding that happened between Kyle and H.”  She further explains that if two or more people endure a traumatic experience together, they have a strong bond. People tend to cling to each other when they are lost and scared. In the novel, the two young people meet under extreme circumstances, have to stay together for a few days, and fall in love. The questions some of my students pose are: So, Kyle and H bonded and fell in love because of shared emotional trauma.  Does that make their bond weaker or less valid? Would they fall in love if it weren’t for 9/11 events? The answers vary, until Jade, one of the two graduate students I have in class, declares that H and Kyle’s relationship are not “less legitimated based on how they met and got close to one another. Unlike the couple in Hate List, they are bonded by grief, fear, and confusion, but not hatred. They are not compelled to each other because of the people they hate, rather they are drawn together by the people they have loved and lost.” Their love may not last long, just like the first teenage love of millions of other young people, but it is genuine, gentle, and real at the moment. This love helps them survive. 
Another intriguing question suggested by Randy to continue discussion was: Is Kyle helping H or is H helping Kyle? His classmates seem more agreeable on this one and believe that both characters need and help one another cope with personal tragedies coupled with the entire country’s catastrophe. “H helps Kyle in dealing with external conflict while Kyle helps H with internal conflict,” concludes Randy. Perhaps, Kyle needs help even more longing for sense of normalcy and occupying himself with mundane task as doing laundry, preparing breakfasts, taking extra care of his Uncle Matt, and protecting Hannah. The world, as he knows it, has broken into myriads of pieces, and being unable to fix it, Kyle does little things he can control.
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By the end of the novel, readers sense hope and know that our major characters are going to be okay. “Hope is the thing with feathers,” claims Emily Dickinson in her famous poem, and H, who is literally wearing feathers at the moment we meet her first, becomes Kyle’s hope in the novel. In his Forum response and later in class, Daniel thinks that “the girl represents blissfulness. She is innocent and her wings make her an angel who is just squeaky clean and innocent. Kyle views her as important but fleeting, like happy memories that we all wish to relive and relish when life is falling apart around us.” He wants to save her, so she can save him.
I would like to conclude this post with a couple of quotes from my students. They wrote an after-class journal entry responding to a question: How do we find hope when we are broken? Here is what Tyler wrote:

Every day we walk around putting walls up. We don’t want to be weak or hurt. Because that stuff sucks. Then why is it that inside of all that chaos and misery there is also happiness and connection? Who decided on that nonsense? I don’t know, but what I do know is that moving on is worth the risk.
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Whenever life feels out of control, off track, or just plain chaotic, know that you are more than those things. We are more than the sum of our intentions and the sum of our mistakes. We are the liminal. We are the doorway, and we get to decide what comes next. So let your heart out every once in a while. Take it out for a walk. Let yourself feel again. Let yourself heal and be vulnerable. 
Finally, there is Lisa Viviani, an exchange student from Italy (yes, that very Italy) in my class this semester. She is also a graduate student. In response to destructive events in her life, Lisa confesses: 

I cry a lot, I feel angry, I feel empty. But then I realize it's just life, and sometimes you cannot control it. So I keep moving on. Maybe starting from small daily things, like Kyle did, doing laundry or cooking breakfast. I know that, even when my world collapses, the world outside keeps moving on. I can find the way to keep moving on with it too.

The people of this country have survived the devastating aftermath of 9/11, will conquer the present pandemic virus, and will keep the memory of things, along with Gae Polisner and her heroes—H and Kyle—because we are “tethered,” tethered to each other. I also have a hope for my preservice teachers that one day they will walk into their own classrooms and bring these priceless memories to their own students. They will teach them to always hold on to hope.
Until next time.
4 Comments

Putting the "Why" in YA Literature by Kelli Sowerbrower

4/15/2020

0 Comments

 
We have another great post for a time of isolation and confinement. I hope most ELA teachers are primarily asking their students to read and write. If they do that, we can work with the rest. Who knows they might even discover a few things on their own.

Today's guest contributor is Kelli Sowerbrower. Kelli and I meet so long ago I can't remember when it was. I know that we immediately decided that our mutual interest in books and reading would make us friends and, indeed, such is the case. Like Kelli explains below, I was also always a reader. As the photo below indicates, Kelli was one of the presenters at the UNLV 2015 Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature.  She continues to engage students in the ELA classroom. 

Putting the "Why" in YA Literature

I am a reader. I teach English because I am a reader. I’m pretty sure I found reading in high school; I recall Flowers in the Attic and a handful of Stephen King stories. BUT, I do not remember talking about what I was reading--maybe with my mom, but does that count? Then I went to college and found professors and peers who read. Together we dove into short stories, novels, discussion, papers, and I found myself.

I recently changed schools and moved to one where sets of classroom novels are everywhere. This was new to me; the curriculum was not based on a chronologically designed textbook that was published two decades ago but novels. All types of novels. My heart sang. Suddenly, I was finding my people who read because they were already reading the books on the syllabus. It didn’t take long for me to start a book club. We readers needed to be together. We needed to exchange titles. We needed to talk. We needed to be with our people to flourish and find comfort when getting emotional about fictional characters.
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Kelli Presenting at the 2018 UNLV Summit
We found each other. Meeting once a month to either talk about the suggested book, or any book, we met. Then this blog came up in our conversations, I knew it was a chance for my kiddos to write about their experiences. So, I posed this question to not only my book club readers, but to all my readers: Why YA Lit? Why read? What you will find below are several of the responses from high schools students ranging from sophomore to senior. This is an argument coming about why we need choice reading in our classrooms. Why we need current titles in our classrooms. Why we need diversity in our classroom titles. Why we should continue to move to a novel based curriculum where possible. Why we should always start a book club. ​

Why YA Lit?

Grace Martin (senior): Her current favorite: Divergent
​I read YA Literature because I can dive into “coming of age” stories that I can connect with and relate to. Often times in YA stories, regardless of the genre of the novel, the protagonist is finding where they fit in the world and discovering their own identity. Though anyone of any age can resonate with these themes, I think it is especially easy for students to relate to these themes repeated in YA Literature. As a student, I am adjusting to new things and studying to prepare for my place in the world, so reading stories that reflect real life struggles that young people face allows me to connect it to my own experiences. 
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Issac Cox (junior): His current favorite author is Misa Sugiura or Becky Albertalli
YA literature is something that I’ve been reading even before I would consider myself a young adult. Although I have broadened my interest into other genres of books, YA Literature is something I will always hold near and dear. For me, discovering YA literature was the first time I could really form my own opinions and start discovering myself as a person. Throughout elementary and middle school the reading we did in class were only for educational purposes: the books didn’t challenge my growing mind. When I began to read on my own, I discovered a whole different species of books: Something I could connect with on a personal level. When I began reading YA novels, it was the first time these confusing emotions I had inside me had actually been put into writing, and became something I could translate into words. YA literature opened a whole new door in my life where I could suddenly describe complex emotions lik
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Misa Sugiura
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Becky Albertalli
Amelia Davidson (junior): Her current favortie: Wicked Saints
I read because I was a bookworm throughout elementary and middle school. I loved (and still do) emerging myself into a different world, a different story, then feeling as if I had time traveled when I closed the book two hours later. I realize now that reading as much as I did improved my vocabulary, spelling, and writing skills once I got into school. It was a great way to pass the time in boring or easy classes.

I read now for a lot of the same reasons - I love immersing myself in the story and characters, and I love learning new things and techniques and ideas. But as I've grown older it's taken on more weight to me. It's difficult to carve out time to just sit and read in my increasingly busy schedule, but doing so is important to me. Expanding your own point of view--especially with YA I think--is a central theme in books and stories. With each book I read, I try to come away with more knowledge, be it about myself or others, emotionally, culturally, linguistically, whatever. I read to grow my knowledge and worldview.

​Besides, as a teenager, who doesn't love a good excuse to stay up until 2 a.m.?
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Katherine Henry (senior): Her current favorite: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Why do I read? A question that is as old as the first book and is one that has been addressed to me a thousand times. The simple answer is words are magic. Think about it! Words are just different letters put into a certain order that our brain translates into meaning different things. All words in the English language are made up of only 26 letters and there are thousands and thousands of words. Different words invoke different emotions and different responses depending on the person. Words have the power to tear people down or build them up. They connect people. Words help people learn about the past, faith, science, and everything to the extent that humans know. But my favorite thing that words do is make stories. Stories have the ability to completely transport me through history, into the future, launch me into space, or even into an entirely different reality. I love to read YA Lit because while I’m reading, I’m in a world that is completely my own and only limited by my imagination. I get to go to new and exciting places without ever leaving my couch. I get to know and love characters without ever even saying anything to them. I can go on adventures with the characters that would never happen in this world. I can imagine what everything looks like and the only boundary is me. Even when a book is over the story still continues in my head. And when I miss the characters, the place, or just how perfectly the story was written it’s always patiently waiting for me to open it again and start all over.
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Why Read?

Avery Boardman (sophomore): Her current favorite: Anne of Green Gables 
That was the question my peers used to ask me. And not in a nice way either, because this question was always accompanied by a sneer or scoff, along with a pointed glance in the direction of whichever ill-fated book I happened to be carrying.
​I guess this seemed to be a point of shame for me at one time, almost like a burden of my personality. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the pages, away from the ink that enraptured me in a way nothing else could. I couldn’t define WHY I spent hours of my life invested in something “not real, unnatural, pointless…” Honestly, the only explanation I could have given was that it made me smart. Back then it seemed as though that was the only thing that mattered, that “smartness” that gave me good grades and made me have a high STAR math level and reading level. After that, it wasn’t about the reading anymore, it became, “WHY won’t you just stay on the same level as us then?” And it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that there was nothing wrong or shameful about books, nothing that made me less of a student. 
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So slowly I repaved the cracks in my mind to view reading as what it really meant to me, which made me realize a new truth. It isn’t about the grades or “smartness” gained from reading; it’s about the inner understanding. When I connect to the characters, I feel as though I have a secret twin that can understand me and eloquently describe the world as I can see it. Reading books has given me new viewpoints on how the world works. It’s like Rapunzel leaving her tower for the first time: there’s a special magic to entering a world that never existed except on a bookshelf. So yes, I have learned many life lessons from ink and paper, which brings me to the last and most important discovery: It doesn’t need to be “WHY do I read?” But instead, “WHY did I listen?”
Jennifer Briton (senior): Here current favorite: Pride and Prejudice
Reading allows me to escape the limitations of reality. Whenever I put my nose in a book, I get transported into a world where anything is possible. Reading sparks my imagination more than anything else, because it gives me the ability to picture the author's world in my head in a way that I know is uniquely my own. Immersing myself into a book and reading characters' thoughts opens my own mind to diverse opinions and exposes me to situations that I have never experienced myself, which helps me to be a more understanding person. Even though reading is often done alone, it can also be a great way to bond with people. Someone can read the exact same book as me and have a completely different take on it. That's what's so great about books. Their stories belong to everyone, but no story feels exactly the same to each person. 
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Thomas Comte (senior): His current favorite: Dracula
I read because life is too mundane. Through the pages of a novel I am transported to different lands, times, and most importantly different perspectives. Through these different perspectives I can learn from the authors and characters experience so that I may challenge my way of thinking. Through the worlds that an author creates I am able to experience things vicariously through the characters that I would never be able to. I will never battle for a kingdom, or ride a dragon, or create a creature from nothing. Through reading I am able to grow from both experiences and perspectives that I could not have without the book. 
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Emily Ray (senior): Her current favorite: The Velveteen Rabbit
I was diagnosed with moderate-severe Asperger’s Syndrome (Autism) in the second grade, and one of the key signs that comes with that is sometimes the affected person will be basically mute, requiring other non-verbal ways to communicate. I wouldn’t talk. I can’t even remember if I was mentally holding back or if I just couldn’t comprehend the need to speak, but nevertheless it was obviously a rough time for me. The few times I tried to talk (to go the bathroom, etc), I would have a severe stutter and couldn’t pronounce many character combinations (tch, ch, sh, cl, ck).

​It was pretty hard to make friends because even if I could communicate with them, my social skills were lacking, and they most of the time couldn’t understand me. So I would go to the library instead of being in class or at recess. I quickly realized that it was just easier for me to be reading constantly because then people wouldn’t bother me, and I would blend in more. It’s kind of sad, but that’s how I started reading.
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It was pretty hard to make friends because even if I could communicate with them, my social skills were lacking, and they most of the time couldn’t understand me. So I would go to the library instead of being in class or at recess. I quickly realized that it was just easier for me to be reading constantly because then people wouldn’t bother me, and I would blend in more. It’s kind of sad, but that’s how I started reading.
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However, how I got invested in reading and literature was the Geronimo Stilton book series. These books helped me experience language in a new way because some words were displayed in a different font (ex. The word “cheese” was in a font that looked like cheese, etc). I found these books when I was in the 4th grade, and up until that point I kind of figured that words by themselves were meaningless unless put into a strand. It’s kind of hard to explain, but if A is an adjective and B is the rest of the sentence and C is the meaning to the story I figured that no matter what A was, B would always lead to C. This made me completely rethink how much individual words matter.

​This is also why I read because sometimes there are things that are inside of you that you don’t realize until you read them off a page. And I know that these experiences don’t always have to come from literature, some people feel this way about music or art, but for me, it was. That’s why I love story writing and reading because it helps me find myself.
Until next time.
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April is Poetry Month. While you Stay at Home, Here are a Few Recommendations

4/8/2020

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First, I hope all of you are doing well. Today marks the beginning of the fourth week of being affected by the COVID19 pandemic. As Wednesday, March 11, 2020 rolled around I was packing a bag and getting ready to fly to Michigan for the MCTE Spring Conference. By the end of the day, the conference was cancelled, the flight was cancelled, and things across the country were starting to shut down in earnest. By the end of the day, there were 1,301 cases of the disease in the US. Last night the us marked 400,335 cases. The death total moved from 38 to 12,841. Okay, I think it is fair to say, Houston we have a problem. Clearly, we don't understand how this thing works or how quickly it spreads. It seems that most of the people I know are taking the issue seriously. Oh, sure, some are complaining, but people are being careful, staying home, keeping their distance when out and about, and checking on people in online formats.  So, stay safe, but keep in contact with the people you are close to. In fact, it might be time to reach out to some people you haven't talked with in awhile.
For the past several years. I have posted a poem a day during April. I have friends who try to write a poem a day during this month. I admire their efforts. You go Sarah J. Donovan. I can't wait to see what you come up with by the end of the month. As much as I like poetry, that just seems beyond me. Nevertheless, I like the notion of thinking about poetry every day for a month. I like thinking about my favorite poems and poets. Last year, I wrote a brief post about my relationship with poetry and about how I was posting a poem a day. You can read it here. In the post I provide links to some of the poets I admire and few YA novels in verse or verse novels. Other people with more expertise than I have talk about that distinction and you can find links to some of their posts in my older post. 
Today's post will be brief. While I am at home, I seem to be busy.  I am learning to teach online, I worry about my students (this semester most of them are graduate students who are teaching and have their own students), I worry about my family in different parts of the country and the world, and I think about my church community. I know some of them will be struggling with work issues. In addition, I am on the verge of deciding the fate of the UNLV 2020 Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. We will have a decisions by next week. Cancel, stay the course, or move to an online platform.

Now for some poetry and YA literature

YA Literature in Poetic Form
Kwame Alexander Makes a Few Picks

First, I had a messenger exchange with Kwame Alexander a couple week ago and he said I could use and build on something he wrote in a Facebook post on March 24, 2020. Here it is:

If I were stranded in the house indefinitely, five novels-in-verse I’d want to have on my nightstand are...
(Brown Girl Dreaming is a genius memoir-in-verse NOT a novel-in-verse, people. Same goes for Enchanted Air and Shout. I obviously did not include my books, well at first i did, but the list ended up being only my kid said that was kinda wack. Of course I’m gonna have a Versify title. It’d be irresponsible not to, y’all. These are in no particular order).
1. Out of the Dust
2. Love that Dog
3. The Way a Door Closes (pt. 1)/Keeping the Night Watch (pt. 2)
4. Long Way Down
5. White Rose
What are yours?

MY PICKS!

Consider the rest of the post a visual essay and series of suggestions for your further reading enjoyment.
Until next time.
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Go Ahead, Be a Couch Potato: Reading and Rest with YA Literature by Gretchen Rumohr

4/1/2020

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I love this post! I have talked with Gretchen several times over the last few weeks. Working on projects together keeps you in contact. Among other things, we have talked about how the new "normal" isn't normal at all. I know that I resent the fact that some people seem to want teachers to sacrifice even more than they already do.

I do love that a single teacher drives by the homes of students. It seems to be a wonderful, spontaneous way to reach out and I am sure that her students appreciate the gesture. But, when a school wants every teacher in a school to host a parade through their boundaries, it gives me pause. Some of those teachers are overworked and full of anxiety as they try to conduct online instruction. Others might have several children of their own at home. In some cases, they might have a spouse that is still working or, heaven forbid, ill. Others might be seeking a masters or another advanced degree and are figuring our their own school work. The list goes on. If random acts of kindness become mandates do they have the effect we desire?
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Some say that COVID-19 has caused American the education system to fall apart. I say, not so. I agree with my colleague Dr. Kenny Varner who suggests that the situation has revealed the existing weaknesses. Many school districts are confronting the realities of the digital divide. Many students have limited or no internet service. Others may not have device that is adequate for the work they are asked to do. Or what if a family does manage to have the internet, but they have more than one child at home? Who uses the device? A friend of mine had four children at home and two of them were supposed to be in a ZOOM class at the same time. What are we doing? I could mention other disparities that I see, but on to Gretchen's post.

In the meantime, If you are lucky enough to have the internet and sufficient devices, be grateful. Read Gretchen's post and then read a book and/or watch a movie. Then in a spare moment, think about a kinder, gentler response to students, teachers, and your family members who may be struggling more that is readily apparent. Let's rest and recover and, once in awhile, ponder the educational inequities that exist. Money will help solve the problem, so let's keep talking about that. In addition, let's acknowledge that we to often assume that we can do things in the digital world easily and with equity. Well, clearly we can't.

Thanks Gretchen. Now, for some fun.

Go Ahead, Be a Couch Potato: Reading and Rest with YA Literature
​by Gretchen Rumohr

It feels like it was two months--not weeks--ago when, in this post, I listed all of the books I plan to read during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Steve noted that my list seemed ambitious, and he’s right. I am an optimist, after all.  I mean, what could be a better time to read than now, when all we need to do is stay home?  Yet, as I look at that list, I haven’t gotten very far.  Life has demanded otherwise: the tender care for out-of-sorts children, the commiseration with disoriented colleagues, the reassurances for current students, the checking in on family members, the frantic setup of a home office, the wiping down of groceries/doorknobs/countertops, the washing of hands, the Zoom meetings with anyone and everyone, the cooking of meals, the baking of cookies, the countless walks with contentedly bewildered dogs, the exposure to the news cycle, the way that life is, and will continue to be--for the foreseeable future. I spend my days relishing the gift of face-to-face time with my four daughters, meals together, and warmer weather while simultaneously looking over my shoulder, aware that COVID-19 will likely affect someone I know, and soon. 
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We need to be honest with ourselves about how we are faring in these times.  My therapist suggested that my phone alarm beep on each two-hour mark so that I could “check in” with myself: how am I doing?  how am I feeling?  where is the tension in my body?  Like before, every two hours can be an ambitious goal, but such intention is warranted; I hope this advice will spur on more regular self-acceptance and care.

With these check-in exercises, I find myself answering “How am I feeling?” with “Good grief, I’m tired!”  Fatigue can be a response to the stress of secondary trauma as well as the many life demands I’ve already listed, and it indicates a clear need for self care, especially rest. Antero Garcia reminds us that when a nation is sick, it rests. We do ourselves and others a disservice when we insist on “business as usual” over a necessary siesta.  Yet beyond the normal ways of self care--sleep, light exercise, meditation, taking breaks from media coverage--we can indulge our love for young adult literature with some worthwhile YA book-to-screen adaptations.  A series or movie marathon, complete with stove-topped popcorn and a comfy blanket, is good for the soul!  
Now, maybe I’m being ambitious again, but I’ve already outed my optimist tendencies.  We are all in this for the long haul.  Here is my worldwide pandemic YA watchlist, with network-provided descriptions:
The Hate U Give
 
Starr Carter is constantly switching between two worlds: the poor, mostly black, neighborhood where she lives and the rich, mostly white, prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer.  Now, facing pressures from all sides of the community, Starr must find her voice and stand up for what's right. The Hate U Give is based on the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller by Angie Thomas. (Amazon Prime)
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The Perks of Being a Wallflower
 
In this adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s impactful coming-of-age novel, an introvert freshman is taken under the wings of two seniors who welcome him to the real world. (Readers, take note:  I started Perks in the YMCA parking lot late one morning.  By two o’clock in the same parking lot, I finished this incredible book.  My viewing of this movie is long overdue.)  (Amazon Prime)
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​Love, Simon
 
Everyone deserves a great love story. But for seventeen-year old Simon Spier it’s a little more complicated: he’s yet to tell his family or friends he’s gay and he doesn’t actually know the identity of the anonymous classmate he’s fallen for online. Resolving both issues proves hilarious, terrifying and life-changing. Based on Becky Albertalli’s acclaimed novel, Love, Simon is a funny and heartfelt coming-of-age story about the thrilling ride of finding yourself and falling in love. (Amazon Prime)
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Everything, Everything
 
What if you couldn’t touch anything in the outside world? Never breathe in the fresh air, feel the sun warm your face…or kiss the boy next door? Based on the bestselling book by Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything tells the unlikely love story of Maddy, a smart, curious and imaginative 18-year-old who due to an illness cannot leave the protection of the hermetically sealed environment within her house, and Olly, the boy next door who won’t let that stop them. Maddy is desperate to experience the much more stimulating outside world, and the promise of her first romance. Gazing through windows and talking only through texts, she and Olly form a deep bond that leads them to risk everything to be together…even if it means losing everything. (Amazon Prime)
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 Dumplin’
 
Dumplin’ follows an outspoken plus-sized teenage girl named Willowdean, who’s known as Will to her friends and Dumplin’ to her mother, a former beauty queen who now runs the local Miss Teen Blue Bonnet pageant. In her small Texas town, Will confidently ignores comments about her weight and listens to Dolly Parton songs obsessively. But when she decides to enter her mother’s pageant in protest, her bold move encourages other contestants to follow in her footsteps, redefining the town’s traditions in the process. (Netflix)
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To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (#1 and #2)
 
What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them…all at once? Lara Jean Song Covey’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control when the love letters for every boy she’s ever loved—five in all– are mysteriously mailed out. This adaptation is from New York Times Bestselling Author, Jenny Han. (Netflix)
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​Looking for Alaska

The Looking For Alaska series, based on the best-selling John Green novel of the same name, centers around teenager Miles “Pudge” Halter (Charlie Plummer), as he enrolls in boarding school to try to gain a deeper perspective on life. He falls in love with Alaska Young (Kristine Froseth), and finds a group of loyal friends. But after an unexpected tragedy, Miles and his close friends attempt to make sense of what they’ve been through. (Hulu)
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All the Bright Places

Dealing with the loss of her sister, introverted Violet Markey (Elle Fanning) rediscovers passion for living when she meets the eccentric and unpredictable Theodore Finch (Justice Smith). Based on the internationally bestselling novel by Jennifer Niven. (Netflix)
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​Stargirl
 
Stargirl is a tender and offbeat coming-of-age story based on Jerry Spinelli’s critically-acclaimed, New York Times’ best-selling young adult novel about an unassuming high schooler who finds himself inexplicably drawn to the free-spirited new girl, whose unconventional ways change how they see themselves…and their world. (Disney+)
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​I realize that my list may cater to my girls’ realistic fiction interests--this pandemic is a family affair!  More inspiration can be found here. What is on your worldwide pandemic watchlist?
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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