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A Place to Fall in Love: The Importance of Rural Love Stories by Dr. Chea Parton

6/28/2023

Chea Parton grew up on a farm and still considers herself a farm girl. She has been a rural student, a rural English teacher, and is currently a visiting assistant professor at Purdue University where she works with future teachers through the Transition to Teaching Program. She is passionate about rural education. Her research focuses on the personal and professional identity of rural and rural out-migrant teachers as well as rural representation in YA literature. She currently runs Literacy In Place where she seeks to catalogue rural YA books and provides teaching resources, hosts the Reading Rural YAL podcast where she gives book talks and interviews rural YA authors, and serves on the Whippoorwill Book Award for Rural YA Literature selection committee. You can reach her at [email protected].

A Place to Fall in Love: The Importance of Rural Love Stories by Dr. Chea Parton

I know the Hallmark Christmas Movie season is over (for now), but one of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the role that place plays in romance and love stories. For example: there are specific places that people propose that are considered more romantic than others and some that are considered decidedly not romantic at all. The Hallmark and Lifetime movie channels have built a holiday TV empire with movies that have predictable city to country/small town story lines that have started to migrate into other seasons. (Analyzing these formulaic plot lines and why people love them so much would be an entire project unto itself, which I’ll put on my to-do list for future me.)

YA is no stranger to love stories either, which has been a subject of some contention. On the one hand, authors like Maya MacGregor have discussed the important role YA love stories play in identity construction, representation, and allowing readers to dig into what is/should be considered (in)appropriate and (un)acceptable in relationships. In the piece linked here she writes, “Narratives that include romance, in particular, have a unique power to not only reflect back a reader’s identity and legitimize it, but also to establish the vital, priceless baseline of what is both normal and acceptable in relationships.”

On the other hand, teen readers like Vivian Parkin DeRossa have expressed frustration that YA love stories are unrealistic and don’t match with what most teens understand about love and what they’re looking for in their relationships. DeRossa writes, “YA tends to treat teenage relationships like they’re going to last forever. Many epilogues show the main character and their love interest happily married. But that’s not how most teen relationships shake out. Long-term love just isn’t something a lot of teenagers think is realistic at this point. Sure, some of my classmates will end up marrying their current boyfriend/girlfriend but most will breakup before or during college. And they know this.”

I’ve read a few rural love stories recently, and they have me thinking about the role that place plays in these stories, especially in relationship to MacGregor’s point about its role in validating identities. Dating and romance in rural places are shaped by geography in specific ways. For example:

Finding someone to date might be difficult. A family friend and I were trading engagement stories recently and she (partially) joked that she made sure she wasn’t related to her now husband before they started dating.
Dating someone in another town can require significant travel time which limits dating before driving age, and depending on finances, after driving age.
Finding things to do might involve farm chores or other geography-related activities. My mom and stepdad used to work together castrating hogs on/after their dates.

So, seeing these kinds of experiences validated in stories that feature romance in rural places helps to expand what rural young folks consider romantic. Hollywood and other popular media tell us that going out to a fancy restaurant and spending lots of money on dinner and/or a movie is what a “date night” is, but I guarantee that my mom and stepdad learned a lot about each other doing farm work than they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to discover if all of their dates consisted of conversation over food. Not that you can’t learn about each other that way, too, just that you might learn different things important to rural life in the context of rural work and living.

And place layers with other universally important aspects of romance such as consent, sexuality, and ways and reasons to choose a partner—sometimes in ways that are affirming and at other times in ways that provide readers opportunities to be critical of how characters navigated their romantic relationships. Below are a few rural romances that I think are worth checking out and why.

Bend in the Road by Sara Biren allows readers to think about how place and rurality factor into relationships through the interactions between the main characters—they are both insiders and outsiders to the farm where the book takes place in important ways. Farm succession features heavily, which is such an important issue for rural agrarian folks and I was both surprised and tickled to see it handled so well in this book.

Grave Things Like Love by Sara Bennett Wealer features a main character trying to navigate which boy is the right boy for her. She makes some important mistakes and being privy to her experiences and thoughts as she works to learn from them helps readers see that we don’t always get it right—we don’t always pick someone who is best for us—but that we can learn through those mistakes. Our missteps help us to learn what is important to us and for us in a relationship, and sometimes (maybe often?) those important things aren’t what we find in popular media. This story features examples of what rural dates can look like, the conundrum of having to drive a bit to meet up with your date, and the visibility a romance can have in a rural space.

Someday We’ll Find It by Jennifer Wilson is one of those books that offers important opportunities for readers to point out the problematic and toxic things that can feed relationships and their longevity. In small populations, it is statistically logical to believe that you may not ever find anyone else, so staying with someone who is toxic or abusive might seem like it makes sense. This book provides important space to critique that. It also illustrates the double standard often experience by rural girls and women when it comes to relationships.

A Little Bit Country by Brian D. Kennedy does a wonderful job of highlighting some of the obstacles a queer person might face in a rural community. Kennedy does an excellent job of embracing nuance and complicating stereotypes about rural people through this book. A queer relationship might not be the only kind of relationship that a rural person might want to hide but visibility in small towns can make that difficult. It also captures the way that tourism—in this case related to country music, but agri-tourism is a growing industry—can complicate things due to the transience of outsiders in the community.

There are many more books that could be on this list—these just happen to be some that I’ve read most recently, so if you have recommendations, I’d love to hear them. I’m also going to keep studying on the role of place and romance in YA, so if you have thoughts about that, I’d love to hear them too.

After writing my way through these thoughts in this blog, I do think rural representation in YA love stories is important, and I hope you’ll consider picking one up yourself, using them in your classrooms, and/or recommending them to both rural and nonrural readers in your life.

Queer Shame, Pride, and Joy by Dr. Christian Gregory (he, him, his)

6/22/2023

Dr. Christian George Gregory is an Assistant Professor at Saint Anselm College, teaching courses for preservice teachers in methods, pedagogy, the graphic novel, and Young Adult Literature. He has written chapters on the history of both YAL and the graphic novel and published in English Journal, English Education, the Journal of LGBTQ Youth, and the International Journal of Dialogic Pedagogy. His research interests are diversifying the canon, dialogical theory, and queer studies.

Queer Shame, Pride, and Joy by Dr. Christian Gregory (he, him, his)

For this YAL Wednesday post during Pride month, I invite you to celebrate Queer and Trans* Young Adult Literature (QT*YAL). My title marks both the history, present state, and futurity of QT*YAL. As scholars have noted, the history of QT*YAL was marked by the common trope of “bury your gays” and “dead lesbian syndrome” in which characters enter narratives only to be punished for, presumably, the crime of identity (Hulan, 2017; Rofes, 2004). With the advent of gay rights movement came an emergence from shame, with the rallying cry, “Out of the closet and into the streets” (Gregory 2021). From this visibility came YAL narratives of coming out, coming-of-age, and coming to, in fits and starts, pride.

The proliferation of QT*YAL titles in the past decade testifies the increased interest in queer narratives (Lo, 2011). Yet simultaneous with such progress has come notable pushback and restrictions. Book-banning and other forms of censorship have spread quickly across the nation in a partisan wild-fire.

For this post, I hope to remind teachers of the value of these stories, knowing that queer and trans* students will find their way to these stories whether teachers elect or not to include them in curriculum. As states, districts, and schools are often their own political eco-systems, I urge instructors to consider the variety of ways to introduce these books to their students: through curricular choices, self-select reads, excepts, or school, public, or personal libraries. Each of these stories I here highlight has immense formative value for queer and trans* youth. There stories are far more than reflective mirrors. They refract the multiplicity of identities like diamonds.

One scholarly note: For Halberstam (2018), trans* embraces the “unfolding categories of being organized around but not confined to forms of gender variance” and the asterisk refuses “to situated transition in relation to a destination, a final form, a specific shape, or an established configuration of desire and identity” (Halberstam, p.4). I use trans* to the variety of emergent identities and possibilities of more.

Flamer, by Mike Curato (he/him)

Biracial and Catholic, 14-year-old Aiden Navarro spends one week away at Boy scout camp in the summer before his entry into high school. At camp, Aiden confirms his strengths (knot-making or knowing all the campfire songs), and admits his challenges (archery). He also makes new friends, who appreciate his talents and humor, fights back against his bullies, and awakens to his attraction to his long-haired, football-playing friend Elias. Through this, Aiden finds inspiration in the courage and resilience of Christian Saints like St. Sebastian and Marvelverse icons, such as Jane Grey. Aiden’s caring top-knotted scout leader Tom provides an “orientation” lesson on how to find true north with his compass. When Aiden queries why there are two norths, a magnetic and true north, Tom responds, both as scout leader and queer mentor: “There is no ‘right’ north, really. This is all about figuring out how to get where you need to go. It’s not always straightforward” (p.203).

For LGBTQ+ students: Aiden’s complex intersectionality of identity (Filipino-American, Catholic, and gay) provides students the intersectional identities he navigates on a daily basis. Semi-autobiographical, Flamer depicts both ideations of suicide, its failed attempt, and the crucial message that “when you think the fire is out…you are wrong […] the fire isn’t done burning” (p.352; 358). Queer students have urged their parents to purchase copies, as noted by children’s book author Katey Howes in her tweet to Curato: “my 15 y.o. (proudly bi) daughter read FLAMER in an afternoon and demanded I buy her 3 more copies which she plans to “secretly deliver” to “friends who really need this book” So thank you. Seriously. Massive Thank yous” (Howes, 2020).

For Teachers: Flamer is one of the most contested banned books nationwide; it is a true-to-life queer BIPOC coming-of-age story. As such, it includes hate language, particularly among boys trying to regulate masculinity among themselves (Pascoe, 2007); it also depicts sexual anxiety, romantic fantasy, and a lights-out masturbation session among boys at camp. Nothing is explicit and all seems brutally authentic. This is a work that, even in writing about suicide, values queer life. This is a book that may truly save lives.

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (they/them)

From ogbanje transgender Nigerian writer Akwaeke Emezi comes this allegorical fantasy of monsters and angels and how art may provide imagined strategies to respond to untruths and suppressive forces. Trans* protagonist Jam and her family reside in Lucille, where monsters have been bested by angels. Jam searches for this history, and knowing that anyone can forget what monsters look like, she retreats to a library of books. Meanwhile, her mother, Bitter, has finished a painting of hybrid creature, which, with a drop of Jam’s blood, comes to life as Pet with the single purpose to “hunt” everyday monsters, not yet known or seen. In the end, this indelible allegory concerns hunting sexual predators and unearthing the often hidden, unspoken crimes of child abuse.

For LGBTQ+ students: The details of Jam’s identity formation, her claim of being in the wrong body, her self-advocacy for hormone blockers and trans* health options, her parents loving support of this identity, functions as a timely counternarrative to today’s anti-trans* legislation. Further, the narrative follows the trans*-protagonist on a quest narrative for justice rather than a more common, valuable narratives of gender formation (See Gender Queer). By illustrating trans* lives as heroic, justice-seeking, and protective of children, Emezi engages in a speculative world-building where queer and trans* students can imagine themselves agents, activists, and heroes.

For Teachers: Provides examples of trans*-supportive families, networks, and alternative family structures. Trans*, queer, and non-binary characters populate this speculative town. As such, the fiction both reflects and imagines queer positive family groupings with the BIPOC community.

All Boys Aren’t Blue, George M. Johnson (they/them)

A memoir at the intersection of Blackness and queerness, Johnson recounts his middle-class upbringing in New Jersey. Their story encompasses a coming-of-age story that tackles various queer phobias (homophobia, femmephobia, transphobia) and how the extended Black family structure, imperfect as it is, finds space for support and acceptance. Johnson’s positionality is that of the queer friend, advocate, mentor, guide, and support. They are best friend, brother, mother, and chosen family, telling tales, citing cautionary facts and figures, and offering queer front-porch advise, seasoned with bon mots, clever comebacks. Johnson’s a hard-won coming-out story, as they write, “We see coming out stories all the time…what we don’t see is what led up to that moment. How many times a person tried to push past that barrier to get to that point” (p.237).

For LGBTQ+ students: Johnson’s memoir plumbs the depths of intersectionality. Whether it is code-switching between gendered language or between racial identity, Johnson often finds himself double-dutching between two fast ropes of identity: “it was me jumping between personas: the person I wanted to be on the inside versus the person society told me I had to be on the outside” (p.69).

For Teachers: Johnson’s work reminds educators of the “creativity of children” who may “not met the acceptable standard of gender performance” (p. 59) and who may not conform to strict binary ideas about manner and mannerism. This book addresses Johnson’s double marginalization in ways that other works may not address. They must content with queerness within their familial structure, blackness and queerness within their white, Catholic high school, and queerness within their historically Black university. Notably, a chapter on sexual assault and incest, which likely led to its ban from libraries, is complex, fascinating, and responsibly managed. Knowing that sexual coming-of-age is often delayed for queer folk, a “second adolescence” (p.274) lived later, Johnson provides what they never received: a chapter devoted to sexual education, including narrative, reflection, and data and stats on HIV transmission in Black queer communities.

Gender Queer: A Memoir, Maia Kobabe (pronouns: e/em/eir)

A coming-of-age/coming out graphic novel regarding the complexity of identity. The work begins in shame, an act of masking, with paper and tape, a cartoon book project titled “Gender Queer” and ends, years later in a classroom, as Kobabe, teaching middle schoolers, considers whether and how to share eir pronouns the class. Those last words, “Next time, next time, I will come out” (p.238) illustrates the complexity facing queer and trans* teachers face. The breath of the narrative contains the confusion, elation, and stops and starts of gender queer identity construction.

For LGBTQ+ students: Most remarkable about this memoir is the authentically cloudy journey sense of self-discovery: of one’s body, sexuality, gender presentation, neurophilosopy, and identity. This work, exploratory, revelatory, provides non-binary and/or trans* students with language and thinking that can clarify the confusion of identity formation.

For Teachers: Kobabe’s work, one of the most contested in the book bans, is such a mirror into the internal anxieties facing non-binary, gender queer, and trans* people. Chapters, passages, sequences and page spreads may provide a helpful frame for classroom discussion. The constellation of family, friends, and most of all, books (fiction, fantasy, comics, and science theory) reinforce the value in reading and its heuristic effect on identity.

The Paradox of Shame, Pride and Joy

While some works address shame surrounding queer and trans* identities (Curato, 2020; Johnson, 2020; Kobabe, 2020), often the authors write a pathway out toward some self-affirmation. From the shame’s dull pain or confusion’s fog, pride seems to be the destination. Yet pride is not without its complications. As wonderful as pride is, it can be an armature against heteronormative, homophobic, and transphobic structures. One needs pride to combat these counter forces. Pride is a defense, a reclamation, an assertion of one’s value to non-queer folk. Pride is an antidote to shame.

Queer joy is another affect altogether; it can be an incredibly private expression, though often it expresses itself publicly. Yet public or private, queer joy serves its maker first and those with whom it is shared, second. Further, in its expression and presentation, queer joy, fountain-like, returns to its source. It need not, as pride so often does, combat shame; it often feels the result, at least in the moment, of a shame-free zone. Needless to say, queer joy is often shameless.

Shame. Pride. Joy. All such affects are embedded into today’s QT*YAL and seem reflective of the specific, paradoxical state in which we reside. Queer youth are experiencing pride, joy, and, shame all at once. Queer students are more visible, and, at the same time, more vulnerable (Paris and Cain Miller, 2023). Teachers and students today reside in pride and joy, while contending with the real toll psychologically from systemic homophobia and trans*phobia.

Queer Joy

Let’s end in joy. In the works mentioned, one might tease out moments of transcendence, of joy: in the mastery of a basket weaving failure and exchange of jokes in summer camp in Flamer; in the trans*-heroic, self-knowing protagonist of Pet, and finding just the right floral pattern of self-presentation in Gender Queer. In All Boy’s Aren’t Blue, Johnson writes hopefully that their queer liberation would come by going away to college; but in truth, it came form the power of identifying with Beyoncé. It’s not that Johnson wanted be Beyoncé; as he writes, “I wanted to be me, in Virginia, and dance to her. I wanted to BE ME dancing to her” (p.231). Her power afforded theirs. Her passion, theirs. Her joy, theirs.

Johnson’s moment of queer joy came through their immersive experience of Beyoncé, a pleasure analogous to reading. Each reader’s connection to a character’s queer joy forges a parasocial relation – a friend, a mentor, a form of support. And queer youth need support. Sometimes it comes in the form of family. Sometimes friends. But it can also come from stories and characters to reflect and refract their own experience. In reading about another, queer youth find the space to be and to encounter and reflect on all the emotions that come with queer being. The landscape of queer joy is a most crucial part of queer affect. It is a space not visited often enough.

Using YA Pedagogy to Authentically Assess Student Learning by Dr. Amy Piotrowski, Hannah Barker, and Tiana Leakehe

6/15/2023

Dr. Amy Piotrowski is an associate professor of English education at Utah State University. She teaches undergraduate courses in English education and secondary education as well as graduate courses in literacy education. Her research focuses on digital literacies and young adult literature. Before going into teacher education, she taught middle school Language Arts, high school English, and college composition in Texas. Her work has appeared in journals such as English Education, Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, and Utah English Journal.

Hannah Barker is an English major with an emphasis in teaching in her senior year at Utah State University. Before studying English teaching, she studied music composition and music teaching at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. She has a great passion for teaching the arts and enjoys studying and implementing creative and personalized teaching methods.

Tiana Leakehe is an English major with an emphasis in teaching at Utah State University. She will be entering her senior year this coming fall. She is committed and excited to use YAL in her future classroom. As a Pacific Islander, she is passionate about making education multicultural and believes that YAL is a great tool to help to do so.

Using YA Pedagogy to Authentically Assess Student Learning by Dr. Amy Piotrowski, Hannah Barker, and Tiana Leakehe

Assessment. Just the word can evoke dread in both students and teachers. What are the possibilities when assessment is a creative way to show off what we know, rather than being the educational equivalent of a root canal? In my (Amy’s) Teaching Young Adult Literature course, we talk about assessment as activities that provide evidence to teachers about what students have learned and what students need further instruction on. Jennifer Buelher argues in her book Teaching Reading With YA Literature for more authentic and meaningful assessments. She calls for assessments that both draw on students’ aesthetic responses to the text and challenge students to critical analysis. In other words, assessment should include “both personal and analytical work” and get students to “engage in continued learning and meaning making”(Buelher, p. 113).

The final assignment I have my preservice teachers complete in Teaching Young Adult Literature is to design an activity to assess student learning about one of the novels we have read that semester. Drawing on Buelher’s book and its chapter on assessment, preservice teachers create the handout they would give students with instructions for the activity, how the final product their students create will be assessed, and a rationale for the activity they have designed. Two of my preservice teachers, Hannah and Tiana, share here what they designed for a culminating activity. In Hannah's activity, students create book jackets about Lisa Klein’s Ophelia, while in Tiana’s activity, students create leaflets based on Kip Wilson’s White Rose. These are examples of activities that assess student learning that go beyond traditional assessments. Hannah and Tiana also share what they learned about assessment by designing these activities.

Book Jackets and Ophelia - by Hannah

Creativity is an essential part of learning. Throughout my time both as a student and as a teacher-in-training, I have come to realize that I learn much more when I am given some sort of choice in the learning, some way to be creative. For our YA Pedagogy class, I chose to create an assessment that incorporates inventiveness and personalization while also guiding all students towards the same learning goals.

This assessment was centered around the book Ophelia by Lisa Klein. The book is a retelling of the classic story of Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective. It’s an enjoyable way for students to dive deeper into Shakespeare while also allowing them to immerse themselves in the best elements of YA fiction. The assessment itself is the creation of a book jacket. Each section of the book jacket calls for a different requirement: The front cover needs to be an artistic illustration, the student’s own interpretation of the front cover of the book. The front cover flap needs to contain two themes from the book, including two quotes to support those themes. The spine contains the title of the book, as well as a small image or symbol that the student decides represents the book well. The back cover contains a 500-word review of the student’s experience reading the book. They also have to answer at least one reflection question from a list provided for them on the handout. The back cover flap contains a 300-word analysis on a single character from the book using evidence from the text. The students may choose whether they would like to make it online or on paper.

There is plenty of room for student choice and creativity in this assessment, as every part of the book jacket calls for the student to create their own individual answer or to choose how to do something from a list provided to them. It is an authentic way to assess student learning because I am able to see how well the students understood the book and its themes through their short responses- I can even see how well they understood based on the illustrations and creative symbols they choose! There is plenty of room for creativity and individuality in YA assessments.

White Rose Leaflets - by Tiana

Oftentimes, the most meaningful part of reading for students is the personal connections they make to a book. These personal connections become even easier to make with YAL because of its ability to speak to students' interests and questions. When it comes to assessment, this personal side to reading seems to get lost. Traditional multiple choice tests or papers typically just ask students to recall information or apply their knowledge analytically. Although these are important parts of assessment, they lack the personal qualities that engage students. Assessments should emphasize the importance of those connections that students make by asking them to expand upon them. Because reading is personal, assessments should be too (Buehler, p. 113).

I practiced making assessments personal by creating a project that goes along with a piece of YAL titled White Rose, by Kip Wilson. This book is a great resource for young readers to get an accurate account of the historical events that happened in Germany. It also allows students to empathize with real people from the past and includes themes of morality, identity, and bravery. Readers learn that Sophie and the other members of the resistance group created and handed out leaflets which included the truth about the Nazis. In this project, students will create their own leaflets, where they will tell the truth about the book by including important themes, characters, events, and personal connections they made. The White Rose group took an issue that included many details and condensed it into a leaflet that would get the most important parts of their message out to readers, students are able to empathize as they attempt to do the same thing. This project not only assesses students analytical skills, but also asks students to explain how they personally connected to the book.

References
Buehler, J. (2016). Teaching reading with YA literature: Complex texts, complex lives. National Council of Teachers of English.

Contemporary Takes on Star-Crossed Lovers by Roy Edward Jackson and Erinn Bentley

6/7/2023

Roy Edward Jackson holds degrees in Education, English, and Library Science. He has worked in public education in a variety of roles for over two decades. Currently, he is working on doctoral research concerning the rise in LGBTQIA+ book challenges in school libraries. He resides in Pennsylvania with his husband and menagerie of pets.

Erinn Bentley is a professor of English education at Columbus State University. When not mentoring her pre-service teachers, she enjoys leading students on study abroad programs and traveling with her family.

Contemporary Takes on Star-Crossed Lovers by Roy Edward Jackson and Erinn Bentley

Romeo and Juliet premiered over 425 years ago. For many readers, it is the first, and sometimes only, experience with Shakespeare. It may feel like a binary experience for teachers regarding students' responses to it; students seem to either love or hate the text. However, that love/hate response may not be as content driven it may seem. It could be more about access to the language and structure which can feel obscure and difficult for young readers. As teachers, we often incentivize our students to finish the text with promises of movie and book adaptations. This may be the wrong approach from many young readers. What often happens is after trudging through the text, with its difficult language, the a-ha moments come through in the adaptations. Oh, I get it now, that’s what that was about. There is something special about Romeo and Juliet that tugs at young readers with themes that are meaningful to them. Themes of love, class structure, duality, and fate. These themes resonate today 425+ years later. These themes are timeless and never tiresome. Perhaps though, the incentives that are offered after the reading may be better suited by reversing the timing. Reading, and watching, updated adaptations first gives the access point for readers to enjoy, and not trudge, through the original text. Three books are fantastic access entry points into one of Shakespeare’s most often taught plays in our schools. They are Romiette and Julio by Sharon M. Draper, If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson, and Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackmore.

Sharon M. Draper’s 1999 YA novel, Romiette and Julio, surprisingly doesn’t read dated for today’s young readers. The publishing date would indicate a bit of antiquated references; however Draper has constructed a strong novel with the right touches of timeliness that make today’s young readers relate to the overall structure. Romiette is a young African-American student born and raised in Cincinnati. A city nicknamed the Queen City of the West, is wisely chosen as the location. Romiette Capelle comes from local royalty with her ancho, newscaster father and local, boutique store owner mother. The family is well regarded and renowned. Julio Montague is a mid-year transfer student who recently moved from Corpus Christie (another aptly chosen city) Texas. As a Hispanic student of a modest means family, Julio struggles to find footing in school where he is marginalized. The two meet in a chatroom online, only to find they attend the same school. The novel follows the plot of the play with themes of class and race highlighting the story. The two go public at school with their relationship and spark the ire of a local gang, the Devil Dogs, who reign at school. While it has a different ending, Draper’s novel shines as a modern day adaptation with supporting characters that are fully fleshed out and matching well with Rosaline and Benvolio to the original play. The technology and newscasting resonates today for readers. In addition, Draper has utilized Romiette’s dreams in the book to show the power of foreshadowing, something that can get lost in the original play when a young reader struggles with the obscurity of the language. Romiette and Julio has accessible language, structure and plotting that make this a strong vehicle to gain entry into the text it originated from. Reading this prior to Shakespeare's text allows for students to not get bogged down and instead have a connection to the original play.

Jacqueline Woodson’s If You Come Softly takes more liberties with the original story, but perhaps packs a more heartbreaking punch than Draper’s adaptation. If You Come Softly is the story of Ellie, a white, Jewish girl from Manhattan and Brooklyn born Jeremiah who is Black. They meet at Percy Academy, one of New York’s most elite, and expensive, private academies. While both come from affluent families, Jeremiah is often mistaken for being a scholarship kid based on his race and position on the basketball team. Woodson wisely taps into the tropes and stereotypes that many Black young students are plagued with in American schools. This is shown when Jeremiah is erroneously placed in remedial classes with no justified reason. The love story is the heart of Romeo and Juliet, and it is the heart of Woodson’s novel. While the families are not warring against each other, the war that the two face is a society that has placed such stigma on race, particularly the Black race in America. Ellie faces little stigmatization at Percy, yet Jeremiah faces it routinely in and out of school. While Woodson doesn’t cast the story as closely as Draper did, the role of the nurse in Shakespeare’s text shines in Woodson’s novel where Ellie’s housekeeper, Marion, plays a highlighted role. Woodson packs a gut punch of an ending when Jeremiah, just after leaving Ellie for the evening, is gunned down in Central Park by the police for simply being a young Black man with a basketball in his palm. A novel published in 1998 sadly resonates all too true to the tragedy of young Black lives lost wrongly to the police over 25 years later. In fact, the tragedy of the ending is a perfect entry point for preparing kids for the tragedy of Shakespeare’s play when read after If You Come Softly.

Set in an alternative historical reality, Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackmon tells the story of two star-crossed lovers through their alternating points of view. Persephone (Sephy) and Callum reside in England in the early 2000s; however, this England is split by class and race: Crosses (dark-skinned people) are the ruling class and control the noughts (light-skinned people). Sephy (a Cross) is the daughter of a wealthy and powerful politician and Callum (a nought) is the son of Sephy’s nanny. They are best friends until Sephy’s mother fires Callum’s mother, forcing the teens to keep their ongoing relationship a secret. When Heathcroft, a Cross secondary school, allows a select number of noughts to attend, Sephy is thrilled to be reunited with Callum. Both, though, quickly realize that no one accepts their friendship. As Callum’s family becomes increasingly angered by the Crosses’ unjust governance, his father (Ryan) and older brother (Jude) join the LIberation Militia (LM) and are accused of bombing a local shopping center. Things disintegrate quickly for Callum’s family, as his older sister commits suicide, his father is arrested and imprisoned, Jude goes into hiding, and Callum is expelled from Heathcroft.

In typical star-crossed lovers fashion, a series of miscommunications leads to the couple’s separation, leaving Sephy to attend a boarding school and Callum to join the LM. When united years later under unusual circumstances, they resume their short-lived romance before Callum is forced to go back into hiding. Soon, Sephy discovers she is pregnant. Once this news is made public, Callum meets her for a midnight tryst, is discovered and arrested. Sephy’s father then presents both lovers with a heart-wrenching decision, ultimately sealing their fates.
The similarities to Romeo & Juliet are numerous, and this novel would pair well with the play or as an alternative reading. That being said, Noughts and Crosses also stands on its own as a literary text. Considering Britain’s colonial past, reimagining people of color as the more powerful race allows readers a unique perspective to examine racism. The Jim Crow-like laws, segregated schools, biased justice system, and hate-filled epithets in the novel, sadly, can be compared to current events here and around the world. The novel also offers quieter moments for readers to consider. For example, when a nought is injured at Heathcroft, Sephie is told, “‘They don’t sell pink Band-Aids. Only dark brown ones.’” Sephy admits, “I’d never really thought about it before, but she was right…Band-Aids were the color of us Crosses, not the noughts.” In Sephy’s world, the Crosses erased noughts by ensuring every television advertisement, magazine model, and first-aid bandage only matched their skin - much like our own country’s past and current history.
In addition to providing provocative themes and text-to-world connections, Noughts and Crosses offers characters who are flawed and realistic. Often in YA novels, the teenage protagonists are portrayed as heroes who are wise beyond their years. Sephy, on the other hand, is spoiled, immature, and naive through much of the first half of the novel, which is actually typical behavior for a 14-year-old child who has lived in a privileged, protected space. Callum is moody, impetuous, and stubborn - again, traits of a real teenager. Both characters disappoint their families, themselves, and each other, which I believe makes them more relatable and makes their relationship more poignant. While at the beginning of the novel they both dreamily imagine running off together, they adopt a mature and realistic view in their final moments together. Unfortunately, this realization comes too late, and readers are left wondering over the many decisions these characters made, and if they would have chosen differently. This novel is certain to spark impassioned discussions among student-readers.

Whether paired with the original Romeo and Juliet or read as an alternative text, these 3 novels offer unique opportunities for students to grapple with the universal themes of unrequited love, loyalty to family or friends, and the struggles associated with coming-of-age. We highly recommend adopting these novels in your classroom.

A Place to Fall in Love: The Importance of Rural Love Stories by Dr. Chea Parton

Queer Shame, Pride, and Joy by Dr. Christian Gregory (he, him, his)

Using YA Pedagogy to Authentically Assess Student Learning by Dr. Amy Piotrowski, Hannah Barker, and Tiana Leakehe

Contemporary Takes on Star-Crossed Lovers by Roy Edward Jackson and Erinn Bentley

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A Place to Fall in Love: The Importance of Rural Love Stories by Dr. Chea Parton

Queer Shame, Pride, and Joy by Dr. Christian Gregory (he, him, his)

Using YA Pedagogy to Authentically Assess Student Learning by Dr. Amy Piotrowski, Hannah Barker, and Tiana Leakehe

Contemporary Takes on Star-Crossed Lovers by Roy Edward Jackson and Erinn Bentley

Dr. Steve Bickmore​Creator and Curator

Bickmore's ​Co-Edited Books

Archives

Categories

Blogs to Follow

Dr. Steve Bickmore
Creator and Curator

Bickmore's
Co-Edited Books