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What Books are You Using in Your YA Courses? Here are My selections.

7/29/2020

I have been thinking about what a YA course should look like for 18 years now. I am still not sure. What I do feel pretty firmly about are just a few issues.

1. Students should read a ton. They need to read a lot more that we have time for in a one semester class. If we are teaching classes full of future teachers we want them be able to make recommendations to all of the students that walk into their classrooms or tune in through some online tool. The more experience with adolescent literature our teachers and librarians have, the better served the students will be.

2. That should be exposed to as many genres as possible. This means that we should be be teaching some genres that we may not gravitate towards in our own reading. I don't read much fantasy, but I am grateful for the advice and recommendation I glean from Melanie Hundley, Stephanie Toliver, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and many others.

3. They should also be reading in a wide variety formats. I still hear some teachers are reluctant to teach graphic novels, books in verse, or the short story. Given the results of many award winners and award nominees over the last several years, we should be getting over this bias as soon as possible.

4. I think student should be aware of the the major awards, their histories, and the books that have made the short list in these awards.

5. There should be a large element of choice. I think this is especially true once students are introduced to the various major awards and aware of what is available in the various genres and categories middle grades, realistic fiction, scifi, fantasy, novels in verse, or memoirs.

6. My last point for today's consideration is that the books should follow the guidance of Rudine Sims Bishop and provide our students, and by extension, their future students with windows, mirrors, and sliding doors. These remains true when the majority of the teaching force remains white middle class women and classrooms are rapidly becoming more diverse throughout the country.

If I were to only teach books that matched my interest, I would be reading realistic fiction for older adolescents that focused on race, class, and gender. Given the current examples of political and racial unrest, I am selecting a lot of books that match my interests, but that also represent a variety of formats. I have a mix of a few established titles, but I am drifting to quite a few books that are relatively new. I have also included books representing many diverse peoples written by insiders from those communities.

Take a look. I would love to hear from you. I am sure that I share a few titles with many of you. At the same time, I know that I won't be teaching some of your favorites--or mine. I do think that we are in the midst of a fabulous influx of new authors. Yet, the fact remains that we have many well established authors who are still writing and producing wonderful works. (It is almost a physical pain that I am not teaching dig. by A.S. King or 100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith.) Every time I look at the list I can think of twenty authors or books that would fit in with what I am trying to do. Don't get me wrong, that is not a bad thing. In fact, quite the opposite, it speaks to an abundance of quality YA literature in the current moment. In fact, like many of you I enjoy a "to be read" list that is gigantic. So in fact, I am not complaining. I am relishing in a moment when it might be difficult to create a bad reading list if one is attuned to the current moment of YA literature.

The Books
With Very Brief Introductions
In no particular order except Holes will be first and Read Between the Lines will be last

Holes by Louis Sachar

Okay. I love this book and I am quite found of the movie. I can do without the way Disney imagine the lizards, but overall it does a good job. Starting with this book gives me a chance to talk about how the film industry has taken to YA literature at a lot of levels. I also like how this book is simultaneously about race, class, and gender in multiple ways. I have often argued that if I were teaching AP literature again, I would start with this book. I love the fractured narrative with intertwining narratives and elements of magical realism. I think if students can identify the literary elements in this text, they can tackle them in some of the books by some of the more traditional authors used in AP courses--Faulkner, Morrison, Dickens, Bronte and many others.

Merci Suárez Changes Gears by Meg Medina

There is so much to love about this book and about Meg Medina. She has written wonderful children's literature and wonderful YA fiction. With Merci Suárez Changes Gears she has written what I consider a middle grades novel that garnered her the Newbery medal in 2019. This novel not only explores various aspect of Merci's coming of age story it also examines a multi-generational Cuban family.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

Few YA novels have the staying power of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. I can't even imagine how many editions have been published. It has been in print for 44 years and countless number of young black readers have been able to see themselves in the lives of Cassie and her family and friends. With this book they have a mirror and for many white children reading this book is their first experience with book as a window.

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Every time I think about this novel, I hear my good friend and colleague, Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides forcefully, but politely telling me that American Born Chinese is a perfect book. If such a thing really exists, she might just be right. Certainly, for the history of the graphic novel and its consideration in the classroom and the literary canon this book needs to be mentioned in the same sentence with Maus by Art Spiegelman and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

New Kid by Jerry Craft

Craft's book was nominated for almost every award possible. I quick look at Craft's website demonstrates the list of accolades heaped on this 2020 Newbery winner. I love Craft's quote about his own work: "I make the kind of book I wish I had as a kid."

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Woodson's memoir remains one of my favorite books of the last 20 years. It was one of those books that I knew I was going to write about as I read it. I was talking about it non stop even before it began winning award after award. Finally, I had a chance to write about it for First Opinions, Second Reactions. In my essay, I discuss how the book transported me back to my own childhood. Our experiences shape us.

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Acevedo's stunning debut novel carries one of the most powerful and original voices in Young Adult literature. In addition, If your students listen to the audio version of this book, they will hear not only the power of Acevedo's words they will listen to the author herself read her work. Clearly, based on the reception of her next two books we have remarkable new talent in the world of YA literature.

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai

Okay, I admit it, I am officially an old guy. The Vietnam War surrounded my adolescent years. I remember the news reports. I can still hear Walter Cronkite reading the news reports of battles in a far away place that became even closer as people we knew lost brothers and fathers in that conflict. As a young teacher I lived next an extended family of Vietnamese refugees. My children grew up and played with their children and grand children. This beautiful novel in verse captures the struggles of family trying to make their place in a new world.

March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

I am late finishing this post. I have been on a long needed break. As a result, I am finishing this post as I listen to President Barack Obama pay tribute to John Lewis at his funeral at at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Often YA Literature stands as a witness to historical acts of social justice. In our current moment, I can't imagine teaching a course on YA literature without using texts like this one that calls attention to moments of change. All acts are political. Without flinching I plan to teach a course that demonstrates how writers of YA fiction take on the issues of race, class, and gender. I can't do everything, but I can do this. I can "Get in good trouble, necessary trouble."

Dear Martin by Nic Stone

Nic Stone has become one of my favorite authors. I love the range of her style and her themes. For my money, Dear Martin stands as one of the lights on a hill as classrooms and communities talk about police violence. As your students fall in love with The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas or How it Went Down by Kekla Magoon or Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes remind them of this wonderful book.

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

This book is a remarkable example of collaboration. While I love the story, the characters, and the craftsmanship, I am enthralled with the work accomplished by the combined work of Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. I believe that our issues will find a resolution more quickly if we can work together to discuss hard and uncomfortable situations. Jason and Brendan model that work for us.

I’m Not Dying with You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal

I had the great privilege of meeting both Gilly and Kim at a dinner as part of my activities at the 2019 NCTE convention. I didn't know the book, but I knew I had found another model of collaboration. Kim and Gilly work together to tell the tough stories that ask the tough questions and explore the potential answers that will move us forward. Read this book! Then, find a way to collaborate with someone in order to answer the difficult questions that surround you. Let's find a way to take a step forward. I immediately began to scheme so that they could speak at the 2020 UNLV Summit. What a gift.

Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay

I spend time finding books that represent own voice writers who are writing novels that represent under represented, diverse communities. I was invited to a dinner in Las Vegas with Laurie Halse Anderson about a 18 months ago and she was carrying a book. I asked her what she was reading and she began carrying on about the Patron Saints of Nothing. I have learned to pay attention to Laurie's recommendations. And, since I am putting her novel, The Impossible Knife of Memory, reluctantly to the side this year it is only fitting that I include this fine novel. It didn't take me long to be a fan and Randy Ribay was on my short list to be a keynote speaker at the 2019 ALAN workshop. Thankfully, he was being promoted by his publisher, so that was a quick conversation. His keynote speech is available at this link on his webpage.

Internment by Samira Ahmed

I love the cover of this book. The word Resist written across the hat could be the subtitle for this book. As I read it I felt that it could be written as a direct response to incarcerated children and families on the southern border of our county. Of course it wasn't. Books take a while to get from the authors imagination to the page, through the editing process, and into the hands of readers. Ahmed does a remarkable job envisioning a situation of governmental abuse and the fear of the "other" that seems all to prevalent in our society today.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Dystopian, apocalyptic, and futuristic fantasy that wonders what might become of us if we continue to push each other into silos that prohibit us from moving forward. This book quickly reminded me in tone of McCarthy's The Road, of Huxley's Brave New World, Golding's Lord of the Flies and in some interesting ways it becomes a journey novel that questions Twain's Huck Finn as an alternate tale of the difficulty of finding what has been promised. Cherie Dimaline is a member of the Georgian Bay Metis Community in Ontario. While the book can easily be defined as Canadian, this indigenous author reminds us how artificial the boundaries that are drawn in the new world really are. They were drawn across traditional tribal lands with little regard for the people who were already there.

If I Ever Get Out of Here by Eric Gansworth

One of my favorite topics to examine in YA literature is the role of music in a book. Eric Gansworth's passionate narrative of a Tuscarora youth finding his way through adolescences is punctuated by the music of 1975. This period piece can not only be read, but students can enhance their experience by listening to the music that inspires and contextualizes Shoe's experiences.

Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida by Victor Martinez

This book by Victor Martinez was the first book to win the National Book Award in 1996. This is a perfect example of a book that shouldn't be ignored just because it is old. The power of this own voices narrative deserves a moment of revitalization.

To Build a Heart by Maria Padian

I have been a fan of Maria Padian's work for quite awhile. Trevor Ingerson sent me a few books and Maria Padian's Wrecked had a little post it note that suggested this book might suit my interests. Well, Trevor was right. Now with her newest novel, How to Build a Heart, Padian demonstrates that she is a moving force in YA fiction. I look forward to discussing this book with my students. Izzy Crawford misses her father who died Iraq. For six years Izzy and her mother have lived with relatively little support from her mother's family in Puerto Rico and her father relatives in North Carolina. Can this mixed race girl find a place to belong?

Anger is a Gift by Mark Oshiro

Oshiro's debut novel took me completely by surprise. I loved how this story of both grief and action built around some of the issues that are at the center of current protests throughout America's cities. I kept wondering why I hadn't heard about this book sooner. I am anxious to see what comes next.

Read Between the Lines by Jo Knowles

I love this book! It was one of the books that I think deserves another opportunity to be re-promoted. When I first read it I thought "This book is going to be on everyone's list!" While that didn't happen, what did happen is that Jo Knowles is
on everyone's list. I don't know any one who has read one of her books who is not taken by her themes, characters, and style. Last year at the 2019 ALAN Workshop she demonstrated her commitment to kindness. Unfailingly her books demonstrate the power of fiction to inspire hope. At UNLV, we look forward to hosting Jo as one of the keynote speakers at the 2021 Summit on the Teaching and Research of Young Adult Literature.

I am looking forward to what my student have to say about these texts. I am also interested in see what they self select as well.

What are you going to offer your students. I would love to know.

Until next week.

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MG/YA Stories of Surviving Loss & Abandonment by Lesley Roessing

7/24/2020

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Once again we have another terrific post from the amazing reader and my friend Lesley Roessing. She has produced quite few posts in the past for Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday and she references some of them in her introduction. You can always find them and the post by others on the contributors page. Take it away Lesley

MG/YA Stories of Surviving Loss & Abandonment

The year 2020 is presenting challenges for all of us, but there are children in our classrooms who deal with significant, even critical, challenges all the time. Many times these children are hiding in plain sight—from their teachers, counselors, and peers, struggling on their own and revealing resilience beyond their years. One in fourteen children have a parent who is incarcerated. There are 7.4 million refugees of school age, and in 2017 25% of all US children had at least one immigrant parent. One in six children live in poverty, and 1.4 million children are homeless. Probably the highest numbers are children who have experienced loss and abandonment.

Everyone experiences loss differently, but death has become all too common in our children’s worlds. The statistics are overwhelming:

In 2018, a total of 2,839,205 resident deaths were registered in the United States. (CDC) Not all these deaths affected our students and their peers, but a high percentage were parents, grandparents and other relatives, guardians, siblings, friends, and other people with whom our students may have had relationships.
1 in 5 children will experience the death of someone close to them by age 18 (Journal of Death and Dying)

1.5 million children are living in a single-parent household because of the death of one parent. (Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing. 2008)

In 2018, 400,000 people under 25 suffered from the death of a loved one (National Mental Health Association).

In 2008, it was predicted 1 in 20 children aged fifteen and younger will suffer the loss of one or both parents. These statistics don’t account for the number of children who lose a “parental figure,” such as a grandparent or other relative who provides their care. (Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing)
It is estimated that 73,000 children die every year in the United States. Of those children, 83% have surviving siblings. (Home Healthcare Nurse, 2011)
In a 2001 study of 11- to 16-year-olds, 78% reported that at least one of their close relatives or friends had died. (Harrison and Harrington)
In 2012 the American Federation of Teachers reported that 7 in 10 teachers currently had at least one student in their class(es) who had lost a parent, guardian, sibling or close friend in the past year.

In all these ways, a high percentage of our students and their peers are affected by death, loss, and grief.

However, parents and guardians leave children in many different ways and for many diverse reasons, some beyond their control. In the United States, more than 7,000 children are abandoned each year. Some are abandoned at birth; others later in life. Some are given up for adoption or go into the foster care system, and many live with relatives. Abandonment fears can impair a child's ability to trust others. A child’s self-esteem can also be affected by lack of parental support.

Story can be instrumental in supporting children and adolescents facing loss and handling grief and also effect empathy for their peers who are coping with losses. Children need to see their lives and the lives of their classmates reflected in story to feel heard. Whole-class selections provide a base for discussions about loss and create classroom community. Five or six of these novels can be employed for classroom book clubs. And independent self-selected novels on the theme of loss allows readers to share and compare their characters’ journeys.

Below, I review and recommend 26 novels (and one memorial for the victims of the Parkland shootings) on the topic of Surviving Loss & Abandonment. At the end of the blog is a list of 70 novels—the reviewed novels and additional novels I have read within the last five years.

Because of their need to face grief and survive loss at early ages, these characters can be added to my previous YA Wednesday guest blogs on strong girls, strong boys, and strong girl-boy partnerships in MG/YA literature:

50 More Strong Girls in MG/YA Literature—Part B"

“25 Strong Boys (Plus 5 Strong Girl-Boy Partnerships) in MG/YA Literature

Loss of a Parent and Grandparent

Baptist, Kelly J. Isaiah Dunn is My Hero
•Fact: An estimated 1 out of 14 children in the U.S. will experience the death of a parent or sibling before they reach the age of 18; one out of every 20 children aged fifteen and younger will suffer the loss of one or both parents.
•Fact: The number of homeless students enrolled in public school districts and reported by state educational agencies during school year 2017-18 was 1,508,265. This number does not reflect the totality of children and youth experiencing homelessness, as it only includes those students who are enrolled in public school districts or local educational agencies.
•Fact: In many cases, these two facts are related.

Isaiah Dunn was one of these children. After his father died suddenly of a heart attack, his mother, too depressed to work, took her solace in bottles. “But I do think. About how the world can be good and happy for one person, but bad and sad for somebody else. And how everything can change in just one minute…like it did for me, Mama, Daddy, and Charlie.” (21) Fifth-grader Isaiah, his mother, and his 4-year-old sister Charlise lost their apartment and moved into the “Smokey Inn,” which is how Isaiah refers to their motel. But they then lost even that, living in their car until they were rescued by a former neighbor.

“Every day Mrs. Fisher writes a sentence on the board, and we have a few minutes to write something about it. Today she wrote, ‘My world is a good and happy place.” (21)…I keep my workbook closed, too, cuz there’s no way I’m writing any words about being safe and happy.” (23) And a few days later Isaiah reflects, “I wanna tell Mrs. Fisher there’s no way I’m writing about ‘my favorite room in my house’.” (55)

But Isaiah does have his father’s notebook of stories of the superhero Isaiah Dunn which he reads slowly and savors, and he has a love of words, a talent for writing poems, and the goal of making enough money somehow to move his family into a house. He truly wants to be Isaiah Dunn, Superhero. But life is tough, and young adolescent lives are complicated under the best of circumstances. The reader follows Isaiah’s year as he navigates changing relationships with classmates and faces his own grief, attempting to hold his family together, and readers cheer him on as he creates a lasting tribute to his father’s memory.

Connor, Leslie. A Home for Goddesses and Dogs
“You’ll be all right. You come from strong.” (1) In the months after her death, Lydia Bratches-Kemp finds out just how true her mother’s words were.

Thirteen-year-old Lydia has experienced many challenges in her young life. Her father left home when she was six, at the same time her mother became ill with a heart condition. Lydia helped take care of her mother for seven years until she died. But it wasn’t all sadness; her mother homeschooled her so they could spend time together enjoying nature and making art and goddesses, collages from old photographs bought at a flea market.

When Lydia is taken in by her mother’s sister Bratches and her wife Eileen who live in the small town of Chelmsford, Connecticut, a town of farms and strong women and girls, she undergoes a myriad of new experiences. She attends a school where the twelve 8th graders, who have known each other and all the townspeople their whole lives, welcome her with open arms, especially Raya and Sari who show up on her doorstep on weekends and take her to visit every farm and teach her to snowshoe. She, Bratches, and Eileen live with the kind 90-something-year-old Elloroy, owner of their house, who is, in his words, “almost dead” and Soonie, his sweet, old greyhound.

nd last there is Guffer, the dog whom Bratches, Eileen, and the reluctant Lydia adopt. “I wanted to stop them and ask, Are you sure? Sure you don’t want to wait and see how one rescue goes before you get yourselves into another? Not to liken myself to a dog, exactly. But I had been taken in.” (45) Lydia, by her own words was not a dog person, but as they train the “bad” dog, she becomes more and more attached. “It’d been twelve weeks since Aunt Brat had first driven me up Pinnacle Hill in her boxy car.… We’d [Guffer and I] arrived the same week; We’d both had our lives changed.” (311)

As she deals with secrets—hers and Bratches’; new family, friends and neighbors; pymy goats; a missing father, and her first kiss, she settles in as a member of this close community. “I soaked up the scene. There was something so easy, so right, about watching my friends peel off their boots and jackets in the front hall and something so everyday about Guffer coming to inspect their empty footwear.” (237)

But her love for Guffer also gives her the strength, supported by her new family, to face the adult bully who threatens him. “’Turns out I’m pretty strong,’ I told [Elloroy].” (369)

“We three linked arms and plodded back toward the trail, relieved and still reveling. I held my women up; they held me up. ‘I am flanked by a pair of goddesses, Mom! They won’t let me down! I will never fall down!’” (352)

Erskine, Katheryn. Seeing Red
"The truth will set you free." Or so writes Miss Miller on her board.
When I studied history in school, I learned dates, events, and names. I didn’t learn the motivations, the different perspectives of the truth, and most important, I didn’t learn what changed and what still needs to change. And I didn’t learn to reflect on where I stand and how I can become an agent of change. Teachers told me what to think.

Miss Miller “tell[s] us to think!” In his first classroom encounter with this new, hippie teacher, Red says, “I mean, it’s all happened already and there’s nothing you can do about it, so it’s kind of a waste of time.” Seeing Red takes the reader back to the 1970’s where Red learns that in his town discrimination and racism is still alive and his family was more involved than he knew. Learning his history will be crucial in making things “right.”

Frederick Stewart Porter (Red), the 12-year-old main character of the novel Seeing Red begins with the narrator’s observation, “Folks don't understand this unless it happens to them: When your daddy dies, everything changes," and he spends the novel navigating those changes. Red knows in many instances what his father would want him to do, but he now experiences the complexities of what is right to do and how to make that happen. Where do his rights/wants end and the rights of others begin? His mother needs to sell their house, shop, and store; Red wants to stay, to preserve his father’s family legacy. He has to decide how far he will go to do so. To enlist the help of the town gang, he first goes along with their initiation. If you burn a cross but don’t mean it to make a statement, does it still make a statement? What if you were just doing what you were told to do? What if your friend who is black happens to be there? What if he is tied up? And beaten?

As Red learns more about the town and his family’s history in forming that town, he thinks back to his father’s words, “Next time, you think for yourself and decide what makes you a man, a good man.” Red does. “It felt like there was nothing but change happening.”

Why do we study history? It’s all happened already and there’s nothing you can do about it, right? This novel reminds me of the Edmund Burke quote, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing.” And that's one reason for our adolescents to read Seeing Red. We can encourage our adolescents to "Discover the past, understand the present, change the future” – Kathy Erskine.

Gemeinhart, Dan. The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise
“You see, I’d walked into that gas station alone. And I’d walked out of it alone. Just like I’d walked in and out of gas stations alone every day for, like, years. And maybe right then and there, holding that kitten, is when I’d just had enough of all that aloneness.” (7)

Coyote Sunrise and her dad Rodeo have been living in a school bus and driving around the country for five years. Five years since Coyote’s two sisters and her mother died in a car crash. Five years since they had spoken of their family, visited their hometown, seen Coyote’s grandmother, or even used their real names.

But one day at a campground, spending the day with a new friend and her mother, Coyote noticed, “It felt like a family. Like a sister and a mom. I liked it. I wouldn’t have been willing to admit right then that it felt like that, or that I liked it—but it did, and I did.” (44) But after that one day, as was their custom, Rodeo and Coyote get back in the bus to move on and share once-upon-a-time stories.

“Once upon a time, there were three girls. Sisters. Once upon a time, there was a mom.

And, once upon a time there was a box.… And they’d all promised, all three sisters and one mom had promised to come back for the box of memories…no matter what, they’d come back for that box.” (56)

In a weekly phone conversation with her grandmother, Coyote learns that the park where she, her sisters, and mother buried a memory box will be bulldozed for development, and she makes a decision. “I had to get myself, and a bus, and my dad, all the way across the country in less than four days. And I had to do it without my dad noticing.” (62)

Along the way they pick up a cast of characters, diverse people with their own problems: Lester is returning to a woman who wants him to give up his passion for music; Salvador and his mother are fleeing an abusive father/husband; and Val is running away from parents who refuse to accept her as she is—and of course, Ivan, the cat. Traveling with these people and helping them solve their problems, Coyote finds the support and family she needs to give her the strength to do what she needs to do to help her father acknowledge and move on from his loss and to help her fulfill her promise to her sisters and mother.

“I guess sometimes life does seem like too much, especially during the big moments. But usually you can dig inside yourself and find what you need. You can find what you need to grow into those big moments and make ‘em yours.” (299)
Dan Gemeinhart’s novel allows us to join this family, as if we were riding along, and share their sorrows, their failures, and their successes as we witness Coyote’s and her father’s healing.

Gephart, Donna. In Your Shoes
In multi-generational households or neighborhoods, the death of a grandparent can affect a child as much as the loss of a parent. In Your Shoes introduces readers to two adolescents surviving loss—one grieving of the death of a parent, the other of a grandparent.

Grieving her mother’s death, Amy is torn from her best friend and her home in Chicago to live in her uncle’s funeral home in Buckington, Pennsylvania. Her father is learning the funeral trade and is away Monday to Friday, and Amy, even with her optimism, is not making new friends. Life hits a low when she sits down with girls in the middle school cafeteria—and they move to another table. But she meets a new best friend, Tate, a weight lifter with interesting fashion sense, in the school library, and they spend their lunch hours talking stories and eating Jelly Krimpets.

Meanwhile Miles is still grieving the loss of his grandmother while worrying about his grandfather dying. In fact, Miles worries about everything. His family owns Buckington Bowl, and bowling the perfect game, especially while beating his best friend Randall, is his goal.

And a bowling shoe is how Miles and Amy connect—literally, both at the beginning and the end of this delightful middle-grade novel. In addition to Randall and Tate, Amy and Miles become each other’s support system through the special bond of grief and loss.

Donna Gephart’s delightful novel about the power of family and friendship features two sports uncommon for a middle-grades book, female weight-lifting and bowling. The novel also conveys the power of story, those we read and those we write.

Maynard, Joyce. The Usual Rules
The Usual Rules is an emotional and insightful novel about the effects of the events of September 11, 2001 on the families and friends of the victims—those left behind.

The reader learns about the close relationship between 13-year-old Wendy and her mother through flashbacks: her parents' divorce; the sporadic visits of her father; her mother's marriage to Josh, her "other dad"; and the birth of her half-brother Louie. And then her mother goes to work at her job at the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001—and does not return. Wendy’s world changes. “Then September happened and the planet she lived on had seemed more like a meteor, spinning and falling” (p. 175).

The reader experiences not only Wendy's (and Josh's and Louie's) loss but the suffering and uncertainty of those left behind. Could her mother be walking around, not remembering who she is? As the family hangs signs, we learn how different this loss was for the many people who held out hope for a long time without a sense of closure. And this loss was different because it was experienced by many—an entire country in a way. “Instead of just dealing with your own heart getting ripped into pieces, wherever you looked you knew there were other people dealing with the same thing. You couldn’t even be alone with it” (p. 95). We see the loss through the eyes and hearts of a daughter, a very young son, and a desperately-in-love husband.

Wendy leaves Brooklyn and goes to her biological father in California. Among strangers, she re-invents her life. As those she meets help fill the hole in her life, she fills the hole in theirs. Books also help her to heal.

Even though there are quite a few characters in this novel, but they all are well-developed, and I found myself becoming involved in all their lives, not only Wendy, Josh, and Louie and even her father Garrett, but Wendy’s new friends—Carolyn, Alan, Todd, Violet. On some level they all have experienced trauma and loss, and, within these relationships, Wendy is able to heal and return to rebuild her family.

Although I did not want this novel to end and to leave these characters, this well-written novel taught me more about the effects of September 11, loss, and the importance of relationships—and it added a new perspective to my collection of 9/11 novels. [See more novels for Studying & Discussing the Events of 9/11 at http://www.yawednesday.com/blog/15-novels-to-generate-important-conversations-about-the-events-effects-of-nine-eleven-by-lesley-rosessing]

Henkes, Kevin. Sweeping Up the Heart
Amelia’s mother died when she was too young to remember her, so she has not missed her or grieved her death—at least not like her father, the Professor, who has an inability to express his love—and his thoughts. As in the Emily Dickinson poem, Amelia presumes he went through “Sweeping up the Heart and putting Love away.” (50) Luckily, Amelia has been raised by a neighbor who comes to the house each day and loves Amelia as if her own.

But during Spring Break, twelve-year-old Amelia’s life begins to change. She had become used to being alone, throwing herself into her small sculptures, since her best friend turned Mean Girl. “’I never liked that kid,’ her father said…. ‘I thought she was a miserable soul.’” (175). When Amelia meets her art teacher’s nephew, Casey, they become fast friends with a hint of something more. Meanwhile Casey is working on preventing his parents' impending divorce and has his own sweeping up the heart (literally, a sculpture he made to save the marriage).

Looking out the restaurant window where they imagine lives for the passersby, Amelia notices a woman who looks like her mother and even resembles Amelia herself. Casey, full of imagination, suggests that it is her mother’s spirit, and Amelia takes this to the next step—What if her mother didn’t really die? As she begins to imagine life with her mother, she feels the grief she has been spared. The woman turns out not to be her mother, but is someone who might be able to heal their family. “Although this wasn’t the spring break she’d wanted, she wouldn’t change it.” (179)

I have read Kevin Henkes’ picture books, and I felt the same language and sentence structure in this book. This is a novel about complex emotions and relationships but written simply in lovely language with characters who immediately became part of my heart.

Lowitz, Leza. Up from the Sea
“The bigger the issue, the smaller you write.”--Richard Price
Instead of focusing on the overwhelming statistics generated by the March 11, 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan—nearly 16,000 deaths and 3,000 people missing—the event becomes even more intense and compelling as author Leza Lowitz relates the story of one town and one boy and the resilience of many.

The story begins on March 11 when Kai, a half Japanese, half American 17-year-old and his teachers and classmates experience the “jolting of the earth,” and as trained, they evacuate, running for their lives, looking for the highest place, as their town is destroyed. Written powerfully in free verse, the reader feels the fury of nature as the water “churns,” “thrashes,” “surges,” “sweeps,” “charges.” Kai ends up in a shelter having lost his mother, his grandparents, and one of his best friends. His father left years before to return to America.

Faced with overwhelming loss and trauma, Kai walks into the ocean but is saved by one of his classmates and convinced to accept the opportunity to go to New York City on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 where he will spend some time with young adults who lost their parents as teens in the 9/11 attacks. At Ground Zero, Fia tells him, “Bravery means being scared and going forward anyway.”

Kai hopes to find his father in NYC but returns to his village to help the young adolescents who lost their families and to rebuild his town. “I want to be/ like that tree/ deep roots/ making it strong/ keeping it/ standing tall.” And it is to his roots Kai returns and stays—“The quake moved the earth/ ten inches/ on its axis./ I guess/I shifted,” too.”

Well-written as a verse novel, Up from the Sea would serve as an effective continuation to a 9/11 study. Readers should already be aware of the events of 9/11 to understand the connection between Kai and Tom but will comprehend the trauma and loss experienced, and resilience that is required, by anyone who faces adversity.

Polisner, Gae. In Sight of Stars
Researchers at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center found that “children who lost a parent due to suicide when they were teenagers or young adults had the highest chance of being hospitalized for a suicide attempt in the first two years after the parental suicide.” This finding highlights the vital importance of providing support to children who are grieving.

Klee’s father committed suicide, and Klee was the one who found him. If that weren’t traumatic enough, his mother moves Klee away from his friends and Manhattan for a senior year in a new high school in the suburbs, away from the museums, art, and parks he loves—the museums, art, and parks where he spent time listening to his father’s stories about Van Gogh and life—and from his friends.

Klee looks for support in Sarah, his one new friend, but he may be demanding more than she can give. When she disappoints him, he cuts himself with a knife and ends up in a psychiatric hospital.

The reader lives through Klee’s hospitalization with him; as does he, we wonder what is real, what is imagined. Who can he trust? He already found that he cannot trust his perfect mother, or can he? Who is real, and whom does he fabricate. How much like his favorite artist, Van Gogh, is he?

The author creates a perfect puzzle. I was reminded of the sliding puzzles I played with in childhood. But in sliding puzzles, there always is a piece missing. And Klee finds he does have a piece of the puzzle that is missing and when he finds it, he may be able to build the picture and trust again.

The story is skillfully crafted, as each piece slides into the opening left by the movement of another piece. The characters—Klee, Dr. Alvarez, Sister Agnes Teresa, Martin, Sarah, and even Klee’s mother—are well-developed and are integral parts of the puzzle.

The novel offers hope for those who are surviving trauma and loss: “…the sight of stars is always right there. Right in your line of vision. Even on the cloudiest day.”

Schwartz, Elly. Give & Take
“My insides are filled with a missing that can’t be fixed with words.” (85) Twelve-year-old Maggie’s world seems to be filled with good-byes. It all began on the first worst day of her life—"Forgot Me Day,” the day her Nana forgot who Maggie was, and then the second worst day, the day Nana died. Maggie becomes anxious that she will forget what is special in her life, and she starts collecting mementoes of small moments. She hides boxes under her bed and in her closet, boxes filled with gifts but also milk cartons and straws from lunches, sticks, rocks, anything that will help her remember.

When the family takes in a foster baby, Maggie knows it is temporary to give the baby a good start until she gets her forever family but Maggie hides away baby socks and diaper tabs. “A little something. To remember. So my memories don’t disappear.” (13) Baby Izzie is adopted and Maggie is again filled with a “giant missing.”

When her secret is discovered, her parents send her to work with Dr. Sparrow, who helps her work toward “a heart big enough to love a lot and a brain healthy enough to let go.” (267)

During all this, Maggie meets a new friend, Mason, who joins their formerly all-girl trapshooting team; helps her little brother Charlie makes friends; finds—and loses—a pet turtle; and has to decide whether to tell a friend’s secret, a secret that could be hurtful to others, risking the loss of that friendship.

Maggie, who struggles with anxiety manifested through hoarding, joins her author-Elly-Swartz-sisters Frankie, who in Smart Cookie is dealing with the loss of her mother, and Molly who struggles with OCD in Finding Perfect in my heart. Their stories will help some young adolescents see their lives reflected and challenges honored and will give others the empathy to understand their peers. For the adult who read these novels, they may provide a flash of insight into those in our classrooms and families.

Loss of a Sibling

Abbott, Tony. Denis Ever After
“So. I made a difference.” (132)

Denis died when he was seven years old. It is now five years later, and he is with his great-grandmother GeeGee in Port Haven where the dead go to forget their lives—backwards, helped by those on Earth who begin forgetting them, until they “fade peacefully.” Usually the dead remain the age they were when they died, but Denis was a twin and since Matt, his brother, imagines them still doing things together, he has aged along with Matt.

Denis died under mysterious circumstances. He was kidnapped and found three days later, halfway across the state from his home, placed on the Georgia memorial on the Gettysburg battlefield. Was he murdered? By whom? How? And where? As twelve-year-old Matt and his friend Trey begin to investigate, Denis feels he must come back as a ghost and help them. What follows is a story of loss, broken families (Matt’s; their father’s, his father's, and another family who becomes involved in the kidnapping), the effects of war, redemption, and bonds. Russell, the scribe of Port Haven, says that “there are bonds between all of us, the living and the not.” (7) In risking much and helping to create those bonds, Denis did make a difference.

“A thousand thousand threads! Patterns woven and repeated, subtly or accidentally, over the years. One thing I’ve figured out, though. Those threads aren’t just lines connecting and reconnecting. They’re more like arteries, pumping life from one thing to another, creating not simply patterns in a fabric, but a living connection from person to person to thing.” (303) Matt’s reflection describes Tony Abbott’s well-crafted complex tale. At first I thought the author would never be able to pull all the diverse events together; however, like arteries in a body, they each served to nourish each other.

Teachers and parents have expressed concern about finding books for our more advanced young adolescent readers; in many YA novels, the themes, events, and language are not appropriate for 9 to 13 year-olds. Denis Ever After is a complex MG novel that is appropriate for young readers; and given that the vocabulary is not particularly advanced, it will also appeal to more emergent readers who are interested in an intricate mystery.

Lyga, Barry. Bang
Stan Lee once said, “If they don’t care about the characters, they can’t care about the story.” And that is true. Characters are first. But if the characters don’t have a story to tell, there is no point in reading or reading forward. And for me, the third, and equally crucial component, is good writing— not the purple prose I see in a lot of novels (an abundance of adjectives, lists of metaphors, cute parenthetical asides) but writing that is not intrusive except when it is so perfect that the reader just has to stop and appreciate the writer—“When the bell rings, I abandon English like it’s the Titanic.”

Bang by Barry Lyga has all three elements. Even though, when he was a toddler, he killed his baby sister, I cared passionately about Sebastian, many times more than he did. I also loved and appreciated his two friends Evan and Aneesa; if circumstances only allow you two friends, they are the ones to have. “When I’m with her, I feel hope. Possibility. It clings to me like a scent.”

The plot is an emotional rollercoaster for Sebastian as well as for the reader. I went from shock, to sorrow, to laughter, to frustration, back to laughter, to tears. Given the subject matter, I appreciated the laughter even more than usual; I would describe the novel as presenting a heavy subject but with a light touch, even thought that might be considered a confusing representation. I will say that I couldn’t put it down. This is truly a book that will generate important conversations.

Panteleakos, Nicole. Planet Earth is Blue
Nova, an adolescent with nonverbal autism, is locked in her own world with limited communication. She is able to open up this world with the help of her older sister Bridget, the one person who acknowledges her intelligence and takes care of her when their mother can’t. Nova and Bridget share a love for space and space exploration, and their knowledge is vast. As they are taken away from their mother and moved from foster home to foster home, Bridget looks forward to turning eighteen when she says she will be able to take care of Nova on her own.

When the story begins, Bridget and Nova have run away from their latest foster home, and Nova has been placed in a new home with loving foster parents and their older daughter; they all want to get to know Nova, her limitations, but also her capabilities. Meanwhile Nova begins school, repeating sixth grade, experiencing endless testing (her social worker has classified her as “severely mentally retarded”) and getting to know new peers in her special education room, each with their own challenges and abilities. The classmates bond, but Nova is desperately waiting for the day of the Challenger launch with the first teacher aboard; Bridget has promised to find her so they can watch the launch together.

The story is told in alternating third-person, the story of Nova’s life with Francine, Billy, and Joanie and school, and first-person which the reader views through Nova’s letters to Bridget—which are, in her real life, illegible. I found it very effective to read about people and events and then re-read them from Nova’s perspective.

Having read that the story incorporated the 1986 Challenger space shuttle launch, I began reading this novel with a feeling of trepidation. I assume that this might be experienced in a different way by readers of diverse ages and background knowledge. The novel presents a moving story, and Nova becomes a character we can all champion as she experiences the disadvantages and finally the benefits of the foster system. Readers will learn a lot about space and the space program, but they will also learn how many times and ways people are judged on assumptions.

In 2018 the CDC determined that approximately 1 in 59 children is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). According to a study by Boston University, about 30 percent of people diagnosed with ASD "never learn to speak more than a few words." Also, on any given day, there are nearly 428,000 children in foster care in the United States. Today’s children are dealing with multiple challenges, and many are in our classrooms. And this is why novels, such as this debut novel, belong in our school and classroom libraries.

Note: Including this novel in a unit of book clubs about Death or Surviving Loss may serve as a spoiler for readers.

Polisner, Gae. The Summer of Letting Go
Magic—“the power of apparently influencing events by using mysterious or supernatural forces” (Oxford Dictionary). Many believe that magic, or fate, appears when needed. And this wonderful well-written novel hopefully will appear when needed by an adolescent.

Francesca’s (Frankie) younger brother Simon drowned four years earlier while at the beach with his parents and sister. At the time, eleven year-old Francesca was watching him, and she has felt guilty ever since. Guilt weighs heavy on a child, and Francesca hurts and desires more than a fifteen-year-old can handle.

Then she meets a little boy with her same name, Frankie, who looks like Simon and was born the day Simon drowned. Did Simon’s soul transmigrate to Frankie? Can Francesca make up for the tragedy of four years ago by taking care of, and loving, Frankie. As she helps Frankie, Francesca also helps his mother, a recent widow, and her own mother, who is stuck in grief, and is able to heal and move on.

I am probably stretching, but the novel reminds me of a Cinderella tale (and I have read about 70 cultural variants in my research). In all the Cinderella tales, the motifs stay the same: the mother dies [here Francesca's mother doesn't die, but she is no longer emotionally available to the family]; the father is ineffective; there is an uncaring figure [in this case, again the real mother who is no longer able to show love]; there is an agent of magic who represents the dead mother—in the novel the neighbor who has been taking the place of her mother; the Cinderella figure is faced with, and passes, a test, and [spoiler alert] she ends up with the prince. But most importantly there is magic—or, in this case, is it coincidence? Whichever it is, it works and Francesca is able to reclaim her life. “Not even the ocean can drown our souls”—Gae Polisner.

Children take on guilt all the time—for parents’ divorce, for events happening, and this guilt can stay with them into adulthood. But I would imagine that no guilt is as strong as thinking they have caused the death of a sibling, no matter how young they were at the time.

Reynolds, Jason. Long Way Down
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote "Poetry: The best words in the best order."

This new novel by Jason Reynolds, his first verse novel, proves that maybe more than any verse novel I have read. I have read quite a lot of verse novels and have read many great, lyrical verse with very effective line breaks. But in this novel, every single word, punctuation, and spacing counts. It is a perfect novel for reluctant readers because, even though the words are simple to read, the story generates inference, prediction, making connections re-reading, and employs all the reading strategies necessary to a good reader.

Fifteen-year-old Will is grieving the death of his brother who was killed in the streets. But he has learned the rules: “Don’t cry. Don’t snitch. And always get revenge.” As he takes his apartment building elevator down to the lobby, determined to murder the person he is almost sure is responsible for his brother’s murder, he meets the ghosts of others who are connected to his brother and have experienced death through street violence.

Long Way Down also brings up ideas of loss and retaliation and where, or if, we can break the chain of violence and who makes that decision for us. This novel takes the reader a long way down—in the space of a minute.

Ribay, Randy. Patron Saints of Nothing
“There was a time I thought getting older meant you’d understand more about the world, but it turns out the exact opposite is true.” (296)

Jason Reguero has his life planned out, at least as much as any typical 17-year-old. He will finish his senior year, play video games with his best friend Seth, attend Michigan in the Fall, graduate, and get a job, even though he has no idea what he wants to do and has not found anything that has awakened a passion .

In fact, Jay seems somewhat adrift until he receives the news that his seventeen-year-old cousin, Jun, was killed in the Philippines by government officials under President Duterte’s war on drugs, accused of being a drug addict and pusher. Jun’s father, as head of the police force, refuses a funeral or any type of memorial.

The last time Jay saw Jun was when his family, whose family had moved to the U.S. so the three siblings could be more “American” like their mother, was when they were ten and were like brothers. They had written back and forth until Jay got caught up in his own life and stopped answering Jun’s letters. Jun, questioning the political regime and the church, had moved from his restrictive father’s house and was thought to be living on the streets. Feeling guilty for having abandoned his cousin, Jay uses his Spring Break to fly to the Philippines to investigate Jun’s death, the reason he was really killed, and why no one—other than his sisters, Grace and Angel—mourns his death.

Jay is introduced to Grace’s friend Mia, a student reporter, and together they investigate Jun’s last few years. They find that Jun’s story is not that simple. “I was so close to feeling like I had Jun’s story nailed down. But no. That’s not how stories work, is it?. They are shifting things that re-form with each new telling, transform with each new teller. Less a solid, and more a liquid talking the shape of its container.” (281)

In this coming-of-age novel, Jay finds some answers, and some more questions, challenging his preconceptions. But he also begins discovering his Filipino heritage and his identity as a Filipino-American. He finds a passion which determines his future—at least for now.

“We all have the same intense ability to love running through us. It wasn’t only Jun. But for some reason, so many of us don’t use it like he did. We keep it hidden. We bury it until it becomes an underground river. We barely remember it’s there. Until it’s too far down to tap.” (265)

This is a YA novel for mature readers about identity, family, heritage, and truth. Readers will also learn quite a lot about Filipino history and contemporary politics.

Loss of a Friend or Classmate(s)

Connor, Leslie. The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle
When I began reading The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle, I wondered if I would be as captivated by Mason as I was with another Connor character, Perry T. Cook (All Rise for the Honorable Perry T Cook). Perry and Mason have a lot in common; they are both loyal, resilient, glass-half-full guys who persevere through challenging experiences.

Mason has faced a variety of challenges. He is the largest kid in his grade, sweats uncontrollably, has trouble reading and writing; he lives with his grandmother and uncle in a house he refers to as the “crumbledown”—and Shayleen moves in and takes over his bedroom.

Mason has suffered more than his share of losses—he had a walkaway daddy, his grandfather and mother died, and, along with most of the town, Mason is still mourning his very best friend who fell from the ladder of their tree house and died. And there are two bullies who are always after him.

What Mason does have, beside an indomitable spirit, are a compassionate school social worker, a new best friend who is as loyal as Mason, a neighbor’s dog who loves him, and a supportive family. However, what Mason doesn’t realize is that Benny died under mysterious circumstances and some people, including the lieutenant who questions him incessantly and Benny’s two fathers, think Mason may be to blame. As Calvin and Mason create their own hideaway and battle bullies, Mason inadvertently solves the crime, but he still is never one to think badly of anyone, “My heart feels scrambled” (p. 320). The truth as told by Mason Buttle is the truth.

The reader will fall in love with Mason, and even though he may begin the story wearing a T-shirt that proclaims him as “STOOPID,” he ends with the revelation that “Knowing what you love is smart.”

One thing I love about this book is that each of the characters is so well-developed, even the minor characters. With very short chapters and a wealth of diverse characters, this novel would be a good teacher read-aloud or a book club selection for the more-reluctant readers.

Haydu, Corey Ann. The Someday Suitcase
Friend. We use this word casually. Almost everyone we meet and like is identified as a “friend.” We have Facebook Friends we have never met. And it seems young teens have a new BFF every week. But in The Someday Suitcase, readers meet true best friends.

When Clover learns the word “symbiosis” in science, her favorite class [“It refers to a relationship where two organisms or creatures are benefitting from each other and surviving together.…They’re dependent on each other” (7)], she has found a word that perfectly described her friendship with Danny. Sometimes they form two halves of a whole; sometimes they are exactly the same. Clover is practical; Danny is fun. Her favorite subjects are science and math; he is better at English and social studies. When they close their eyes and play statute, they make the exact same shape. Every time. The two fifth-graders have “the world’s closest best friendship.” (2)

When Clover learns the word “symbiosis” in science, her favorite class [“It refers to a relationship where two organisms or creatures are benefitting from each other and surviving together.…They’re dependent on each other” (7)], she has found a word that perfectly described her friendship with Danny. Sometimes they form two halves of a whole; sometimes they are exactly the same. Clover is practical; Danny is fun. Her favorite subjects are science and math; he is better at English and social studies. When they close their eyes and play statute, they make the exact same shape. Every time. The two fifth-graders have “the world’s closest best friendship.” (2)

When Danny gets sick, really sick, Clover decides “I am going to make my science fair project all about Danny.” (54) She will use science to find out what is wrong with him, something the doctors don’t seem able to do. All they know is that when he is with Clover, he feels better. “Maybe this is who I’m meant to be—a person who makes other people feel better.” (150)

Living in Florida, the two friends have always wanted to see snow; Clover’s father, a truck driver, brings her snow globes from each trip. When Danny’s mysterious illness worsens, they buy a someday suitcase. “It’s for when we go to the snow.” (114)

With Danny missing so much school, Clover, although feeling guilty, begins to make friends of her own, and the mother of one of her new friends explains that with science, there is also “room for faith and religion.” (174). When Clover and Danny set their sights on a clinic in Vermont where they think Danny can be cured (and where they can finally see snow), they experience the magic of their friendship: “Until it’s proven false, anything is possible. Even magic.” (209)
This is a sweet, heartbreaking story about friendship, “a magical friendship…. Love with a twist.” (263)

Jackson, Tiffany D. Monday’s Not Coming
‘Without Monday by my side, I was jumping alone in shark-infested waters…” (10) Claudia sees Monday as her best friend, her sister, her soul-mate. But Monday isn’t there when Claudia returns from her summer visit to Georgia; she’s not there the first day of school, the first week, the first month, and no one else seems to be looking for her but Claudia. She gets evasive, conflicting answers from Monday’s mother, her sister April, and the adults at her school, and the police. Even her parents vacillate between helping her and forbidding her from visiting the dangerous complex where Monday lives.

How will she navigate the school bullies and hide her dyslexia so that she can apply to the top DC high school with Monday without Monday to stand up for her and fix her homework? Who will prepare her for her first dance solo? Who will help her navigate her first romance?

Well-crafted, the timeline fluctuates so that the reader learns the story in bits and pieces, appreciating this format at the end. Part mystery, part the story of responsibility for others, this is a story of constant friendship and persistent loyalty, as well as a story about grief.*

*Note: Including this novel in a unit of book clubs about Death or Surviving Loss may serve as a spoiler for readers.

Lerner, Sarah, ed. Parkland Speaks
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.

Polisner, Gae and Baskin, Nora Raleigh. Seven Clues to Home
“But something else is pulling at me, knocking around in my insides, starting out like a whisper, like a song I sang all the time, but now I forget the words.

‘Remember?’

‘Do you remember those times I was happy?’
‘I do.’” (146)

Joy and Lukas met in second grade when, celebrating summer birthdays, they discovered their August birthdays were only two days apart. And they became best friends for the next five years. They even knew they would always be best friends, “Keepers of Secrets, Wizards of Clues, Growers of Gardens, King and Queen of Summer Birthdays, Holders of Hearts” (193)

But “there are some moments that change everything…” (157)

When Lukas dies on Joy’s twelfth birthday, she lives through a year of pain and grief. On her thirteenth birthday, she decides to follow the clues that, as was their tradition, Lukas had left for her birthday the previous year.

This captivating novel which grabbed my heart and squeezed it, as I wanted to keep reading but couldn’t face finishing and leaving these lovable characters, is written in alternating chapters narrated by Joy and Lukas.

Readers follow Lukas though the day before Joy’s 12th birthday as he hides the clues leading to her present and wrestles with giving her the heart necklace that will declare his new feelings, fearful that she will not feel the same. Readers shadow Joy on her 13th birthday as she escapes the house and follows the clues around town. “I don’t think I’ve been on my own, unaccounted for, this long in my whole life. But it feels good. Kind of like being let out after being hidden away—even if I did the hiding myself—like the sky clearing, and the air smells so fresh.” (133)

We experience the depth of their friendship through memories and their commitment to the birthday clues. We also meet the family and townspeople who care about them.

There are moments that change everything and books that change everything. Seven Clues will be that book for many readers, especially those experiencing loss.

Parent Abandonment/Neglect

Atkinson, Mary. Tillie Heart and Soul

I grew up in a small town where everyone I knew had a “typical” family—mom, dad, siblings, maybe a pet and a station wagon, or at least I assumed they did. When I began teaching, I found that very few of my students were part of a ”typical” family, that families came in all varieties, but many of those kids longed for that family from The Donna Reed Show or The Brady Bunch

Ten-year-old Tillie lives with her uncle, an artist living in a loft with other artists. She doesn’t know who her dad is, and her mother is in rehab in another state. Even though she looks nightly at the three pictures she has of her mom and talks to her in her mind, Tillie seems okay with living with her loving, gay uncle, hoping for the day her mom is well enough to return, working on her roller skating, and being teased at school for her small stature. That is until Glory comes to their school. It isn’t Glory herself but her family and fancy bedroom that causes Tillie to doubt her uncle and their life together and tell her first lie. Then her BFF Shanelle drops Tillie and shares her secrets to get Glory’s attention and friendship, and Tillie feels even more alone, and she starts to wonder if she has been too much trouble for the people she loves. “Why can’t I have a mother like everyone else? What’s wrong with me?”

This is a little novel for those young adolescents who feel different (and who doesn’t at that age?) or who have lost someone through divorce, death, addiction, and are trying to navigate the shifting social relationships of the middle grades and that which we call our families.

Hackl, Jo Watson. Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe
According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 9.8 million Americans aged 18 or older, or 4.2% of the adult population, are living with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depressive disorder. Two-thirds of females and one-half of men afflicted with serious mental illnesses are likely to be parents.
“Turns out, it’s easier than you might think to sneak out of town smuggling a live cricket, three pocketsful of jerky, and two bags of half-paid-for merchandise from Thelma’s Cash ‘n’ Carry grocery store. The hard part was getting up the guts to go.” (1)

As the story begins, Ariana “Cricket” Overland's father and grandmother have died, her mother has left, and she is living with her Aunt Belinda who is secretly planning to pawn her off on Great-Aunt Genevieve. Her mother, a creative artist, has struggled between depression and wild adventures for years and is obsessed with a Bird Room she once saw, a room where “Everything was alive.” Cricket is sure that her mother will return to lay her grandmother’s headstone and, having said she wished her mother could “just be normal” (106) the night before she took off, Cricket wants to find the Bird Room and prove that her mother is not crazy and maybe find a treasure using clues hidden by the mysterious Mr. Bob. “I couldn’t stop Mama from leaving, and I couldn’t stop Daddy from dying, but I could sure do something now. (11)

When Aunt Belinda abandons her in Thelma’s Cash ‘n’ Carry, Cricket takes her pet cricket, spends all her money on supplies and food, writing an IOU for what she can’t afford, and takes off for Woods Time, as her father would say. Living in a tree house and following her father’s guidelines for survival, she survives raccoons stealing most of her food and supplies and an ice storm, and explores the ghost town, torn down and abandoned by a lumber company, until clues—and a snake bite—lead her to Miss V, the one person whose house still exists, a woman who helps Cricket discover that not only her mother, but she, “contains multitudes.” “I thought about what Miss V had said about Mama being more than what the neighbors thought…. And it wasn’t who I was, either. I was my own, whole person.…Maybe it was time to start taking chances on me.” (203)

Ariana Overland is an adolescent a reader wants to champion. I found myself cheering her on throughout the book. She joins the ranks of literary strong girls as the resourceful and resilient hero of an adventure story about family and identity written by a new author with an incredible voice.

Hunt, Lynda Mullaly. Shouting at the Rain
Just like Ally (Fish in a Tree) and Carley (One for the Murphys), Lynda Mullaly Hunt has created a third character who will live in readers’ hearts—Delsie who is always barefooted and lives by the news from her weather station.

Delsie was raised by her game-show-watching Grammy and grandfather, Papa Joseph, since her mother deserted her shortly after birth. None of them ever knew who her father is. However, Delsie never thought of herself as an orphan until the complicated summer which began when her friend, playing the role of Annie, asks her, “What’s it like…really like…to be an orphan.” (2)

Delsie lives on Cape Cod, summer home to tourists, where Grammy cleans guest cottages and they live in a tiny community of four houses where everyone is each other’s family and support system. Papa Joseph has died, and they all miss him and try to fill his space.

The summer before seventh grade is a rollercoaster for Delsie. Her summer best friend, Brandy, is changing; she worries about getting messy and befriends the new girl Tressa, a classic Mean Girl.

Luckily, Ronan moves in with his father; he stands up to the Mean Girls on Delsie’s behalf, and he and Delsie become friends, sharing feelings of abandonment by their mothers and, therefore, being broken. Delsie realizes that while she feels like she has to lie to become friends with the girls (“I remember pretending to know things and like things I didn’t just because I wanted them to like me.”), with Ronan, “I don’t have to lie about who I am.” (99) As family friend Esme tells Delsie, “…anything that matters in this whole…wide…world is about connection.” (83) What begins as a summer of abandonments becomes a summer of connections.

At the end of the summer, Delsie realizes two things: that people, such as the sour adult neighbor Olive, may have their own problems but also may be more caring then others realize or expect (“…instead of just a plain scoop of cold ice cream, a scoop with some chocolate chips hidden inside.”) (180) and that “Knowing that I have real friends that have my back and will protect my feelings—people like Aimee, Michael, and Ronan—makes all the difference.” (240) This pivotal summer Delsie learns a lot about her neighbors, about family, and about support and love.

Reading the novel was also a rollercoaster for me. I was sad about Delsie’s history, mad at how she was being treated by Brandy and Tressa, and glad that she was able to recognize her true friends and revise her definition of family. I know that adolescents reading this book will identify with some parts of Delsie’s and Ronan’s lives and possibly those who don’t will see themselves reflected in Brandy or Tressa and gain empathy and understanding.

Jacobson, Jennifer Richard. Small as an Elephant
According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 9.8 million Americans aged 18 or older, or 4.2% of the adult population, are living with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depressive disorder. Other mental illnesses that may affect parenting and child welfare include obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, psychotic, panic, and posttraumatic stress disorders. Because two-thirds of females and one-half of men afflicted with serious mental illnesses are likely to be parents, "There's a significant number of individuals with some level of emotional distress who are raising children," says Joanne Nicholson, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center in The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth University.

Jack’s mother frequently spins out of control. Sometimes she is sad, sometimes she is normal and sorry about her behaviors, but more often she is “spinning”—loud and excited and full of fun, usually inappropriate. She takes Jack out of school to go to amusement parks and makes up games, but she also fights with her mother and takes away Jack’s trust of his grandmother, and Jack wishes his mother would take her medication more regularly.

On a camping trip in Maine, she leaves Jack and disappears. It is up to this 11-year-old boy to find his way back to Massachusetts and, hopefully, his mother. Obsessed with elephants, Jack steals a toy elephant which becomes his good luck charm and battles weather, a broken finger, hunger, fatigue, and evading the police once he is listed as missing, before he learns to trust a new friend who takes him to Lydia, the elephant, and to his grandmother who will help make his life safe and filled with love. Part adventure, part confronting challenges and accepting help, this novel and its resilient character will appeal to many and raise empathy for what too many children face.

The three Jacobson novels I have read and reviewed in the past year should be read by not only adolescents but by their teachers and parents because they focus on issues that too many of our children face: Paper Things on homelessness; The Dollar Kids on loss and poverty; and Small as an Elephant on children affected by a parent’s mental illness and by child abandonment.

Magoon, Kekla. The Season of Styx Malone
I continually watch for good novel openings, to show readers how authors can grab attention.

“Styx Malone didn’t believe in miracles, but he was one. Until he came along, there was nothing very special about life in Sutton, Indiana.” (1) The first page just keeps getting better until the last line seals the deal—“It all started the moment I broke the cardinal rule of the Franklin household: Leave well enough alone.” (1)

Ten-year-old narrator Caleb Fanklin and his eleven year old brother Bobby Gene live in a small town, and their father does not allow them to venture out from where everyone knows them and they are “safe.” Caleb’s goal is to get to the museum in Indy. And to be extraordinary, not “extra-ordinary” as he thinks his father is calling him.

Then the brothers meet a mysterious sixteen-year-old name Styx Malone, Yes, as in Greek mythology, where the River Styx separated the world of the living from the world of the dead. Malone may not be their transport from the dead to the living but it sure seems so. Styx is free from parental restraints and always has a plan that becomes bigger and better. “The moment felt like Saturday, like summer heat, like adventure…. It felt like the soft swish of corn tassels and being one step closer to an impossible dream… One step closer to our happy ending.’” (116)

As the boys become more and more involved with Styx, providing the friendship it appears he is missing in his life, they learn that he is a foster child who has moved from home to home, family to family, and his life may not be as glamorous as it seems. “’Only person you can ever count on is yourself.’…There were lots of people I could count on…. But I got what Styx was saying: Freedom came with a price.” (154)

Many things changed the season Styx Malone “shook [their] world.” That summer did make a difference—to Styx himself and to expanding the world of the Franklins.

There were many interesting, delightful characters, including Cory Cromier, the eleven-year-old bully who loves babies and becomes a Franklin brothers’ ally, and Pixie, Styx’s magical ten-year-old foster sister. This book, with its short chapters, each ending with seductive lines, and prospective discussions of morality, ethics, responsibility, friendship, and family, would make a good read aloud for grades 5-9.

Perkins, Mitali. Forward Me Back to You
When 16-year-old Katina is assaulted in the stairwell by the popular star basketball player, her jujitsu skills let her defend herself. But when she reports the attack, it is she who is made so uncomfortable she has to leave school. Her confidence shattered, she wonders if she will ever be able to trust men again.

Robin was born in Kolkata, abandoned by his mother, and adopted by loving, wealthy, supportive American parents at age 3, but he has never stopped thinking about his first mother and his life seems to have no direction.

When Pastor Gregory takes Robin, Katina, and Gracie from Boston to Kolkata to work with female human trafficking survivors, with the help of her new support system and some of the young survivors themselves, Katina learns to trust again; Robin, now Ravi, finds purpose in his life; and Gracie, who was the major support system for both of them, finally gets Ravi to realize his love for her.

Told through very short chapters that alternate between Kat and Robin and simply written, Mitali Perkins’ novel would be valuable read that is accessible to, and appropriate for, all adolescent readers.

Reading in Book Clubs

Books, such as these, which present sensitive issues and challenges that readers may themselves be facing, especially benefit from being read in small collaborative groups—book clubs. Book clubs can offer books on a variety of subtopics and written in diverse formats that may interest or connect to a range of readers and written at different reading levels, providing differentiation for readers.

In small groups readers more readily participate in discussions, especially when discussion techniques are taught as a book club skill. Book club participants of all ages have reflected that some advantages of book clubs are that are supportive and allow for deeper discussion with more participation and the sharing of multiple perspectives.

A unit can be designed to examine, through novels, the effect of a death from different circumstances on adolescents who had divergent relationships with the deceased. The unit could also analyze and compare differing genres in which novels about death are written—i.e., prose, verse, and graphic novels as well as novels written from differing points of view. Besides all the obvious advantages of book clubs, these books on different subtopics and reading levels and types of writing allow for more reader choice.

As an alternative, educators could choose one subtopic (Loss of a Parent, Loss of a Sibling, Loss of a Friend), for each of their classes, and readers would choose from 5-6 books in that category to form book clubs.

The class could be divided into five or six book clubs after students review 5-6 choices and each choose a book at their comfort reading level and in which they are interested. Each choice will generate conversations on disparate topics, focusing on assorted literary elements, and at a variety of cognitive levels, inducing students to read critically and converse meaningfully. At times individual members of book clubs could meet with members of other book clubs in inter-club meetings to compare and contrast their novels, how the authors wrote about death, and how their characters handled loss and grief.

Planning, organizing, facilitating, and assessing book clubs, as well as teaching readers to write their reflections while reading to increase comprehension; how to plan and hold meaningful, respectful discussions; and ways to present their novels after reading to the class as text synthesis are outlined—with student examples—in Talking Texts: A Teachers’ Guide to Book Clubs Across the Curriculum.

A middle school and high school teacher for twenty years, Lesley Roessing was the 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. 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. She 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
- Queer Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the English Language Arts Curriculum
- Story Frames, an upcoming book on teaching writing

75 MG/YA Stories of Surviving Loss & Abandonment

Death of Parent(s) and Grandparent(s):
Abbott, Tony. Junk Boy
Acevedo, Elizabeth. Clap When You Land
Alexander, Kwame. The Crossover
Alexander, Kwame. Rebound
Baptist, Kelly J. Isaiah Dunn is My Hero *
Bryant, Jen. Pieces of Georgia
Buxbaum, Julie. Hope and Other Punch Lines
Connor, Leslie. A Home for Goddesses and Dogs *
Erskine, Katheryn. Seeing Red *
Erskine, Kathryn. Quaking
Gemeinhart, Dan. The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise *
Gephart, Donna. In Your Shoes *
Henkes, Kevin. Sweeping Up the Heart *
LaCour, Nina. We Are Okay.
Lowitz, Leza. Up from the Sea *
Lyga, Barry. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl
Maynard, Joyce. The Usual Rules *
Padian, Maria. How to Build a Heart
Polisner, Gae. In Sight of Stars *
Quick, Matthew. Boy 21
Reynolds, Jason. The Boy in the Black Suit
Roe, Robin. A List of Cages
Sloan, Holly. Counting by 7’s
Schwartz, Elly. Give & Take *
Thomas, Angie. On the Come Up
Woodson, Jacqueline. Locomotion
Woodson, Jacqueline. Miracle’s Boys
Death of Sibling(s):
Abbott, Tony. Denis Ever After *
Appelt, Kathi, Maybe a Fox
Dooley, Sarah. Free Verse
Erskine, Katheryn. Mockingbird
Knowles, Jo. See You at Harry’s
Koertge, Ron. Coaltown Jesus
Leaver, Trisha. The Secrets We Keep
Lyga, Barry. Bang *
Mills, Wendy. All We Have Left
Moore, David Barclay. The Stars Beneath Our Feet
Niven, Jennifer. All the Bright Places
Panteleakos, Nicole. Planet Earth is Blue *
Polisner, Gae. The Summer of Letting Go *
Reynolds, Jason. Long Way Down *
Ribay, Randy. Patron Saints of Nothing (cousin) *
Sanchez, Erika L. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter
Death of Friend(s) and Classmates:
Anderson, Laurie Halse. Wintergirls
Benjamin, Ali. The Thing about Jellyfish
Connor, Leslie. The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle *
Fields, Terri. After the Death of Anna Gonzales
Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars
Haydu, Corey Ann. The Someday Suitcase *
Jackson, Tiffany D. Monday’s Not Coming *
Jacobson, Jennifer Richard. The Dollar Kids
Lerner, Sarah, ed. Parkland Speaks *
Magoon, Kekla. How It All Went Down
Paterson, Katherine. Bridge to Terabithia
Polisner, Gae and Baskin, Nora Raleigh. Seven Clues to Home *
Silvera. Adam. They Both Die at the End
Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give
Woodson, Jacqueline. Behind You
Parent Abandonment/Neglect:
Atkinson, Mary. Tillie Heart and Soul *
Benway, Robin. Far from the Tree
Burg, Ann E. All the Broken Pieces
Bryant, Jen. Kaleidoscope Eyes
Creech, Sharon. Walk Two Moons
Crossan, Sarah. The Weight of Water
Crossan, Sarah. Apple and Rain
Hackl, Jo Watson. Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe *
Hunt, Lynda Mullaly. One for the Murphys
Hunt, Lynda Mullaly. Shouting at the Rain *
Jacobson, Jennifer Richard. Small as an Elephant *
LaMarche, Una – Don’t Fail Me Now
Lenz, Niki. Bernice Buttman: Model Citizen
Magoon, Kekla. The Season of Styx Malone *
Perkins, Mitali. Forward Me Back to You *
Sarno, Melissa. A Swirl of Ocean
Zarr, Sara. Gem & Dixie

* books reviewed in this blog

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“Approaches to Teaching an Online YA Course: Spending a Month with the Printz Award Winners” by Ashley Black

7/15/2020

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I am away on vacation. i appreciate the help from Ashley Black this week. I love her topic and you just can't go wrong with any of these books.

“Approaches to Teaching an Online YA Course: Spending a Month with the Printz Award Winners”

Despite the number of times I have taught my university’s Young Adult Literature course, I find myself struggling to narrow down the reading list as there are just too many YA books I want to introduce to my students, most of which are teacher candidates in elementary, middle, or secondary education programs. In past iterations of the course, I have tried to ensure the reading list meets an amalgum of criteria: (1) published over an expanse of time, (2) represent a diverse group of authors, (3) contain YA protagonists whose identities are multifaceted, diverse, and complex, (4) composed in a variety of genres, and (5) can be used for instruction in middle or secondary classrooms. I thoroughly enjoy the task of piecing together a text set that meets these criteria, but for a four-week online YAL course in the summer, this challenge becomes even more daunting. How do I choose eight books (the amount I typically assign for a four-week course) that can do all these things? So, I decided to try something different this term. We are reading the last eight winners of the Michael L. Printz Award Winners from least recently published to most recently published:

Acevedo, Elizabeth. (2018). The poet x. New York: Harper Teen.
King, A.S. (2019). Dig. New York: Dutton.
LaCour, Nina. (2017). We are okay. New York: Dutton.
Lake, Nick. (2012). In darkness. New York: Bloomsbury.
Lewis, John, et. al. (2016). March: Book three. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf.
Nelson, Jandy. (2014). I’ll give you the sun. New York: Dial.
Ruby, Laura. (2015). Bone gap. New York: Balzer + Bray.
Sedgwick, Marcus. (2013). Midwinterblood. New York: Square Fish.

Instead of reading each reading through a lens that I have already selected, my students are approaching this set to determine what makes these books worthy of the Printz Award, what literary lens we might use to unpack them, and how the texts help us understand ourselves and the world around us in more critical ways. To accomplish these goals, students are participating in either online threaded discussions or Zoom discussion sessions on each book in addition to writing their own book reviews in which I ask them to reflect on the readings using the goals listed above.

We are entering the half-way point in our class right now, and students have begun to notice several common threads among the award winners. The first half of our reading (In Darkness, Midwinterblood, I’ll Give You the Sun, and Bone Gap) are all told through alternating narratives from various characters and/or through different points in time. Students began to posit why this specific narrative structure resonates so much with YA authors and readers alike, and they explored how this type of structure supports the idea that adolescent readers, who are in the midst of expanding their worldview, need support in interrogating events from multiple points-of-view and in drawing cause and effect conclusions.

Another similarity among the first four books on our reading list resides in human connection, whether the narratives are told by twins or two characters connected by space and time. These connections are ones of love and sacrifice; of betrayal, separation, and reunion; of the fight against injustice; and of acknowledging what unites us all. Through our discussions, these are some guiding questions that have begun emerging: (1) In what ways is love coupled with sacrifice? (2) How do we confront cultural and societal systems of oppression that are rooted in the fabric of a place’s history? And (3) How do we find the courage to acknowledge and accept truth?

While we still have the second half of the readings to tackle, I have enjoyed approaching this particular class through an inductive process, letting the texts speak for themselves and giving students the space to explore what these texts have to offer readers. I look forward to discussing the award-winning qualities of these books with my students and to help students develop a rational for why YAL is relevant, potent, and necessary, not just for adolescents but for all.
Below, I’ve provided a little introduction to each text with a link to the authors’ Twitter pages. Happy reading!

In Darkness by Nick Lake

Told through two alternating narratives across centuries, In Darkness offers readers a glimpse into Haiti during two poignant moments in time: the 2011 earthquake and the struggle for an end to slavery. In 2011, Shorty finds himself buried beneath the rubble of a hospital after the earthquake and tells his life story asking readers to reserve judgement until we learn everything about how Shorty has ended up in this particular situation. The other narrative is told by Toussaint Louveture in his leadership during the Haitian Revolution. While these two narratives are centuries apart, Shorty and Toussaint reach through time to find themselves connected amongst the most impossible of circumstances.

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

Blessed Island is a seemingly welcoming and beautiful island, but its mysterious nature baffles all who visit. Told in seven separate yet interconnected stories spanning centuries, readers begin their journey to Blessed Island with Eric Seven, a journalist on his way to discover the mysteries of the island. Not much is known about the island to outsiders, such as why its inhabitants tend to live for very long amounts of time or why the dragon iris only survives here. However, Eric soon discovers he is connected to this island in more ways than he ever imagined.

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

In I’ll Give You the Sun, twin siblings Jude and Noah are both interested in art and attending a private arts school. Their mother is an art critic who supports her children’s love of art, but she seemingly sees greater talent in Noah. This perceived favoritism of Noah’s art only complicates his relationship with his sister, Jude, and becomes complicated further still at the death of their mother. In alternating narratives from Jude and Noah at different points in time, I’ll Give You the Sun leaves readers guessing every step of the way.

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

The mysterious nature of the community of Bone Gap serves as the perfect setting of this award-winning book. Told through alternative narratives from Finn, a teenager who is the target of loathing from his community, and Roza, a beautiful young woman who mysteriously disappears from Bone Gap. While Finn saw her being captured, the police and everyone else in Bone Gap refuses to believe his account of her abduction and disappearance, and while everyone else seems to have moved on, Finn cannot stop searching for the mysterious man who took the lovely Roza.

March: Book Three by John Lewis, et. al

John Lewis recounts his experience during the Civil Rights Movement and the Selma March in this graphic memoir. As part of a trilogy, the third installment in the March series leads right up to the pivotal moments in planning for peaceful sit-ins and marches in Selma, Alabama while confronting the systemic racism of Mississippi and the nation at large. Readers will also begin to explore the delicate balance Lewis and his peers enacted as they drew people together for a common cause as well as their interactions with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X.

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

A beautiful and devastatingly real look at grief, We Are Okay’s story is told by Marin, who has fled her life after the death of her grandfather for reasons no one knows, not even her best friend, Mabel. Marin begins her freshman year of college in New York with no friends, no clothes, and no support system. At the end of her first semester, Mabel is traveling to visit Marin and to try and uncover what went wrong and why Marin has shut everyone out of her life. We Are Okay is an honest, realistic look at how adolescents, and adults alike, process grief when confronted with the truth of our loved ones’ pasts.

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Told through narrative verse, Xiomara experiences what many young women face as they experience physical development: being too seen by others around them. While Xiomara is noticed for her changing body, she does not feel heard by others, even her own family, but she begins to find her voice through poetry and a poetry slam club at her Harlem school. She navigates what it means to be a young woman and an individual within a family culture in which she herself does not feel comfortable. The Poet X shows readers the utter power of poetry and how adolescents like Xiomara can learn to find their voices, if we only stop and listen.

Dig. by A.S. King

Part mystery and part surreal, Dig. tells the tale of five cousins from a family of potato farmers. Each cousin narrates alternating chapters, yet the five narratives seems to be disjointed for much of the text. That is, it is disjointed until he five find one another and begin piecing together how their own stories overlap into a deeply disturbing family history. Readers begin to explore how the Hemmings family’s entrapments in deeply rooted racism has unraveled the former standing and respectability of the family, and readers quickly learn their secrets go as deep as the potatoes they farm and harvest.

Dr. Ashley D. Black is an Assistant Professor of English Education and Assistant Chair to the Department of Language, Literature, and Writing at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, MO.

Until next week.

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Mental Health and Healing Through the Novels of A.S. King by Bird Cramer

7/8/2020

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I am so glad that Bird Cramer decided to contribute to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. I am especially happy that she has decided to focus on A.S. King. I have admired King's work for a long time. I think she is a remarkable writer. Over the years, I have selected several of King's books as weekend picks and have written briefly about her work. Bird provides an excellent overview of her work with a strong rationale for the value of King's books in our classrooms and in the lives of adolescents.

I claim that not only is A.S. King one of the best writers of YA fiction, she is one of the best living writers--period. When I read the first two pages of Dig. at an ALAN breakfast a couple of years ago and before it was spread around, I had to stop. I knew I was reading a masterpiece. I read a lot of fiction, both YA and adult and I can think of just a few authors whose books that just stop me. In just a few occasions I find a books so remarkable that my reading is stalled. I just have to stop and admire a passage. This has happened with Anne Tyler, John Irving, Joyce Carol Oates, Lawrence Block, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, Jacqueline Woodson, and William Faulkner. As I hope you can tell, I think A.S. King is in good company, and if she keeps writing, who knows.

“Potatoes are one thing. People are another. You can’t abandon people and think they‘re going to be fine. People need things. Probably love most of all” (King, 2019, p. 208)

We are currently living in an era where radical changes can be made. So many of the inequities in our country are currently being exposed and recognized as part of the human condition, precarious or not. Whether it is racism, sexism, poverty, health care, or mental health, I can think of few other writers whose body of work encompasses these changes more than A.S. King. Nor can I think of such a prolific author who consistently takes risks, questions the status quo, and dares us to become uncomfortable so that we can grow as human beings.

While all of her novels attest to a variety of society’s problems and chart paths of hope for the readers, it is King’s honest portrayal of mental health and trauma that coalesce through the use of surrealism. King distills the essence of trauma and mental illness, de-stigmatizes it surrealistically , then reintroduces them as being an acceptable, albeit painful, part of the human condition. The teens of our lives need this message now more than ever and we, as educators and administrators, can help through providing social support and listening. Giving a student an A.S. King novel can be a non-threatening way to start a dialogue.

The world feels surreal right now and her novels welcome surrealism as a means of personal growth. King’s first published novel, Dust of 100 Dogs, features Emer Morrisey, a young girl who emerges physically unscathed after witnessing the brutal sacking of her Irish village by Oliver Cromwell. After this surreal experience, Emer begins to fend for herself only to find her gender and lack of wealth insurmountable obstacles. She bucks tradition and becomes a buccaneer. After maiming and killing thousands, she is crippled by a curse condemning her to live the lives of 100 dogs, memory intact the whole time. After her final life as a dog, Emer finds herself reincarnated and ready to reenact the violence she witnessed as a child. As soon as she’s old enough. Through switching narratives between 1650 various stages of Emer’s life, the reader is given a window into her ability to begin to process the loss of her family and the love of her life as she simultaneously travels to find her buried treasure. In the end, Emer has to choose between revenge and hope, to stay quagmired in the past or to make her peace with the events in her life that harmed her and begin to heal.

With her next novel, King begins to subtly explore trauma with surrealist elements, which won her a Printz Honor Medal as a result. Please Ignore Vera Deitz focuses around how we treat each other as friends and family, and how these choices can weigh heavily on us. Vera’s father even creates visuals for the reader on what we can do to break the cycle. Vera, our protagonist, recently lost her best friend Charlie. She self-medicates in many ways to escape the pain and also to escape trauma of his untimely death. And also to escape the multitudes of Charlies who visit her throughout the book. The themes present in Dust of 100 Dogs, ones of trying to overcome a legacy of poverty, violence, addiction and ignorance, resurface here as Vera comes to terms with Charlie’s death, the state of their friendship, and how little she knows about the people around her. These tenants remain the roots of King’s novels.

With each additional novel, King offers an unflinching and realistic portrayal of teens and their families. She does not pretend the horrors and realities that teens face every day do not exist. Instead, through her non-linear narratives and use of surrealism, she highlights the difficulties of navigating adolescence under the dark clouds of trauma and mental illness.

For many of us, there is nothing more surreal than trying to manage trauma. By acknowledging this, King creates a viable way for her characters and readers to start processing and dealing with the fallout of trauma Through her surrealist elements, whether it is Socretes making appearances in school auditoriums or characters riding in an invisible helicopter, King takes the reader in hand and walks us down a path to learn how to identify, process, and start to learn to cope, whether the trauma is intergenerational or recent. Or both as in Everybody Sees The Ants.

In Everybody Sees The Ants, King begins tackling the effects of emotional and psychological abuse on adolescents. Lucky Linderman suffers abuse at the hands of a school bully. Meanwhile, his school is more concerned that he conducted his social studies research project on teen suicide. At home, his parents are barely functioning, a result of intergenerational trauma, and he feels the weight of their neglect. The whole family is haunted by Lucky’s grandfather’s disappearance from the Vietnamese jungles. Lucky searches for solutions for this pain through his recurring dreams of rescuing his grandfather. When Lucky is assaulted by a classmate, his mother retreats to Las Vegas to buy them some time to heal. With this transition King continues her on-going commitment to examine family relationships through a trauma lens and models a parent and child identifying what went wrong in their relationships in order to move forward in a healing manner.

The month of June serves as both PTSD Awareness Month and National Pride Month. According to a 2016 survey conducted by the CDC, 1 out of 6 students nationwide (grades 9–12) seriously considered suicide in the past year. That same study found that LGBTQ+ youth seriously contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of heterosexual youth and that LGBTQ+ youth are almost five times as likely to have attempted suicide compared to heterosexual youth. While Astrid Jones of Ask The Passengers may not carry this weight on her shoulders yet, she is exploring her feelings about her female co-worker. She is also trying to figure out a way to come out to her family and friends while surfing through the waters of their microaggressions. Throughout this painful process, Astrid is full of love. Love she feels that her family and her community do not want so she lays in her backyard, watching airplanes fly by, and sends the passengers her love. Astrid’s astute realizations about her friends and family show that love, with conditions, can be disinguine. Having to deny her sense of self to please another person should not be the price a person pays for love, a lesson important for all teens. When finally shown unconditional love from her co-worker (and Socrates, who helps her ponder the meaning of life), Astrid is set free to love herself for who she truly is.

Reality Boy, King’s fifth novel, is a complex tale of dysfunction and PTSD. Through it, King asks what is reality? Who decides what is the truth, a question that is imperative in today’s political and social climate. This book critiques the fantasy of reality tv through Gerald, whose family starred in a reality show when he was five. A show that directly resulted in the fantasy of him terrorizing his family. The reality is that he was and is currently being abused by his oldest sister while the adults around him are silent, therefore willing, participants.Their gaslighting and denial create a lonely adolescent plagued with what could be classified as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, represented in the novel through by his violent outbursts, inability to make friends, and frequent dissociative episodes, which are surrealist in nature. Gerald faces a different type of conditional love than Astrid. He is living in unsafe spaces, both at school and at home, something that many students in our classrooms can instantly connect with. Hard work (physical and emotional), love, and support from other adults in his life help Gerald start to turn his life around and the book leaves the reader with a message of hope.

Published in 2014, Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, is another type of surrealist story. Glory and her best friend, on the cusp of high school graduation, drink a potion of petrified bat that instills in them the ability to see the future. That future is one of civic unrest where The United States is on the cusp of the Second Civil War. It is an America where “a government official will be quoted as saying ‘We’re taking our country back!’” (p. 128). The man who leads this battle cry calls himself Nedrick the Sanctimonious. Does a person need another reason to read this book? If so, then reading how Glory begins to sift through the pain of her childhood and adolescence to awaken to the chance of a future, is a beautiful and breathtaking journey. As the bat tells Glory “Free yourself. Have the courage” (p.304). If not, then I leave you with the thought that this story no longer feels surreal but prophetical in hindsight.

There are many experiences in life that feel surreal: the death of a sibling, surviving a rape, parental neglect, struggling with anxiety and depression. With I Crawl Through It, King weaves those three issues and more into this novel. A girl who has swallowed herself. A boy building an invisible helicopter. A girl who lies melt even easier than butter, and another, who wears a white lab coat wherever she goes. These characters are wrapped deeply in the cloak of surrealism, not to disguise them but in order to allow us to see them for who they are: the students in our classrooms and our buildings or ourselves. Throughout the book, A.S. King weaves together different national absurdities, from cavalier responses to school shootings to parental neglect and abandonment. The fact that all of these things cease to shock society into action is what is truly absurd. By pointing out this hypocrisy, King shouts to all who will read: I am still shocked! I refuse to allow this to be our new normal! I am calling the adults in your life out for their crap. Please do not believe that living like this is ok. The absurdity can slowly begin to end if the privileged acknowledge our individual roles in man’s inhumanity to man and help support a new foundation for our country.

Since I started reading A.S. King novels, I learned that people living with PTSD experience time differently than others. In Still Life With Tornado, King illustrates this through adeptly weaving multiple versions of the main character into same moment throughout in the story to illustrate that a person living with PTSD can be living in the present moment but, in next instant, be trapped inside their trauma(s), even if he or she does not actively understand what is happening,. Sarah, our 16-year-old main character, encounters her 10-year-old self on the public bus. 23-year-old Sarah joins them on the bus to help diffuse the situation. Sarah is on the bus to avoid her tormentor. She spends her weeks searching for answers, denying herself the joy of creating her art and watching a street artist create “original” ideas. She also continues to ride the bus with future versions of herself, who remind her how a current trauma can retrigger a long buried one. The more visits she receives from the different versions of herself, the more she begins to remember the unspoken trauma in her family’s past that occurred when she was ten.

It is difficult to explain the events that happen next. With the addition of multiple versions of the same character criss-crossing through the past and the present settings in the novel, it proved too much to try without charts and graphs (Ken Deitz would be so pleased). I can say that Sarah finds an adult in her life that can help her make positive decisions about her trauma experience. Bruce, her estranged brother, is a counselor. He teaches Sarah boundaries while also talking to school administration to assure her safety. He brings strength to his mother and sister and steers the family in a safer and healthier direction. The characters in Still Life discuss how the absence of violence is not love.

Dig. A.S. King’s majestic battle cry of malarkey onto the siren songs adults so frequently sing: we know what is best, we know what we are doing, we are good people. Having just garnered the Printz Gold, I wanted this post to focus on her other novels, the ones that deserve just as much attention. In her recent acceptance speech (she starts at 30:30) for The Printz Award, she traces the roots of declining mental health of adolescents as the result of “the slow decline of love in our world and who it hurts the most? That would be the children.” for “a country founded on trauma will produce more trauma”. King uses Dig. to highlight just how true that is.

Please put one of these books in the hands of your students. If a novel’s message does not reach the intended individual, A.S. King’s tireless and unrelenting campaign to educate people about mental health and trauma extends beyond her novels and into her actions as well. A quick google search will yield many examples from her tweets to her short essays. They create smaller soundbytes of hope that illustrate how she delivers on the promises of her books through the actions of her life. She dedicates time to the American Foundation For Suicide Prevention, participating in their annual Out Of Darkness Walk in honor of her friends and her daughter, Gracie. Ms. King and her family curated Gracie's List, a book list for the Book Love Foundation. Any library or classroom wanting to promote mental health awareness for students K-12 would grow in leaps and bounds by adding titles from this list. Through these actions, she shows us all how to love and how to remain hopeful in times of darkness.

For so long so many of us hid. We were quiet because we were uncomfortable or unwilling or too frightened. Personally, I do not feel that I have that luxury any more. The young people in our lives need to know that we are working on crushing the stigma behind mental health issues. They do not have to face the road to recovery alone. They will only know that if we speak up and speak out. We can provide guidance and assistance towards finding the right kind of help for the individuals in our classrooms and libraries. Most importantly, we can be quiet. And listen. And place a novel by A.S. King in their hands.

Additional Resources

The Trevor Project
GSA Network

Works Cited

CDC. (2016). Sexual identity, sex of Sexual Contacts, and health-risk behaviors among students in grades 9-12: Youth risk behavior surveillance. Atlanta, GA: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/ss/pdfs/ss6509.pdf

King, A. (2011). Everybody sees the ants. Little, Brown and Company.
King, A. (2012). Ask the passengers. Little, Brown and Company.
King, A. (2013). Reality boy. Little, Brown and Company.
King, A. (2014). Glory o’brien’s history of the future. Little, Brown and Company.
King, A. (2015). I crawl through it. Little, Brown and Company.
King, A. (2017). Still life with tornado. Penguin Books.
King, A. (2017). The dust of 100 dogs. Speak.
King, A. (2019). Dig. Dutton Books.

Until next time.

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YA Literature as Protest by Morgan Jackson

7/3/2020

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Today's guest post is provided by Morgan Jackson. She is a teacher in Las Vegas and provided the Weekend Picks for Feb. 2020. Go to this link and scroll down and to take a look. Morgan and I have only recently become acquainted, but I am already learning a great deal from her perspective. She recently presented at the UNLV 2020 online Summit and it was wonderful.

The country is in upheaval and people everywhere are trying to figure out what they can do. This is no more evident than in conversations with teachers. In a time when we’ve faced a pandemic and the whiplash of switching to some perverted version of online learning, teachers are now having to question how to address the current issues in their classroom. You have the tools at your fingertips. If you’re reading this saying “I don’t want to be political” or “The classroom isn’t the right place to be political” you are being political. Your silence is political!

The books you select, and don’t select, are political. Reading is not a passive activity. From the moment you choose a text you are making a statement. If you’re teaching To Kill a Mockingbird as a coming of age tale, but are afraid to use The Hate U Give. You’ve made a political statement. Both stories center on young girls who learn a harsh truth about their respective environments. Both stories center a Black males’ death at the hand of a white law enforcement officer. So, why is one canon and the other “controversial”? Do one of these men deserve to die? Is only one of these girls permitted to “come of age”? If Scout’s journey is worthy of the classroom, then honor Starr’s or acknowledge that your discomfort is hypocritical and based on race.

Think about what pushes you away from certain stories and how those issues appear in books you wouldn’t think twice about assigning. Consider The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. White character, Black character. Do you think twice about reading it because of its prolific use of the n-word? Do you think about the discomfort of Black students in your room who will be reading it? Is it inappropriate because of how it characterizes Black people. Chances are the answer to all of the above is “No”. Maybe you even argued that it is historically accurate and reflects the society at the time. So why then aren’t you incorporating Dear Martin into your classroom. Let me guess? It might make some students or parents uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because of the language or how cops and some white are characterized. If you’re teaching culturally insensitive texts because they’re historically correct I’ve got news for you, so are a plethora of books headlined by Black characters and written by Black authors

Let’s take this even further. Maybe you have those two books because, let’s be honest, they are brilliant and written by two incredibly talented Black women. What else do you have? And if all you can say to that is that you “love Jason Reynolds” you aren’t doing enough. That’s tantamount to “I have a Black friend.” We all know Jason is a magician when it comes to telling a story. Where are your Black joy books? Black people experience trauma, but they also experience love and anxiety. They solve mysteries and go on adventures. Have you made room for those stories? We must acknowledge the responsibility to be purposeful, active, and honest in our protests. It might mean fighting a department chair or an administrator or a conversation with a parent.

Let your curriculum choices and your in-class library say “I see you. I hear you. I stand with you” to do anything else says “I don’t want to see” or “You’re welcome here, but not anything related to who you are”. Let your text selections be part of your protest, but please don’t let that be where you stop. Consider adding Tochi Onyebuchi’s War Girls. If we’re still reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World there’s room for a futuristic science fiction book that takes place in Nigeria in 2172. Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone and its sequel Children of Virtue and Vengeance are excellent fantasy stories with deep roots. Get to know L.L. McKinney, Dohnielle Clayton, and Justina Ireland and then get to know who they read and read those people. Try Roseanne A. Brown’s A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, a fantasy story steeped in West African folklore or Bethany C. Morrow’s A Song Below Water which includes Black mermaids. Lamar Giles writes plenty of stories that are mysteries. Spin, Endangered, Fake ID, Overturned. All of them involve a main, Black character, trying to solve a mystery that is close and personal to them. Brown Girl Ghosted by Mintie Das is both fantasy and mystery. Leah Johnson’s debut You Should See Me in a Crown is straight rom-com. Justin A. Reynolds’ Opposite of Always is a romantic story in the same vein as John Green.

Our Black Lives Matter protest must include our LGBTQ students, as well. Not just those who are LGB, but also those who are trans students, non-binary, or gender non-conforming students. They are not an afterthought. They are not a separate movement. There is no monolith of the Black life. It cannot fit into one story or type of story. Your protest must include their lived experiences. For Black lives to matter and be valued in your classroom you must show them in every form. George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, Kacen Callendar’s Felix Ever After, and NoNieqa Ramos’s The Truth Is tell very different stories, but what they have in common is the honest story of a person who is lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans, or questioning.

Now is the time to say something. Say it with your words when you can, but also say it with your actions, with your purchases. Buy books that tell Black experiences, the multitudes and myriads of those experiences, from a Black author. We’ve taught problematic white guys for decades with little concern for push back, and often without even thinking about. Choose now to stop making excuses and start making choices.

If you’ve asked what you can do? This is the bare minimum. Pick books that make you uncomfortable. That discomfort is the cost of being anti-racist. It is the cost of saying you do this for the kids. It is the cost of having the impressionable minds of young people in your hands. If you can’t pay that cost consider what your silence costs your students.

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Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward by Michelle M. Falter, Chandra L. Alston, and Crystal Chen Lee

7/1/2020

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I am pleased this week to join with a host of other outlets helping to promote the work of Dr. Falter, Dr. Alston, and Dr. Lee from North Carolina State University. To be clear, this is a great resource. While I am duplicating it in Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday it is available at this link and in graphic immediately below. In fact, please to a minute to bookmark there document for future reference. I hope you will help in sharing this information.

The senseless police-initiated murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, amongst hundreds of other murders of Black women, men, and children in the United States over the past 400 years due to systemic racism and anti-blackness, has become a much-needed call to action for all. This is particularly true and needed in our schools and in our classrooms, as we look to affirm, celebrate, and advocate for all students in our classes, but especially our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students.

In his book, How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi (2019) writes, "The opposite of racist isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.' … One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist'" (p. 9). No one is born racist or antiracist; these result from the choices we make. Becoming anti-racist is different for different racial groups, but all racial groups struggle under white supremacy. For white people, being anti-racist involves acknowledging and understanding one’s privilege, working to change one’s internalized racism, and disrupting racism when one sees it. Developing antiracist identities as people of color starts with recognizing how race and racism have also been internalized. As Dr. Anneliese A. Singh says in her book The Racial Healing Handbook, (2019), “It means recognizing that people of color groups are not always united in solidarity under a larger umbrella of people of color. Misinformation, prejudice, and harm can exist between people of color groups, and these need to be confronted just as White racism must be challenged” (p. 92).

Teaching for an anti-racist future starts with educators.

This is work that is needed for all teachers and all students, whether your school has a predominantly white population or is quite diverse. We also acknowledge that this work looks different for white teachers than it does for BIPOC teachers. An anti-racist educator must actively work to dismantle the structures, policies, institutions, and systems that create barriers and perpetuate race-based inequities for people of color. But how does a middle and high school ELA teacher work towards becoming an anti-racist educator?
As current English language arts teacher educators and former middle and high school English teachers, this document represents a collaborative effort to compile a list of resources, suggestions, and recommended actions for English teachers grades 6-12 to help us all do the work we must do to support students in our schools. We acknowledge that our positionalities as a White female, a Black female, and an Asian American female influence the ways in which we have curated these resources. We also hope that our collaborative background gives breadth and diversity to the work here and inspires others to talk and work across difference. We recognize there are many perspectives and resources on becoming anti-racist teachers, and are grateful for the many scholars, teachers, and activists we list here who have theorized, analyzed, and done the anti-racist work detailed in this document. We hope you will learn from them as we have, and continue to cite and read their original works. We are listening, self-reflecting, and self-examining as we also work alongside you towards becoming anti-racist teachers ourselves through the curation of this document.
Below we offer five steps for actively moving forward towards anti-racist ELA teaching. We suggest beginning with listening and reflection. As Kendi (2019) writes, “....being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination” (p. 23).

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‌‌Listen‌ ‌&‌ ‌Reflect‌‌ ‌⟺‌ Read‌‌ ‌ ‌⟺‌ ‌‌ Interrogate‌‌ ‌⟺‌ ‌‌ Act‌‌ ‌ ⟺ ‌ ‌‌Repeat‌

STEP 1: LISTEN & REFLECT
Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want To Talk About Race, in referencing Dr. Kendi’s book notes that “[t]he beauty of anti-racism is that you don't have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it's the only way forward.” Thus each person’s starting point in becoming anti-racist is with themselves. There are a few key parts to this: positioning, listening, and reflecting.

Positioning. Often educators talk about encouraging students to take the stance of a learner. By this we generally mean being open, being engaged, being present, being thoughtful. This kind of positioning is also required in learning to be an anti-racist teacher. For example, Dr. Bettina Love in EdWeek argues that white teachers “must learn how to deal with what Cheryl E. Matias calls ‘white emotionalities’ and what Robin DiAngelo has termed ‘white fragility.’” Positioning for learning to be an anti-racist teacher requires awareness of who you are in relation to your world and an acknowledgement that we all have biases, which is the first step towards dismantling them. Howard (2003) offers these five questions to begin the work of positioning yourself below (p. 198):

How frequently and what types of interactions did I have with individuals different from my own growing up?
Who were the primary persons that helped to shape my perspectives of individuals from different groups? How were their opinions formed?
Do I currently, or have I ever harbored prejudiced thoughts toward people from different backgrounds?
If I do harbor prejudiced thoughts, what effects do such thoughts have on students who come from those backgrounds?
Do I create negative profiles of individuals who come from different racial backgrounds?

Listening. What does it mean to be an active listener? How do you actively listen? To begin, what you should not do is ask already marginalized and minoritized students in classes to speak for all Black people. What you should do is educate yourself and position yourself to hear what Black children, families, and teachers voluntarily share about these experiences as their lived truth. What they have to say may make you uncomfortable. There is often the desire to respond to these truths, these uncomfortable moments, by focusing on intention. However, taking the stance of a learner allows us to stay open, engaged. Recall, our goal is not about pretending to be free of racism, but working to become anti-racist.

There are lots of places where Black students and teachers have shared their stories concerning racism perpetuated in schools and the curriculum. You might begin with this student’s blog, teacher’s post, and this teacher’s book. Teaching Tolerance and Rethinking Schools also offer an abundance of resources for teachers and teaching.

Reflecting. After hearing these often uncomfortable truths, what should we do with this information? Dr. Maya Angelou is oft-quoted as saying, “when you know better, do better.” Therefore students’, families,’ and colleagues’ truths should encourage us to critically reflect on how racism is perpetuated and ways to fight it in schools. Often the work stops with acknowledging the hurt, sympathizing, or even empathizing with students, families, and colleagues. However, to be an anti-racist educator we must move beyond niceness and empathy. As Amy Shuman (2005) writes, “[e]mpathy offers the possibility of understanding across space and
time, but it rarely changes the circumstances of those who suffer. If it provides inspiration, it is more often for those in the privileged position of empathizer rather than empathized” (p. 5).

Instead, anti-racist teachers must work to become co-conspirators, taking risks for and working alongside Black students, families, and colleagues. To begin to equip yourselves to join in, you must learn and unlearn about racism. Thankfully, there are rich resources to support this work.
Source:
Howard, T. C. (2003). Culturally relevant pedagogy: Ingredients for critical teacher reflection. Theory into practice, 42(3), 195-202.
Shuman, Amy. (2005). Other People's Stories: Entitlement Claims and the Critique of Empathy. University of Illinois Press.

STEP 2: READ
There are many books available that discuss anti-racism, bias, or explore racism in America or our schools in a general sense. We definitely encourage you to read those books (see here, here, here and here for some lists). But, this list below is specifically for doing anti-racist work in middle and high school English language arts. These titles are listed alphabetically by topic area, but not by order of preference. We have highlighted a few books that you might want to start with. As you read, consider framing your notes around the following: a) what it says (summary), b) what it means (analysis & implications) and c) what you will do (action).

Culturally and Historically Responsive/ Social Justice Frameworks and Methods

Bridging Literacy and Equity: The Essential Guide to Social Equity Teaching by Althier M. Lazar, Patricia Ann Edwards, Gwendolyn Thompson McMillon
Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad
Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World by Django Paris & H. Samy Alim
Social Justice Literacies in the English Classroom: Teaching Practice in Action by Ashley S. Boyd
Storytelling for Social Justice: Connecting Narrative and the Arts in Antiracist Teaching by Lee Anne Bell
Race, Justice, and Activism in Literacy Instruction edited by Valerie Kinloch, Tanja Burkhard, & Carlotta Penn
Restorative Justice in the English Language Arts Classroom by Maisha T. Winn, Hannah Graham, & Rita Renjitham Alfred

Conversations and Discussion Approaches

Classroom Talk for Social Change: Critical Conversations in English Language Arts by Melissa Schieble, Amy Vetter, & Kahdeidra Monét Martin
The Power of Teacher Talk: Promoting Equity and Retention Through Student Interactions by Deborah Bieler
Writing and Language Study

Biography-Driven Culturally Responsive Teaching by Socorro G. Herrera
Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy by April Baker-Bell
Students' Right to Their Own Language: A Critical Sourcebook edited by Staci Perryman- Clark, David E. Kirkland, & Austin Jackson
Race and Writing Assessment edited by Asao B. Inoue & Mya Poe
Race, Empire, and English Language Teaching: Creating Responsible and Ethical Anti-Racist Practice by Suhanthie Motha
Talkin Black Talk: Language, Education, and Social Change edited by H. Samy Alim & John Baugh
We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom by Anne H. Charity Hudley & Christine Mallinson
Writing Instruction in the Culturally Relevant Classroom by Maisha T. Winn & Latrise Johnson

Literature Study

Beyond the Culture Tours: Studies in Teaching and Learning With Culturally Diverse Texts by Gladys Cruz, Sarah Jordan, Jose Meléndez, Steven Ostrowski, Alan Purves.
Critical Encounters in Secondary English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents (Third Edition) by Deborah Appleman
Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children's Literature: Mirrors, Windows, and Doors by Maria José Botelho, Masha Kabakow Rudman
The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas
Engaging with Multicultural YA Literature in the Secondary Classroom: Critical Approaches for Critical Educators edited by Ricki Ginsberg & Wendy J. Glenn
Letting Go of Literary Whiteness: Antiracist Literature Instruction for White Students by Carlin Borsheim-Black & Sophia Tatiana Sarigianides
Racism in Contemporary African American Children’s and Young Adult Literature by Suriyan Panlay
Was the Cat in the Hat Black?: The Hidden Racism of Children's Literature, and the Need for Diverse Books by Philip Nel

Intersections of Gender, Race, and Literacy

A Search Past Silence: The Literacy of Young Black Men by David E. Kirkland
A Walk in Their Kicks: Literacy, Identity, and the Schooling of Young Black Males by Aaron M. Johnson
Fearless Voices: Engaging a New Generation of African American Adolescent Male Writers by Alfred W. Tatum
Girl Time: Literacy, Justice, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline by Maisha T. Winn
Reading for Their Life: (Re)Building the Textual Lineages of African American Adolescent Males by Alfred W. Tatum
Reading Girls: The Lives and Literacies of Adolescents by Hadar Dubowsky Ma'ayan
Teaching Reading to Black Adolescent Males: Closing the Achievement Gap by Alfred W. Tatum
Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves edited by Glory Edim

White Anti-racist Educator Narratives

Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students (Paperback- 2nd Edition) by Gregory Michie
Holler If You Hear Me (Comic Edition) by Gregory Michie and Ryan Alexander-Tanner
"Is This English?" Race, Language, and Culture in the Classroom by Bob Fecho
"What Does Injustice Have to Do with Me?": Engaging Privileged White Students with Social Justice by David Nurenberg

STEP 3: INTERROGATE

Once you have reflected and read, it’s time to start interrogating your curriculum, teaching practices, and the texts in your classroom. Interrogation requires deep and ongoing critical questioning. As you unpack what you are currently doing, know this is not easy work. You likely will find some hidden biases you didn’t realize you had.
As a part of interrogating, we encourage you to first look at this list of qualities of anti-racist ELA curriculum compiled by NCTE’s Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English. Do a gut check. Which of these are you already doing? Why? Which of these have you not considered before? Why? Which of these makes you mad? Why? Which of these do you not understand? Why? In this section, we ask you to unpack and interrogate a few of those qualities:
1. Interrogate Your Curriculum and Instruction
Take a moment to find your course’s curriculum materials - including your scope and sequence and pacing guides, your lesson plan documents, assignments, and activities. Ask yourself, how inclusive is my course or department’s curriculum? If you had to map your curriculum using Dr. Nelson Laird’s framework below, on a continuum of exclusive (the left-hand side) to inclusive (right-hand side), where would your ELA department, your courses, or your units fall? Anti-racist curriculum and instruction must be empowering, and equity-oriented while also critical of established norms, such as the literary canon, that propagate anti-blackness.

Source: Nelson Laird, T. F. (2014). Reconsidering the inclusion of diversity in the curriculum. Diversity and Democracy, 27(4), 12-14.

Whether you have a scripted curriculum, a long-established curriculum, or you have great flexibility in determining what is included in your curriculum, it is important to closely examine what your curriculum contains and the messages it sends explicitly or implicitly. There are a variety of resources for you and your colleagues to do an equity audit with. Tricia Ebarvia of #DisruptTexts has created a list of eight questions to ask yourself about the inclusivity of your literacy classroom. Additionally, NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools has created a scorecard that can help you determine the extent to which your English Language Arts curricula are (or are not) culturally responsive.
Curriculum Violence. In the spring 2020 issue of Teaching Tolerance, Dr. Stephanie P. Jones offers insight into curriculum violence and ways to end it. In brief, curriculum violence is when educators “construct a set of lessons that damage or otherwise adversely affect students intellectually and emotionally” through erasure or disregard of people’s humanity. Anti-racist educators, though, seek to humanize rather than dehumanize students. In thinking about your own curriculum, units, lessons, activities, and assignments, we encourage you to think about where you have inflicted violence on your students, whether intentionally or not. This might take the form of:

having students participate in a simulation, game, or reenactment of slavery or other traumatic historical events
having students write from a perspective of an Enslaver (sometimes referred to as ‘slave owner’) or even a Jewish holocaust victim.
repeatedly showing and sharing racist or traumatic images or videos rather than celebrating and showing joy and excellence
leaving particular people’s (e.g. LGBT) history out of the curriculum or teaching it in ways that are irresponsible
Using the N-word or reading the N-word aloud (see Ta-Nehisi Coates for more information)
Downplaying or “whitewashing” the severity of racialized historical events
Asking students to take a side on topics that dehumanize a group of marginalized people (e.g. Should people own slaves?; Should the US build a border wall?)

For more examples, visit Mapping Racial Trauma.

2. Interrogate Your Texts
As ELA teachers, we have a unique responsibility of selecting books for our students to read. Often teachers are unaware that their own ideologies guide their book selections. Interrogating and acknowledging our own ideologies is important because our choices send messages of power to our students, articulating and reinforcing ideas of what is appropriate and valued. This process of determining a text’s value based on ideological assumptions is part of what Raymond Williams (1977) called the selective tradition. He defined the selective tradition as “an intentionally selective version of a shaping past and pre-shaped present, which is then powerfully operative in the process of social and cultural definition and identification” (p. 115). This means that certain ideas and practices of the past are promoted and emphasized, while others are excluded or forgotten. Teachers have long upheld this selective tradition, but we are also capable of disrupting it and creating a new selected tradition, one that includes books that are windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.
Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop (1990) wrote:
“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or
strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection, we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books” (p. ix)
To date, white children have a multitude of opportunities to see themselves represented in literature. But BIPOC students are rarely represented. In Huyck & Dahlen’s (2019) graphic shown below, it is clear that the publishing industry is not doing a good job of depicting characters from diverse backgrounds. All students need diverse books.

Source: Huyck, D. & Dahlen, S. P. (2019, June 19). Diversity in Children’s Books 2018. sarahpark.com blog. Retrieved from https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrens-books-2018-infographic/.

Therefore, the texts we privilege by teaching them and the texts we have in our classroom libraries must be interrogated. There are many resources available to audit these texts. Lee & Low Books has created a Classroom Library Questionnaire to help you determine where there are strengths and where there are gaps in diversity. Michelle has also created a chart to track, sort, and analyze what races and cultures are represented in your curriculum or classroom library that she has used in her teacher preparation courses. Additionally, as you review supplemental materials like videos, art, audio, etc, The Diverse and Inclusive Growth Checklist from KIDMAP will be helpful.
As you analyze your materials, library, literature circle books, or whole-class reads, keep these questions in mind:

Think about your student population. Does your list provide a mix of mirror and window books for your students—books in which they can see themselves reflected and books in which they can learn about others?
Think about the subject matter of the texts. Do all your books featuring Black characters focus on slavery? Do all your books about Latinx characters focus on immigration? Are all your LGBTQ books coming out stories? Do you have any books featuring marginalized characters that are not primarily about race or prejudice? Do you have books that feature joy and excellence, and talk about everyday experiences for a racialized group? Are you holding on to texts just because they are in the literary canon (e.g. Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird)?
Think about the authors of your texts. How many of your books are #ownvoices stories written and/or illustrated by BIPOC authors and illustrators? How many of your “diverse” books were created by white people trying to write about BIPOC experiences?
Think about the bias in the texts. How many of your books are written by authors with racist views? Are you holding on to authors and their texts despite their problematic histories towards disenfranchised or marginalized populations (e.g. Flannery O’Connor)? How many contain harmful stereotypes? If you do come across racist ideas and harmful stereotypes in the books you’re reading with students, will you ignore or gloss over those ideas or have a meaningful conversation about them?
Think about the amount of time you privilege certain texts. Even if you have a wide variety of cultures and races represented in your class library or curriculum, how much weight do those texts hold in your week, unit, semester, or year?
Think about the organization of your courses’ texts? Do you teach American Literature or British Literature chronologically? Why? How does that position white authors predominantly or erase BIPOC authors? Do you only teach black authors texts during Black History Month?

Once you have analyzed what is there and what is not, and you may want to expand your library or select new texts. You may find Teaching Tolerance’s text selection tools particularly helpful. The tool promotes a multi-dimensional approach to text selection that prioritizes: critical literacy, cultural responsiveness, and complexity.
Sources:
Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives, 6(3), ix-xi.
Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford University Press.

3. Interrogate Your Approaches to Text Analysis
Think about the ways in which you teach text analysis to your students. All of us want our students to be critical thinkers, but an anti-racist approach to ELA needs to do more than that. Does your analysis of texts include critical literacy practices? How do you disrupt traditional texts in your classroom to bring in more critical perspectives?
Part One: Critical Literacy
Interrogating your approach to text analysis starts with an understanding of critical literacy. Critical literacy “refers to the use of technologies of print and other media of communication to analyze, critique, and transform the norms, rules systems, and practices governing the social fields of institutions and everyday life” (Luke, 2014, p. 21). Critical literacy is pedagogy that has the potential to transform lives and communities through a process of becoming aware of one’s experience relative to power relations, often realized through reading and writing. We encourage ELA teachers to apply a critical lens when approaching literature.
For practical suggestions, we draw on Haddix and Rojas’s (2011) questions as a framework for interrogating texts. When analyzing texts, consider these questions from Haddix and Rojas (2011):

Who was the text written for?
Whose perspective and narratives are omitted or silenced by this text?
What are the cultural meanings and possible readings that can be constructed from this text?
What is the text trying to do to me? Or how is the text positioning me as the reader?

It is important for you and your students to ask these questions. When teaching from a critical literacy lens, it is also important for your students to know that you are intentionally taking a critical literacy approach to texts.
Part Two: Extending the Critical Literacy Lens
Haddix and Rojas’s (2011) also offer an extended critique to examine “what critical literacy makes possible and what such analyses leave out” (p. 22). To avoid one construction of knowledge, teachers can also ask these questions from Haddix and Rojas (2011):

How is the literature and curriculum defined within this critical literacy approach?
How is the analysis of these texts (literature and curriculum) defined by particular discourses?
How can these discourses be altered, interrupted, resisted?
What subjectivities constitute and are constituted through these discourses (and what “new” subjectivities might be constructed)?

Sources:
Luke, A. (2014). Defining critical literacy. In J. Pandya & J. Ávila. Moving Critical Literacies Forward. (pp. 19-31). Routledge.
Haddix, M. & Rojas, M.A. (2011). (Re)framing teaching in urban classrooms: A poststructural (re)reading of critical literacy as
curricular and pedagogical practices. In V. Kinloch (Ed). Urban Literacies: Critical Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Community. Teachers College Press.

Part Three: Bring Your Lenses to Action --#DisruptTexts
English Language Arts teachers have the ability to challenge the traditional, white-centered canon that are often core texts in current curricula. How can teachers teach the canon while pushing for restorative practices that repair “historic harm inflicted on students who endure school systems that perpetuate racial inequities” (NCTE 2020 Call)? How can we build an inclusive and equitable ELA curriculum by disrupting texts?

We encourage ELA teachers to check out #DisruptTexts, which is “is a crowdsourced, grassroots effort by teachers for teachers to challenge the traditional canon in order to create a more inclusive, representative, and equitable language arts curriculum that our students deserve.”

Educators who want to #disrupttexts should consider their four core principles:

interrogating our biases to understand how they inform our teaching practices
centering the authentic voices and lived experiences of people of color
applying a critical literacy lens to our teaching practices that is anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-bias
working in community with other educators, particularly Black, Indigenous, and educators of color.

Visit their website to join the effort and also join #DisruptTexts Twitter Chats.

4. Interrogate Your Approaches to Writing
Consider the kinds of writing that are privileged in your curriculum. What ways of writing, what genres, what Englishes are valued or valorized? Whose ways with words are marginalized by the kinds of speaking and writing that are privileged in your classroom?
In 1974 the Conference on College Composition and Communication, in their statement affirming students’ right to their own language wrote, “[w]e need to ask ourselves whether the rejection of students who do not adopt the dialect most familiar to us is based on any real merit in our dialect or whether we are actually rejecting the students themselves, rejecting them because of their racial, social, and cultural origins” (3). Although English teachers understand the connection between students’ identities and the subject matter, and often consider this in their text selection, including diverse English varieties as legitimate content in our study of the English language has been slow to catch on.

English teachers’ understanding of the purposes of schooling: a common language, a common curriculum, a common citizenship are often at the core of the hesitation to include, teach, and support the use and knowledge of English language variation. Many English teachers see teaching Standardized English as a way of offering access to students and creating commonality among them. From this we get rules about whether it’s acceptable to begin sentences with ‘and’ or ‘because’ and whether it’s permissible to use ‘I’ in writing. Yet if we look at many of the lauded texts, they routinely snub their noses at and break these rules. The questions, then, are:

Why are some writers ‘allowed’ and even applauded for breaking the rules while others are stigmatized?
How do we offer students’ similar space, freedom, and knowledge to write?
Where do these ‘rules,’ come from, and why are they ‘rules’?
How do we equip students with the knowledge of a variety of Englishes and the spaces to wield them mightily?

Many of us were not trained to teach English language variation and the grammar of those Englishes. Thankfully there is a growing collection of resources to better understand language change as a normal function of a living language (See Anne Curzan’s TED talk and Jamila Lyiscott’s TED talk 1 or TED talk 2 ), the harm that deficit views of dialects of English cause, such as April Baker-Bell’s new book, Linguistic Justice, and ways to prepare and equitably teach about English language variations (see Mike Metz’ Resources for teaching in Culturally and Linguistically Complex Classrooms and Chris Palmer’s Teaching Language Variation in the Classroom).
Series Editors Valerie Kinloch and Susi Long write that Linguistic Justice “offers us an Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy as an approach that rejects the shaming of, and the linguistic violence experienced by, Black people...This approach also helps teachers and researchers come to terms with the many different ways Anti-Black Linguistic Racism gets dangerously normalized in our teaching and pedagogical engagements…” Dr. Baker-Bell’s book gives nuanced insight into how to interrogate the views of dialect, sentence structure, grammar that have historically guided writing instruction and is also causing linguistic violence for Black children.
We know that secondary ELA writing teachers can either be “gatekeepers or guides” (McBee Orzulak, 2013). Learning more about the ways language works can support you in bolstering students’ abilities to write for a range of audiences through various forms. Thus, in interrogating your approaches to writing:

consider the range of ways humans engage in writing;
consider the real power hierarchies embedded in written communication;
work to make those ways of writing and power hierarchies transparent in classrooms;
support students in understanding the ideologies surrounding written communication; and
prepare them to write across various situations.

Source:
McBee Orzulak, M. J. (2013). Gatekeepers and guides: Preparing future writing teachers to negotiate standard language ideology.
Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education, 2(1), 5.

STEP 4: ACT
The last and most important step is to act. How can we move listening to action, reflection to change, and interrogation to transformation? In “What Anti-Racist Teachers Do” the NCTE’s Standing Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English offers practical suggestions below:

OPPOSE English-only policies because censorship deprives linguistically, ethnically, and culturally diverse students of their voices.
RECOGNIZE the importance of adequate materials in students’ first language(s).
SEEK training in English language diversity.
WORK against implicit bias against students of color.
AFFIRM students of color, multiple Englishes, multicultural practices, and identity expression.
INCLUDE culturally and ethnically relevant and sustaining materials belonging in all learning spaces.
CELEBRATE and respect the power of communities of color reading in their heritage language and in their own customs.
ADOPT teaching stances that are anthropologically and ethnographically informed.

English teachers know that language has power. In acting, we want to be sensitive, intentional, and reflective in our language that can lead to action. In this section, we offer some practical and tangible ways to act within and beyond your schooling institutions.
1. School Culture
In moving beyond interrogation, we ask you to start with your larger school community. For starters, share what you are reading and learning about anti-racist teaching with your colleagues. Invite them to read and plan along with you. Think about how you, as an English teacher, can work across and with other disciplines and content areas. How might working collaboratively with your social studies colleagues, or art colleagues, or even math colleagues open up new spaces and ideas for teaching language arts content and pedagogy that are anti-racist?
Working with your principal, find opportunities to make anti-racist professional development consistently part of the fabric of your school culture. Partner with and advocate for your library media specialist to examine what books are being checked out in the library, what diversity book gaps are present, and how library spaces might be transformed into welcoming places, rather than another place that is policing black and brown bodies. Consider and work to change how your school’s library fine policies present an economic barrier in accessing library materials and services for marginalized students.
Advocate for and commit to hiring BIPOC English teachers (and other subject area teachers) in your school. If you do not have teachers of color applying to work at your school, address why that may be. Actively reach out to and recruit from historically black colleges and universities, and make sure your school has adequate mentorship available so as to retain them. Your school, your students, and your community will all benefit from a diversity of voices and perspectives.
Reexamine your policies for who is allowed or offered advanced, honors, Advanced Placement, or IB English courses. Are there policies, ideologies, people standing in the way for students of color to take these courses? Determine whether your school’s tracking system has allowed for the advancement of students of color or has hindered their ability to achieve as equally as their white peers. If not, pilot new ways of organizing classes to eliminate such barriers.
2. Standards
Beyond incorporating ELA state standards, we encourage ELA teachers to explore, examine, and incorporate social justice standards into their curriculum. If we want students to meet our content area standards, how much more essential is it for them to understand and apply ways to make their world a more equitable environment?
Teaching Tolerance offers twenty Social Justice Standards around four anchor standards and domains: Identity, Diversity, Justice, and Action (IDJA). According to their site, “the standards are leveled for every stage of K–12 education and include school-based scenarios to show what anti-bias attitudes and behavior may look like in the classroom.”
Some example of these standards include:

5. Students will recognize traits of the dominant culture, their home culture, and other cultures, and understand how they negotiate their own identity in multiple spaces (Identity)
7. Students will develop language and knowledge to accurately and respectfully describe how people (including themselves) are both similar to and different from each other and others in their identity groups (Diversity)
11. Students will recognize stereotypes and relate to people as individuals rather than representatives of groups. (Justice)
19. Students will make principled decisions about when and how to take a stand against bias and injustice in their everyday lives and will do so despite negative peer or group pressure (Action)

As you reexamine your curriculum, intentionally plan for ways you may incorporate these standards into your lessons.
3. Students
Becoming an anti-racist ELA educator includes affirming your students’ heritage, racial and cultural backgrounds and identities, and their language choices. This should move beyond just a “holidays and heroes” approach in which multicultural education consists primarily of ethnic celebrations and acknowledgment of “great men” during one month or event of the year, but understandings of culture and race in relation to structural issues and power are addressed in superficial, artificial, or stereotypical ways (Nieto, 2017).
Part One: Amplifying Student Voices
One way to do this is to amplify the strengths, identities, and voices of students through writing and activism. Students have powerful words to share that exemplify, express, and teach the community about their experiences, learning, and growth. Particularly for students who are marginalized due to social inequities, it is important for their voices to be heard and their stories to be known. To illustrate how to do anti-racist amplification of youth voices, we share a few examples in our area. We encourage you to modify these examples or research and partner with teachers and/or local community organizations that are devoted to working with and amplifying the brilliance of youth of color.
One example of such an organization in Raleigh, NC is #PassTheMicYouth, which seeks to amplify the voices of young people by sharing their lived experiences and stories of activism through a podcast and blog.
Another example is the Literacy and Community Initiative (LCI), founded by Crystal, which partners with community-based organizations (e.g. Bull City YouthBuild, Juntos NC, and CORRAL Riding Academy) to examine and empower youth voices. The mission is to amplify historically and currently underserved student voices through student publications, advocacy, and leadership.
To celebrate and affirm these students’ writing, we include their published works and respective reading and educator guides below so you may read, learn from, and support the work of youth who are currently marginalized due to social inequities. Their words are powerful and true. Whether you use these youth voices in your classroom, or you find or create ones in your local community to use, students’ stories and narratives can be just as powerful, if not more, than texts in the literary canon.
Texts and Resources
A Leg Up by CORRAL Riding Academy Students

See Unbroken Pieces Through the Shadows by Bull City YouthBuild Students

The Voices of Our People: Nuestras Verdades (Bilingual in English and Spanish) by Juntos NC Students

Part Two: Five Steps for Centering and Publishing Youth Voices
Below, The Literacy and Community Initiative offers five steps for classroom teachers to center and publish youth voices.

Write: When implementing an inclusive writing curriculum, start by asking: "Why write?" and give your students voice and choice in their writing tasks by considering themes, topics, and genres that are intentionally designed to meet their needs. Consider varied genres such as poetry, narrative, memoir, essays, letters, multimodal creations, and autoethnographies. The key is letting students express themselves, their lived realities, and their communities. See LCI’s curriculum guide here.
Revise and Edit: After each writing task, give students a chance to edit their own pieces through guided peer reviews, whole-class workshop models, or individual conferencing. Use posters, steps, and guidelines for editing offering concrete and practical steps for this process. Edit alongside your students--show them that writing is a process that takes time, effort, and care. Focus on meeting your students where they are.
Publish: There are various self-publishing resources online for teachers or individuals should you want to create a finished book. However, sharing your students’ work online, at your school library, with other ELA classes, or even for a parent's night can achieve similar effects of amplifying your students as writers and advocates for their community.
Celebrate: After publication or sharing their work, make time to celebrate them. Your students deserve acknowledgment for their hard work. We recommend that teachers always leave time for these community-building moments in their classrooms. See an example of a celebration here.
Engage and Lead: Create and organize opportunities for your students to share their work beyond the classroom. What community spaces are available for a public reading? Who do your students want to invite to hear their voices and learn from their stories? How can the community learn from your students? See an example here of an LCI students’ podcast with #PassTheMicYouth.

Source:
Nieto, S. (2017). Language, Culture, and Teaching: Critical Perspectives (3rd ed). Routledge.
4. Texts
Another way to take your interrogation into action is to add, replace, or remove books from your curriculum or classroom library that no longer suit the needs of your community or will help you to enact the vision of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s (1990) windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. Below we offer some of our favorite recommendations for texts in middle and high school English language arts classrooms that celebrate blackness or provide insights into what it means to be a Black person in America today.
There are many more amazing books out there, and we encourage you to use some of the following websites that are devoted to diversity in the book industry. These include: Diverse Book Finder; Embrace Race; The Brown Bookshelf; We Need Diverse Books; The Cooperative Children’s Book Center; Social Justice Books; American Indians in Children’s Literature; Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators; Latinxs in Kid Lit; ¡Colorín Colorado!; Reading While White; CrazyQuiltEdi; #ProjectLitCommunity; Worlds of Words; Lee & Low Books; Rich in Color

Middle School Recommendations
*denotes the text works in high school, too.

A Good Kind of Trouble by Lisa Moore Ramée
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely *
Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers
Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America edited by Ibi Zaboi *
Blended by Sharon Draper
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
From the Desk of Zoe Washington by Janae Marks
If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
New Kid by Jerry Craft
Piecing Me Together by Renee Watson
The Parker Inheritance by Varian Johnson
The Season of Styx Malone by Kekla Magoon
The Skin I’m In by Sharon G. Flake
Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia
Woke: A Young Poet's Call to Justice by Mahogany L. Browne, Elizabeth Acevedo, Olivia Gatwood, & Theodore Taylor, III *

High School Recommendations

All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by George M. Johns
Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie
American Street by Ibi Zoboi
Becoming by Michelle Obama
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
Dear Martin by Nic Stone
Don’t Call us Dead: Poems by Danez Smith
I am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds
On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
Pride by Ibi Zaboi
SLAY by Brittney

We also acknowledge that adding diverse books into our classroom spaces is not enough. It’s equally important to think about what you are doing with these texts, how you are talking about these texts, and what lessons and activities are built around these texts. Anti-racist education moves beyond mere inclusion to addressing inequities, discussing and unpacking privilege and racism today, celebrating cultural knowledge and assets, and disrupting status quo and long-held norms and institutional practices that prevent or thwart equality for all. You may find that Stuart Hall’s (1980) reception theory is a helpful tool for enacting anti-racist and culturally responsive readings of texts. Building on this theory, Teaching Tolerance offers suggestions for how to Read Against the Grain.
Sources:
Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives, 6(3), ix-xi.
Hall, S. (1980) “Encoding/decoding”, in S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe and P. Willis (eds.), Culture, Media, Language. Hutchinson.

5. Actions to STOP
Although it is important to take action in your classroom and school. There are just a few things you should stop doing.

Please do not call on your Black or minoritized students/faculty to speak on behalf of all BIPOC.
Please do not mispronounce your students’ names. Take the time to learn proper pronunciation. Apologize when you get names wrong, and work really hard to rectify for the future. It shows you care enough to humanize them and their cultural identity.
Please do not do a separate “diversity unit” or “multicultural unit.” Being Black, Asian, or Latinx, for example, is not something that lasts for one month or one unit. This articulates that white experiences are the default, which they should not be.
Please do not use racially coded or racist language, like “ghetto,” “thug,” “sketchy,” “uppity,” the “N-word,” or “the peanut gallery.” These words are used to dehumanize Black people. As a language arts teacher, we know words and language hold power; so use that power for the better.
Please do not buy prepackaged, ready-made anti-racist materials, and use them without critical thought. You cannot shortcut or sidestep the hard work by buying someone else's.

STEP 5: REPEAT
The work an anti-racist educator needs to do is never done. Step five reminds you that when you think you are done, you should return to Step 1, or whatever step you need to revisit. Anti-racist and anti-bias education is a life-long commitment and practice.
We encourage you to share your efforts towards becoming an anti-racist ELA teacher with other colleagues as a way to be accountable to this work and to dialogue about ways to do better as a community. Please make a copy of this document for yourself, and add to it. Revisit the steps often and make small improvements each day. Small steps can lead to larger ones.
As Michelle Obama reminds us in her memoir Becoming, “becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” This process is also a charge for us (Michelle, Chandra, and Crystal) to continue this journey to unlearn and learn and to continually evolve as we become anti-racist educators with you.
We hope you join us.

AUTHOR BIOS
Michelle M. Falter is an assistant professor of English Education and Literacy in the department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences at North Carolina State University College of Education, and a former middle and high school English teacher. She was a 2016-2019 member of the Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English within the National Council of Teachers of English. Her teaching, research, and scholarship demonstrate a deep commitment to diversity and social justice, helping English language arts and literacy educators’ co-construct knowledge with their students using critical, feminist, and dialogical teaching practices. At the heart of her work as a scholar and teacher is advocacy and allyship for and with teachers and students. She can be reached at mfalter@ncsu.edu
Chandra L. Alston is an incoming assistant professor of English Education and Literacy in the department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences at North Carolina State University College of Education and a former high school English teacher. Her research has come to center around 1) documenting instructional practices and materials that support literacy teachers to see, empower, and support children of color; 2) pedagogies and practices to support prospective literacy teachers in acknowledging and disrupting the systemic structural inequities in facilitating discussions and teaching writing; and, 3) investigating the extent to which educational policies, structures, and materials support observable, positive change in literacy teachers’ practice. She can be reached at calston3@ncsu.edu
Crystal Chen Lee is an assistant professor of English Education and Literacy in the department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences at North Carolina State University College of Education. Her research lies at the nexus of literacy, teacher education, community engagement, and underserved populations. She is the founding director of The Literacy and Community Initiative (LCI), a collaboration between NC State’s College of Education and the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation, that partners with community-based organizations to examine and empower youth voices. The mission is to amplify student voices through student publications, advocacy, and leadership. A former high school English teacher, she received her doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University. She can be reached at cchen32@ncsu.edu
*To cite this document:
Falter, M. M., Alston, C. L., & Lee, C. C. (2020). Becoming anti-racist English teachers: Ways to actively move
forward [White paper]. North Carolina State University. https://go.ncsu.edu/antiracist-ela

2 Comments

Stay tuned for information regarding the Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature!

What Books are You Using in Your YA Courses? Here are My selections.

The Books
With Very Brief Introductions
In no particular order except Holes will be first and Read Between the Lines will be last

MG/YA Stories of Surviving Loss & Abandonment by Lesley Roessing

MG/YA Stories of Surviving Loss & Abandonment

Loss of a Parent and Grandparent

Loss of a Sibling

Loss of a Friend or Classmate(s)

Parent Abandonment/Neglect

Reading in Book Clubs

75 MG/YA Stories of Surviving Loss & Abandonment

“Approaches to Teaching an Online YA Course: Spending a Month with the Printz Award Winners” by Ashley Black

“Approaches to Teaching an Online YA Course: Spending a Month with the Printz Award Winners”

In Darkness by Nick Lake

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

March: Book Three by John Lewis, et. al

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Dig. by A.S. King

Mental Health and Healing Through the Novels of A.S. King by Bird Cramer

Additional Resources

Works Cited

YA Literature as Protest by Morgan Jackson

Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward by Michelle M. Falter, Chandra L. Alston, and Crystal Chen Lee

Teaching for an anti-racist future starts with educators.

‌
‌‌Listen‌ ‌&‌ ‌Reflect‌‌ ‌⟺‌ Read‌‌ ‌ ‌⟺‌ ‌‌ Interrogate‌‌ ‌⟺‌ ‌‌ Act‌‌ ‌ ⟺ ‌ ‌‌Repeat‌

Middle School Recommendations
*denotes the text works in high school, too.

High School Recommendations

Dr. Steve Bickmore
Creator and Curator

Co-Edited Books

Archives

Categories

Blogs to Follow

Stay tuned for information regarding the Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature!

What Books are You Using in Your YA Courses? Here are My selections.

The Books With Very Brief Introductions In no particular order except Holes will be first and Read Between the Lines will be last

MG/YA Stories of Surviving Loss & Abandonment by Lesley Roessing

MG/YA Stories of Surviving Loss & Abandonment

Loss of a Parent and Grandparent

Loss of a Sibling

Loss of a Friend or Classmate(s)

Parent Abandonment/Neglect

Reading in Book Clubs

75 MG/YA Stories of Surviving Loss & Abandonment

“Approaches to Teaching an Online YA Course: Spending a Month with the Printz Award Winners” by Ashley Black

​“Approaches to Teaching an Online YA Course: Spending a Month with the Printz Award Winners”

In Darkness by Nick Lake

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

​March: Book Three by John Lewis, et. al

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

Dig. by A.S. King

Mental Health and Healing Through the Novels of A.S. King by Bird Cramer

Additional Resources

​Works Cited

YA Literature as Protest by Morgan Jackson

Becoming Anti-Racist English Teachers: Ways to Actively Move Forward by Michelle M. Falter, Chandra L. Alston, and Crystal Chen Lee

Teaching for an anti-racist future starts with educators. ​

‌‌‌Listen‌ ‌&‌ ‌Reflect‌‌ ‌⟺‌ Read‌‌ ‌ ‌⟺‌ ‌‌ Interrogate‌‌ ‌⟺‌ ‌‌ Act‌‌ ‌ ⟺ ‌ ‌‌Repeat‌

Middle School Recommendations *denotes the text works in high school, too.

High School Recommendations

Dr. Steve Bickmore​Creator and Curator

Co-Edited Books

Archives

Categories

Blogs to Follow

The Books
With Very Brief Introductions
In no particular order except Holes will be first and Read Between the Lines will be last

“Approaches to Teaching an Online YA Course: Spending a Month with the Printz Award Winners”

March: Book Three by John Lewis, et. al

Works Cited

Teaching for an anti-racist future starts with educators.

‌
‌‌Listen‌ ‌&‌ ‌Reflect‌‌ ‌⟺‌ Read‌‌ ‌ ‌⟺‌ ‌‌ Interrogate‌‌ ‌⟺‌ ‌‌ Act‌‌ ‌ ⟺ ‌ ‌‌Repeat‌

Middle School Recommendations
*denotes the text works in high school, too.

Dr. Steve Bickmore
Creator and Curator