Angela Insegna is back as a guest contributor after only six weeks. What can I say? She had another good idea and I had to fit it in. You can read her earlier posts here and here. Angela is one of the people I go to for inspiration. The first time I reviewed a syllabus for one of her courses, it changed how I thought about the relationship between young adult literature and popular culture. Maybe one day we will have her write about she constructs a syllabus that deals with both. in this post, she talks about how art is valued in in the narrative of young adult literature. It reminded me of an article for The ALAN Review written by Connie Zitlow and Lois Stover entitled Portrait of the Artist as a Young Adult: Who is the Real Me. The project lead to a book, here is the link. Of course, Angela takes a new look at the topic. Hey Angela, any plans for a book down the line? Take it away, Angela.

My students organically noted the parallels between both artistic boys, which led to in-depth discussions about the inherent value of art and the portrayal of young male artists in these texts.  Art was not the province of boys, who were to be more utilitarian, full of common sense, they noted.  They spent a whole class period discussing ways that Jesse’s father might complete his sentence about what “old ladies” were doing to his only son. Art then became a gendered vocation, even though most of the touchstone figures in painting, writing, and music are men and both high school and middle-grades curricula situated under Common Core standards do not offer gender-balanced readings.  More specifically, art and artistic endeavor in Myers and Paterson’s texts were gendered and determined by class.  Jamal and Jesse live in socioeconomically challenged households.  Jesse’s material concerns—his family cannot afford paper or “real paints”—indicate that artistry may be reserved for those who have leisure time and wealth.  Jamal likewise thinks about acquiring art supplies for a special occasion like Christmas: “he would ask Mama to buy him some real paints, not like the watercolors that you got at McCrory’s.  And a real paintbrush, too. . . . Maybe even two, a big one that was flat on the end and a little one with a point.” Both boys also, my students noted, have friends who encouraged them and responded positively to their talents:  Leslie for Jesse, Tito for Jamal.  These peers counteract the adult viewpoints, spurring both adolescents on towards refining their skills.  

Following the Ariadnic golden thread of art’s representation in YA evolved into a project for me, especially with the advent of STEM programs which, at first, excluded art as a valuable province.  Some discounted it because they assume artists cannot thrive in the marketplace.  But for some adolescents in #YArt-centered texts, drawing affords much-needed escape from untenable emotional—not economic—situations.  In Barry Lyga’s The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl (2007), Donny Marchetti designs his own graphic novel with the goal of attending a Comic Convention and presenting it to his favorite artist.  His artistic outlet allows him to better handle school bullying, his parents’ divorce, his new “step-fascist,” and the widening gulf between him and his pregnant mother.  Lyga’s text does not provide actual images alongside the conventional narrative, though the themes of using artistic endeavor as an escape and as a vehicle towards self-identity exist on every page of Donny’s tragicomic narration.  Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) also illustrates the importance of artistic endeavor for adolescents via the character of Arnold Spirit.  In the first few pages we learn how Arnold views drawing, as he ruptures the novel’s ubiquitous humorous tone to state, “the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little life boats.”  Like Donny, Arnold is bullied.  Born with encephalitis, he is picked on because of his large head and small body.  Cartooning provides him with an opportunity to share—and process—his experiences. Readers of this novel are the benefactors of 97 of Arnold’s images, drawn by Ellen Forney.  

In two more #YArt novels, artistic production allows for survival in the face of traumatic events.  In Ruta Sepetys’s Between Shades of Gray, set during Stalin’s Reign of Terror, 15-year-old Lina Vilkas’s family is detained by Soviet police and sent to Siberian labor camps.  Lina, who had been preparing to go to art school, must now survive harsh winters and inhumane treatment. Because the family is separated from her influential Provost father, Lina resolves to use her artistic ability to get word to him of their condition.  She draws on a handkerchief which she then passes to another in hopes that, eventually, her father will receive the message she has drawn on it.  Later, for extra rations, Lina draws for one of the Soviet commanders.  Her mother encourages Lina’s drawing, though it is dangerous to do so in the camps, because “the world has no ideas what the Soviets are doing to us” and the drawings she produces act as a living record of the events.  Finally, her memories of the art of Edvard Munch sustain her during the crucible.  For Lina, artistic endeavor is linked to sustenance, physical and mental.  

In Brendan Kiely’s and Jason Reynolds’s novel All American Boys, Rashad’s artistic ability enables him to survive after he endures an unjust beating from a police officer.  Rashad contrasts his life to that of Bil Keane’s Family Circus, since uses the familiar circle as his frame to provide a point of view.  He explains, “the circle changes how you see it. Like what are we looking through? A telescope?  A peephole?  The sight of a gun?”  Like Lina, Rashad also admires an artist:  Aaron Douglas, of the Harlem Renaissance.  To move through the trauma he has experienced, Rashad uses art.  To provide others with a view into his life—a peephole, if you will—he draws.  Thus, also like Lina, art provides Rashad with a way into and out of hardship.    

​Despite the central role they play in intellectual and personal development, the arts are under assault in the United States.  President Trump proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in March of this year.  While the House rejected the proposed eradication of these agencies, they did approve in July a $5 million dollar cut to the already-beleaguered budgets of both the NEA and NEH during fiscal year 2018.  STEAM programs honor the arts, seeing them as integral to a well-rounded education and, more importantly, for harnessing the creative impulse.  However, we must make certain not to see the arts as a stepping stone to the sciences as some STEAM programs may be tempted to do.  Instead, art stands alone, inspiring and encouraging reflection or reaction.
 
Studying YA’s complicated representation of art, artists, and artistic production over time creates a panoramic snapshot of cultural attitudes towards artistic endeavor.  Adolescents and teachers alike can ruminate on these depictions as they determine art’s position in their own historical moment. 
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What other YA texts represent art?  Follow this golden thread with me by commenting here or using the hashtag #YArt on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook.  

Dr. Kia Richmond is this week's guest contributor. Kia and I have know each other for a long time. She was one of the very first people I meet as a graduate student. When I started following YA scholars at conferences, Kia was there. When I showed up at CEE gatherings at NCTE and at the CEE conferences, Kia was there. Kia has always been a source of support and you can count on her to welcome people into the academic communities of NCTE, CEE, and ALAN. Thanks Kia. She has been on sabbatical and writing a book. Today she shares some of the insights about YA literature and how it portrays Mental Illness.  

Research from the National Institute of Mental Health (2015) reports that one in five youth aged 13-18 experience a “seriously debilitating mental disorder.” Based on conversations with teachers in public schools across the U.S. and on my service on the board of directors of a regional nonprofit focused on helping troubled youth, I would say that number seems a tad low. 
​
Since I started my career as a professor over sixteen years ago, I have included young adult literature featuring characters with mental illness in my humanities and English Education courses (see “Using Literature to Confront the Stigma of Mental Illness”). I bring in YA lit because books written specifically for teenagers offer our future educators insights that are not always accessible through reflections on their own schooling, textbooks by experts on pedagogy, or field experiences at local schools.
 
This year while on sabbatical, I am completing research for a book forthcoming from ABC-Clio/Greenwood Press (Mental Illness in Young Adult Literature: Exploring Real Struggles through Fictional Characters). While reading selected YA novels purchased with a research grant from Northern Michigan University, I have reflected on many of the benefits of including books about mental illness in high school and college classrooms. Here, I will highlight two issues:  
 

• YA lit can demonstrate how our language signifies our beliefs
• YA lit can showcase authentic symptoms of mental illness

​In many books that feature characters with mental disorders such as schizophrenia or depression, readers will notice a variety of terms for someone who has a mental illness (used by an individual with the disorder to refer to the self as well as by those who are talking about others). Here is a sampling of some of the terms used by the characters in Your Voice is All I Hear and Freaks like Us (both about young adults with schizophrenia) as well as Get Well Soon and It’s Kind of a Funny Story (both focused on teenagers with depression):
 
insane, apeshit, crazy, nuts, weird, lunatic, depressed, psychotic, anxious, delusional, sick, freaks, impaired, alphabets, fucked up, mental patients, screwed up.
 
A few of these (such as anxious or depressed) are authentic terms for mental illness as identified by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., APA, 2013). However, the majority of the terms are slang – mostly negative labels or insults, and whether used by the character with the mental illness or someone else, the results are typically the same: isolation, disapproval, or (self-) doubt. 

How we talk about individuals can affect how we treat them (public stigma), and how we talk about ourselves can influence how we treat ourselves (self-stigma). Research in psychology reports that there are many stereotypes about individuals with mental illness; often, they are considered incompetent, dangerous, and responsible for their own illnesses. If someone with a mental illness applies such beliefs to the self, that person can develop lower self-esteem, which can in turn affect how the individual behaves and feels.

In Labeling people as ‘The mentally ill’ increases stigma, Darcy Haag Granello, a professor of counselor education at The Ohio State University, describes a study on the use of terms such as “mentally ill” and “persons with mental illness” and confirms that words influence our attitudes, which guide behaviors. Likewise, researchers in London (Diana Rose, Graham Thornicroft, Vanessa Pinfold, and Aliya Kassam) have identified 250 different labels used to stigmatize individuals with mental illness. Their study highlights that young people have a lack of factual information about mental illness and points to media, family, and peers as sources for the derogatory terms learned.  

​Educators and others who work with adolescents should talk about the vocabulary used in YA novels and discuss how negative terms can influence beliefs and behaviors and perpetuate stigma. Doing so could help to counteract the abundance of the pejorative terms used in the media and elsewhere, and perhaps could change how individuals with mental illnesses are treated by themselves and others in their lives. ​

One of the reasons I am reading YA books about mental illness is to evaluate whether various disorders are authentically represented in the stories according to descriptions of the illnesses in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, 2013). Though I am still in the beginning stages of my research, I have found in the books I’ve read thus far that the majority of the symptoms characters have are represented accurately.

For example, in a series of email exchanges with her friend Connor, eighteen-year-old Isabel (narrator of Amy Reed’s novel Crazy) vividly describes her symptoms of bipolar disorder. Over a seven-month period, Izzy takes readers through alternating moods of mania and depression. Reed’s portrayals reflect many of the symptoms common with bipolar disorder such as:  

• depressed mood
• feelings of worthlessness
• feelings of grandiosity
• sleeplessness
• bursts of talkative energy
• impulsivity
• increased irritability
• intense goal-directed activities
• extreme involvement activities with potential for negative results.

 
In one of her manic states, we can see Isabel’s increased energy. She says she is on a “different frequency” and rambles that “space and time have spikes and gravity shifts around one moment you’re flying and the next you’re a pancake on the highway and the cars are running over you one after another after another and it doesn’t hurt.” When she is in a depressed state, Izzy feels worthless: “I am a parasite on this world. I suck the life out of the things I love…Somebody shoot me. Somebody put me out of my misery.” Thanks to these kinds of descriptions, and Connor’s responses to them, readers get a better understanding of bipolar disorder.

In Neal Shusterman’s award-winning novel Challenger Deep, fifteen-year-old Caden Bosch exhibits symptoms of schizophrenia that align well with the DSM-5’s list for that disorder, which can include:

• racing or jumbled thoughts

• a pressing need to pace or walk around
• auditory and visual hallucinations
• paranoia.

 
Caden thinks another student at school is trying to kill him, and believes that “hissing sprinklers” are actually snakes in disguise. He believes he is on board a large ship headed for the Marianas Trench, sailing with a captain (with an eye patch) whose parrot has “an eye patch and a security badge.” Because he has difficulty differentiating between reality and fantasy, Caden’s descriptions of his symptoms –and his journey - take on multiple meanings. Shusterman tells readers that the story is not a work of fiction because the “places that Caden goes are all too real.” The author’s own son experienced mental illness, and Shusterman tried in the novel to “capture the descent” into “the deep.” His goal for the book is to help individuals with mental illness feel less alone and to help others to develop empathy for those who “sail the dark, unpredictable waters of mental illness.”
​
Jessie Hatcher, the fifteen-year-old narrator of Motorcycles, Sushi, and One Strange Book, authored by Nancy Rue, consistently displays realistic symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity, both of which are associated with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). She has difficulty concentrating and describes her mind as running nonstop like a hamster on a wheel. Additionally Jessie has trouble:

• being forgetful and disorganized
• appearing not to listen when spoken to directly
• being easily distracted
• blurting out answers before questions are completed.

These kind of behaviors are in part the reason for Jessie’s struggles in school and with relationships, and perhaps why she self-identifies herself as a “ditz-queen-airhead-moron.” Jessie’s story is focused on managing the symptoms of her illness while changing her self-labels to more positive ones, thanks in part to her father and a mysterious book filled with Biblical messages.
 
All three young adult characters described above – Izzy, Caden, and Jessie, receive treatments such as medication, therapy, and/or hospitalization for their mental illnesses after being diagnosed by medical professionals. Readers, especially young adults, should be cautioned not to try to diagnose themselves, their friends, or relatives by using lists of symptoms in novels or elsewhere. Likewise, teachers and other adults should not assume that the symptoms shared by teens in YA novels are consistent across all youth; like all illnesses, symptoms vary from individual to individual. All readers, however, can turn to YA literature texts such as these to learn more about those who have mental illnesses. 

In her YA Wednesday blog about Thirteen Reasons Why, North Carolina State University English Education professor Michelle Falter calls for us to be brave: “Braver than we ever have been. Brave because our students are braver than us, and are ready to talk” about issues such as “drug use, alcohol, rumors, social media, bullying, depression, rape, and yes…suicide.”

Bringing in books about mental illness to high school classrooms means that issues such as depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and ADHD will be discussed. Teachers might feel unqualified to handle such discussions. However, in an Education Week article in 2014, Thomas J. Cottle and Jennifer Greif Green say that teachers don’t have to become “experts in diagnosis or treatment” nor do they need to “assume the role of therapist or counselor.”

Talking about characters with mental illnesses is not a new concept - think of the suicides in Romeo and Juliet, depression in Hamlet, and PTSD in The Things They Carried. We are already doing some of this kind of work. Great articles on young adult literature – including articles related to psychological issues and mental illness – can be found in The ALAN Review, Study and Scrutiny, and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, as well as in NCTE journals such as English Journal, Voices from the Middle, and English Leadership Quarterly. Additionally, a 2016 book by Dean A. Haycock, Characters on the Couch: Exploring Psychology through Literature and Film, offers insight into 100 well-known fictional characters from books and films.

By doing a bit of research and being willing to have the conversations (being brave, as Falter recommends), educators and others invested in helping youth can challenge the stigma associated with mental illness.
For additional resources, visit these web sites:
​
http://stopthestigma.org/
http://www.bringchange2mind.org/
https://www.nami.org/Find-Support/Teens-and-Young-Adults
https://www.jedfoundation.org/
http://youth.gov/youth-topics/youth-mental-health

This fall I will be teaching an undergraduate Young Adult literature course for the first time in about four years. I am excited about the opportunity. It will be my first time teaching the class since I have started the blog. I am going to make the course planning and resources as transparent as possible. In fact, I will encourage other classes to take a glance at our activities from time to time. Parents or teachers can feel free to follow our reading schedule and comment on their readings. Five of the weeks will be free choice selections based on a genre. I readily admit that I favor contemporary realistic fiction, memoirs, verse novels, non fiction, and historical fiction. Those will be adequately covered in the assigned texts. (See the link to the course's required readings here.) I do take a critical approach through most of the class that focuses on the issues of race, class, and gender. I believe that scholars and teachers of this literature should be able to apply a critical lens to their readings, these happen to be mine, but students in my class can use the lens they choose.

While using critical lenses is important, I also believe students should be exposed to the various genres in the this rich world of young adult literature. I read sporadically in all of these, but would not claim the expertise in these areas that I know some of my colleagues have. Rather than assign a text in each genre, I have selected ten in each as examples that the students can choose from. They are, of course, allowed to explore and select another text as well. The wonderful librarians in the Teacher Development & Resources Library are also compiling added resources for each category as an extension of the course resources. (Thanks Amanda and crew!)

This will be primarily a visual post. I don't want to make to many comments on the books. I want them to explore the reviews of the books on their own with deciding which one I might prefer over the others. Of course, feel free to add a comment about which book your might choose or recommend to others.

You do notice that I left out The Hunger Games and Divergent series. I am sincerely hoping that my students will at least know about these through the films. Please add your suggestions and or definition of the genre.

Graphic novels are rich part of young adult literature. There some great books that I didn't include and I can't wait to see what my students select.

These category seems to be growing and, I believe, is becoming more difficult to define. I avoid books that are linked to mass market series-- Wimpy Kid, Percy Jackson, Theodore Boone, Alex Rider, Stranded, Comeback Kids, and a host of others. I actually like many of these and I hope kids are reading them. I think teachers should know them and support them. At the same time, I wanted to point future teachers to books that might have stronger literary quality and belong, less frequently, to a mass marketing category. I also writers like David Lubar shouldn't be neglected. Maybe I should do a whole post on just how funny I think he is.
​

There was a time when I read a great deal of fantasy fiction. I think the field is rich and the description of the what counts as fantasy and what doesn't is confusing. It will be a task that my students will have to wrestle with in a few short weeks.

I also struggle to define science fiction. Many of the books listed here might also be listed in the dystopia category.  Does it have to involve space or time travel, imagined machinery, genetic manipulation, or worlds in a galaxy far, far away?

Thanks for following. I am interested in how many of you will approach teaching these genres. I would love emails or commentaries.

Until next week.

Steve 
stevebickmore@gmail.com 

Years ago, as I was just finishing graduate school, I heard a wonderful talk at the ALAN workshop. This lovely woman in a sari discussed her new novel, Climbing the Stairs, and I knew I had to start reading it that very minute. Several years later, I had the chance to meet Padma and she has become one of my favorite people in the YA community. You can read an interview with her here. In this Friday edition of Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday Padma talks about the verse novel.  Thanks Padma.

​A Time To Dance was my first foray into the world of verse novels. When I heard my protagonist, Veda, speak (in my head), I knew she demanded a verse novel.
 
I was terrified. What business did I have writing novels – and that too verse novels?
It’s the same kind of terror I feel as I write this blog post, because my doctorate is in oceanographer, not literature. Yet, just as I felt compelled to write A Time To Dance in verse, I feel compelled to share my view of what a verse novel is. Partly because, a while ago, I heard a brilliant verse novel described as the work of a “prose writer” – and this comment was meant to be derogatory.
 
Given my training as an oceanographer, I didn’t quite grasp this; I agreed that indeed, it was prose poetry.  I hadn’t fully understood that “Poetic prose” is a complement, whereas “prosaic poetry” is decidedly an insult.
 
Since then, I’ve come to realize that there’s a strange hierarchy in my new field, where poems occupy the top spot. I hear editors insist that every poem in a verse novel they’ve edited is worthy as a stand-alone piece. I also meet verse novelists who consider themselves poets and feel poetry is a worthier contribution.
 
I don’t subscribe to such hierarchies. Is An Na’s A Step From Heaven less powerful or less literary than a verse novel because it’s written in powerful prose vignettes?
Not at all!

Whether a work is poetry or prose is not some kind of value judgment.  Nor should it be. Poetry and prose and verse novels are 3 different forms. Poetry isn’t inherently nobler than prose. A verse novel shouldn’t be judged by the yardstick we use for poetry or the yardstick we use for prose, although a good verse novel is informed by both these parent forms.
 
In writing A Time To Dance, I was encouraged by many contemporary poets: Richard Blanco, Scott Hightower, Peter Covino, Peter Johnson, and, to a lesser extent, Greg Pardlo. It was when I sat in on a workshop that Pardlo conducted at the Ocean State Summer Writing Conference, that I became convinced that verse novels are a different species, related to but not the same as either prose or poetry. 

Pardlo discussed the idea that poems may be classified into lyric, narrative and dramatic/persona poems. Lyric poems, as I understand, are poems in which language is incredibly important; narrative poems are those in which there is movement, as in storytelling; persona poems are those in which a person’s character comes alive.
 
This classification, I realized, is not unlike one way we might classify prose. Lyric poems bear a semblance to novels of ideas; narrative poems to novels in which plot takes center stage; dramatic/persona poems to novels where the plot is really a plot of character.
 
It appears that lyric poems are for the most part in vogue these days; the other forms are still extant, but considered somewhat older (and, I sometimes get the feeling they’re also considered less important). Interestingly, however, we also live at a time when we value character growth, arguably far more than even plot, when we read literary novels.
 
A verse novel, to me is a hybrid form – a style of expression where lyricism is incredibly important; where poetic elements (such as rhythm) have a far greater role to play than they do in prose. However, unlike lyric poems that are emotional or intellectual snapshots that do not seek to tell stories, verse novels must tell stories. Each verse may capture an emotionally rich moment; yet it must bear a relation to the whole – it cannot and usually does not – stand alone.
 
Our job as verse novelists – our primary duty – is to tell the story. To keep the plot moving, not to transfix the reader so the reader is made to feel that he or she must stop and admire each piece – the way he or she might dwell on a poem. We walk a tightrope, trying to balance plot, character and lyricism; and if we allow the lyric element to take over fully, then we are writing a series of poems, not developing a verse novel.
 
Verse novels may be composed of exquisite pieces – each of which one may delve into and enjoy independent of the others – to a certain degree. But because a verse novel attempts to tell a story (unless it’s an experimental post-modern push-the-envelope piece of work), it must unite and thread and move the reader along. A verse novel is a map that directs the reader on an intellectual and emotional journey. In a verse novel, however, understanding (of plot, character, emotion) builds almost always, as one progresses. Even if the plot is non-linear, the order in which the author chooses to place the verses is immensely important – and in this way, the verses depend on one another. They must work together as organs function together in the human body.

In contrast, one may open a book of stand-alone poems, randomly, dip into a page and then ruminate – without necessarily missing a vital insight. Although poems in a collection may be arranged for a particular effect, reading them in order is rarely fundamental to understanding and experiencing the collection.
 
Another way to envision a verse novel is to think of a book as a piece of visual art. Reading a book of poetry is like walking through a sculpture room in a museum; while the sculptures may be related in terms of theme, each exists in isolation (although the viewing experience may be enhanced because they’re all present in this room together). A verse novel is one sculpture – one magnificent sculpture – in which we may admire the way each element is carved; but ultimately, the object of the sculpture is to be viewed as a whole. If each part of a sculpture demanded too much attention, it would, in fact, detract from the ability of the sculpture to be enjoyed as a single object.
 
Or, and I can’t help but use another metaphor – whereas a verse novel is like a bouquet of flowers in which each beautiful blossom is arranged to create a certain effect, a book of poetry is a floral field. 

​That, by the way, is a fine choice. It’s been done and done brilliantly. Two of my favorite books for young people – Marilyn Nelson’s My Seneca Village and Nikki Grimes’s One Last Word are enduring examples of poetry collections, centered on a theme. They are marvelous books of poetry; I do not consider them verse novels. They paint pictures; they captivate our minds and hearts; they illuminate characters; but they do not tell stories in the traditional sense. Or if they do, they tell stories in a manner radically different from the storytelling in a novel. Marilyn Nelson’s Carver: A Life in Poems is another such example of a marvelous book of poetry that provides a deep insight into the life of George Washington Carver and leaves us with a lasting impression of his life and times; but it is, to me, a book of poetry, not a verse novel. 

On the other hand, Nikki Grimes’s Garvey’s Choice is a verse novel. As are Holly Thompson’s Orchards, Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, Jeannine Atkins’s Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis. Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, the verses come together to create a crescendo that is akin to a novel’s climax. In verse novels, the scenes cumulatively form a plot arc just as in fiction narratives.On the other hand, Nikki Grimes’s Garvey’s Choice is a verse novel. As are Holly Thompson’s Orchards, Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, Jeannine Atkins’s Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis. Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, the verses come together to create a crescendo that is akin to a novel’s climax. In verse novels, the scenes cumulatively form a plot arc just as in fiction narratives.

Verse memoirs are, in my opinion, also stories about actual events, told through the medium of poetry. In the moving memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, we experience character growth just as we would in a novel. Similarly, in Margarita Engle’s Enchanted Air, our feeling is of having been told a rich, beautiful, story in sensual, lyrical language.  While these books are classified as nonfiction, they are structurally similar to verse “novels.”
 
Other verse novels fall in different places along the spectrum from straight prose to outright poetry. For instance, one may argue endlessly about Sandra Cisneros’s classic, The House on Mango Street. I’ve heard this book described as prose, poetic vignettes, prose poetry, and poems. And doesn’t Kimberly Newton Fusco’s Tending to Grace blur the line between poetry and prose? Does it matter, so long as we are moved by the words? 

​When we write for young readers, we cannot, nor should we, sacrifice the structure of sentences at the altar of lyricism the way a poet writing for a grown up audience may (and perhaps even ought to) do. If we choose this degree of obfuscation, we force our readers to follow a course that is set up like a hurdles race; not a clear track. Does this make us prose poets? Does this make our verses “broken line prose”? Are we inferior because we wish to sing a story, the way bards of old sang ballads?
 
I don’t really care. I do care that my verses keep my reader listening to my story. I do not want my reader to stop and drink in each verse in a verse novel; in a book of poems, I would want to the reader to ponder each verse. Nor, I might add, do I wish, when I write a verse novel, to write a “page turner” – prose is probably far better suited to fast-moving plots paced so that the readers heart races. In writing a verse novel, I want my reader’s heart to beat at a different rhythm than when I write in prose. My aim in writing a verse novel is different than in writing a book of poems or writing a prose novel – not least in terms of the speed and direction in which I hope to propel my reader. This is neither better nor worse than a poet’s aim or a prose novelist’s aim – it’s just different. 

Award winning American author, Padma Venkatraman, has worked as chief scientist on oceanographic ships, spent time under the sea, directed a school, and lived in 5 countries. Her 3 novels, A Time To Dance, Island’s End, and Climbing the Stairs, were released to multiple starred reviews (12), received numerous honors (> 50 best book e.g. ALA, IRA Notable; Booklist, Kirkus, NYPL, Yalsa BBYA; IBBY outstanding; and several state lists), and won national and international awards. She gives keynote addresses, serves on panels, conducts workshops, and visits schools and author festivals worldwide. Visit her at: ​www.padmavenkatraman.com

This week's guest contribution is Sharon Kane. I have been learning from Sharon for quite awhile now. Every time I talk with her I learning something new about teaching or researching young adult literature. She has been a great friend the Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday and you can read her previous posts here, here, and here. Take it away Sharon.

​On a Monday afternoon in June, I was in my office, happily preparing for my graduate level YA literature class.  Students would be bringing their reflections on the day’s assigned text, The Smell of Other People’s Houses, by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock.  The story is set in Alaska, a couple of decades before my students were born, so I knew they’d see it as historical fiction. (Actually, they had earlier read Meg Medina’s Burn, Baby, Burn, set in New York City in the late seventies, so we had already traveled back in time.) I pulled books from my shelves that were set during various time periods, then dragged them in bags, boxes, and suitcases into the classroom.  After our discussion of The Smell of Other People’s Houses, including comments on the setting as it related to the plot, I placed my copy on the ledge of the white board in the front of the room, and wrote “1970” above it.  I told students we would be making a literary timeline with the books I had brought in. Then I sat down and watched.    

​There was rich discussion as students looked through the books for evidence of a year or a time period.  Some titles were obvious: Christopher Paul Curtis’s The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963; Chris Crowe’s Mississippi Trial, 1955; Laurie Halse Anderson’s Fever 1793. So helpful! Students reminded each other of the dates of World War II and the Civil War as well as the Renaissance; the Industrial Revolution; the Great Depression; and our country’s first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls in 1848. They decided to place books set in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries along the front of the room, while stories set earlier than that would go on tables along a side wall. I had pictured a long, linear time line, but students started a vertical layering of books whose settings overlapped. I heard comments such as, “I never realized Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were contemporaries!” “I LOVED Karen Cushman’s novels when I was a kid!” “I was obsessed with books about the Great Chicago Fire, so I know this book goes here-- 1871.” “We read Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer last semester, so we know that took place in 1968. Do you see another book about the Black Panthers that we could put with it?”  

​When we were finished, students said they had a better understanding of how historical events related to each other in terms of time, and some began planning a similar activity for their own classrooms, representing various grade levels.  They liked seeing fiction and nonfiction books about the same topics sitting together. Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars is set during the 1967-68 school year, and the companion book, Okay for Now, takes place during the 1968-69 school year. It made sense to them to place biographies of John Lennon and John Glenn, along with informational books about the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, alongside those novels. 

​That evening, we never took a break.  Students just refused to leave the project.  But, at 8:00 p.m., after taking pictures with their phones, they reluctantly disassembled our literary time line and helped me lug books back to my office before leaving for home.  I was tired, and hoped to get part of my hour-long commute completed before dark.  

​I looked forward to coming back to campus on Wednesday, when I could use the same books to facilitate Part Two of my lesson on setting. We would imagine our classroom as a world map, and place the books accordingly. The front of the room would be labeled “North.”  Tables could be used for continents and countries; the floor could represent the oceans.  I thought about the books that took place in the 1930s, all clumped together on Monday.  Now they would be sorted by geography. Jen Bryant’s The Trial takes place in New Jersey in 1935, while the happenings of Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, occur in Oklahoma during the previous year, and Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry tells a different story of 1934 in Mississippi. Al Capone Does my Shirts, by Gennifer Choldenko, is set on Alcatraz in 1935. The Berlin Boxing Club, by Robert Sharenow; Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown; and Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler’s Olympics, by Jeremy Schaap, all take place in 1936 Germany; they could stay together, but would be an ocean away from the books mentioned in the preceding sentence.  Our room would look completely different with the books organized by place! We would talk about global literature and diversity; we would be able to see where my collection has holes and needs work.

​Alas. On Tuesday, the fire code enforcers made a surprise visit to my office.  What I saw as wonderful resources for teaching about setting, they perceived as “clutter” and “combustibles.” I was cited for violations and warned that the situation must be abated immediately. I dutifully went in and put my beautiful books back on the shelves. 

​I admit that at first I felt a tad like Big Brother was watching me. But YA literature has taught me to take on others’ perspectives. Now I realize that the inspectors were doing their important job, just as I was doing mine.  I even grew to be grateful that they chastised me with a visual that I could work into this post on “Setting.”   Maybe it will help some of you, my colleagues, to feel better about the state of your offices, knowing that at least yours hasn’t led to a criminal record.  Or maybe you’d like to boast about having way more books than I have; feel free to send in pictures of your office libraries. We could make a collage. Imagine the literary time line and world map we could make with our combined YA favorites!
I love my office.  I love young adult literature. I love my students. I appreciate the TIME I spend teaching, and my favorite PLACE is the classroom. I hope you enjoy whatever SETTINGS you are in right now, whether in literature or real life. (Oh, wait, aren’t they one and the same?)

A few week’s ago I asked a couple of question on Facebook and through an email blast. They were: What are you reading this summer? and What new books might you add to your syllabus? 
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Thank you. I had more responses than I could respond to or that I can repeat here. The most frequently mentioned book was The Hate U Give. It is next on my “to read” stack. It has been there for a few weeks. I am almost done with A. S. King’s terrific book, Still Life with Tornado. Both books have great reviews and come highly recommend by readers I trust. Indeed, both of these books showed up as answers to my query.  Angie Thomas’s debute novel has a future. After all, both Jason Reynolds and John Green provide a vote of confidence on the cover. That puts her in pretty good company.

​I have to admit, I took a break from YA and read a few books from the list of authors I read to relax. Here is a glimpse of some of the books for my summer indulgence. I had to catch up with Walter Mosely’s Easy Rawlins series so I read Rose Gold. I also checked off the 15th novel, Endangered, in C. J. Box’s Joe Pickett series. (If you don’t have time to visit the wild country of Montana or Wyoming, you can read about it right?) I also caught up with Dave Roicheaux in Creole Belle, James Lee Burke’s nineteenth novel tracking the adventures of Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel in and around New Iberia and New Orleans. This represents a few of the series that I dove back into this summer. The good news, there is a more recent novel in each of these fine series waiting for me at the library.   

Let's see what people are reading. Again, I had a great response. I settled on four readers who had an industrious and interesting lists. In the future, I will come back to what might go into a future syllabus.

Niki Allanah Blaylock listed the following on her bookshelf: Mosquitoland, (David Arnold); Three Dark Crowns, (Kendare Blake); Wolf by Wolf, (Ryan Graudin); Every Day,  (David Levithan), History is All You Left Me (Adam Silvera); and (Jeff Zentner)'s newest book, Goodbye Days. I have got to say, I love Niki’s list. I have read about half of these and love them. I highlighted Zentner’s The Serpent King as a YA Wednesday weekend pick a couple of weeks ago. The  rest are added to my list of books to read.

​One of the blog’s great friends, Katie Riemersma Sluiter, has been reading some great books as well. Her list includes: Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates); Everything, Everything (Nicola Yoon); Speak (Laurie Halse Anderson), and Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock (Matthew Quick). Coates’ book has had a large affect across the United States. For those of us in English Language Arts community it might be even more impactful. There has been an ongoing discussion about diversity in classrooms, in books, and in educational policy. Yoon’s book is still on the rise with the release of the movie and her second book, The Sun is also a Star is also fantastic. Speak has a track record in the world of YA literature that would be hard to match. However, if you ignore the rest of Anderson’s works you are making a big mistake. Quick is one of my personal favorites. I was glad to see Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock on the list, I think it doesn’t get enough attention.

​Raven Jade is one of my former students at LSU and is now teaching in the Baton Rouge area. She is an industrious fireball and responded with the following:  "I've been reading YA retellings of fairy tales and myths. I'm opening up the year with a unit on archetypes, so I was hoping to find some fun examples of adaptations to spur discussion. So far, I've read Entwined--retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses (Heather Dixon), Cruel Beauty-Cupid and Psyche (Rosamund Hodge), The Percy Jackson series (Rick Roirdan) The Goddess Test series-Persephone and Demeter (Aimée Carter), A Forbidden Wish-Alladin (Jessica Khoury), and A Promise of Fire-Greek myths (Amanda Bouchet). I know I'll be having students identify archetypes in YA, but I haven't decided if I'll have them actually read anything specific yet." I absolutely love it when I find new teachers working hard to create exciting curriculum for there students. Thanks Raven. Keep track of your efforts and you can report in a future blog post.

 For my final choice I share what June Pulliam sent. June teaches in the English department at LSU. She frequently teaches young adult literature and is an expert in horror fiction. You can find her past contribution to this blog here and she is scheduled for another post for Halloween 2017. I thought her summer reading was diverse and very interesting. Her response: “This summer I am reading Mississippi Trial, 1955, by Chris Crowe; American Street, by Ibi Zoboi; Bar Code Tattoo, by Suzenne Weyn, and When Dad Killed Mom, by Julius Lester. I haven't made up my syllabus for the fall yet, but I think I might include Randa Abdel-Fattah's Does My Head Look Big in This?” Her list reminded of old favorites and suggested others that I need to add to my list.
 
To conclude, I want to that everybody else who sent in reading suggestions. There are quite a few more books we could talk about, but time evades me. By far, the most common suggest is the The Hope U Give. If you haven’t read it, it is clearly time to join the party.