This week's guest contributor is Lesley Roessing. Lesley is not a stranger to the blog or the internet. She posts frequently on Facebook about various aspects of young adult literature. She posted on Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday last June and her topic was The New Nancy Drew: Strong Girls in YA Literature.  As the title of this post suggests, this time, she is discussing various representations of diversity. Thanks Lesley.

In a speech at the 2005 National Book Festival, Walter Dean Myers spoke about the characters in books that adolescents read and want to read. He said, “It is important to include their lives in books…because they are human.” In that 2005 speech he was referring to the children living in poverty in New Orleans, but other years when I attended NBF he referred to growing up in Harlem and never seeing himself in a book. In “Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books,” Sunday Review, The NY Times, Walters wrote, “Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity…. They [young people who have said they love my books] have been struck by the recognition of themselves in the story, a validation of their existence as human beings, an acknowledgment of their value by someone who understands who they are. It is the shock of recognition at its highest level.”

It is vital that teachers create diverse classroom libraries or make available to their readers books by diverse authors featuring diverse main characters. While only 12% of the 3200 books received by the Cooperative Children's Book Center from U.S. Publishers as of February 2017 were written by authors of color and First/Native Nations, only 21% of the books were about people of color and First/Native Nations. (Earlier in the month, on Sept. 13, 2017, Dr. Bickmore references this topic in a post and an article.) I continually advocate for making our school and classroom libraries and our book recommendations more diverse, but many times we only view diversity as racial and ethnic diversity as in the statistics above. However, many times we also include books which represent cultural diversity of all types: race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, age, geography, sexual orientation.

​I designed a chart for my readers to track the diversity of the authors and characters of the books they are reading and characters they are reading about so they would be more aware of the books they read. (see chart below) ​However, diversity is not only cultural. Children and adolescents today face a host of diverse challenges, challenges of which we, as their teachers, may be unaware. These students sit in our classrooms, hidden in plain sight. 

The statistics are overwhelming. Today it is likely that teachers will have students who are children of an incarcerated parent, who are homeless or living in poverty, who suffer from a mental illness, or who cope with physical or mental illnesses, in addition to other hardships and challenges. We may host children who are refugees, having survived conflicts and death in their native countries, or are living with parents who are undocumented; the list seems endless.
 
And today, thanks to perceptive, empathetic authors—many of whom experienced these same challenges, these children are able to see themselves and their obstacles, losses, adversities, and traumas reflected in books and know that their lives are valued and their resilience acknowledged. Readers can use these books as maps, noting how characters handled and mishandled problems. And those who are lucky enough to have not experienced these challenges firsthand, through the stories of others, learn compassion for those who have and can applaud their resilience and fortitude.

1. More than 2.7 million children in the U.S. have an incarcerated parent. Approximately 10 million children have experienced parental incarceration at some point in their lives. Between 1991 and 2007, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that the number of mothers in federal and state prisons had increased a staggering 122 percent. During the same period, the number of children with mothers in prison had more than doubled, rising to almost 150,000 children nationwide. Nationally, there are more than 120,000 incarcerated mothers and 1.1 million incarcerated fathers who are parents of minor children.
 
In the poignant novel Ruby on the Outside by Nora Raleigh Baskin, 11-year old Ruby is on the outside, and her mother is on the inside. Ruby lives with her aunt and has never had best friend because since she was five, her mother has been in prison and to survive, she thinks she has to keep it a secret. During the summer before she starts sixth grade, Ruby years for a best friend to help her navigate middle school, but can she trust anyone with her secret? In flashbacks, the reader sees the effect of parental incarceration on Ruby through the emotional, highly regulated visits to her mother and Ruby’s observations of the effect of incarceration on other child and adolescent visitors.

In the first book of a new series by Jason Reynolds, Ghost, readers meet Castle Cranshaw a/k/a Ghost whose father is in prison for holding a gun on Ghost and his mother. Ghost is trying to outrun his anger and joins a track team, learning that everyone, even his new friends on the elite team, has challenges.
​
Take Me There relates the story of Dylan Dawson, a teen with a criminal record; a teen who is almost illiterate and feels like he has no worth or future but struggles to write poetry for his girl; a teen whose father has been in prison since he was six. Dylan’s hopes for a better life with Jess seem out of reach. His father speaks to Dylan through a book he wrote in prison about the perils of illiteracy, which preordains people to a life in prison.  

2. Education Department statistics say 1.3 million homeless children were enrolled in U.S. schools in the 2012-2013 school year. (CBS News) and approximately 16.0 million, or 22 percent, of all children under the age of 18 are members of families living in poverty; this population includes the 11.1 million 5- to 17-year-olds
 
Paper Things by Jennifer Richard Jacobson takes the reader through many of the scenarios that a homeless child experiences. Ari and Gage’s mother died four years before. When he turns nineteen, Gage decides that he wants to take care of his 11-year-old sister Ari. They leave their guardian’s house and become homeless. Over the 6 week period, they sleep in a car, a storage unit, a friend’s 1-room apartment, a shelter, and Ari’s grades fall, she smells, and she is too embarrassed to tell her friends why she is not returning their calls. After she returns home, Ari gathers materials for students for a school craft activity, learning from her experiences that everyone might not have what they need to participate.

In The Exact Location of Home by Kate Messner, Kirby Zigonski and his mother lose their apartment when she can no longer pay the rent. Zig’s father is gone (incarcerated, as the reader later learns) and his mother is going to school to become a nurse and better their lives. They move into a shelter and Zig finds it trying to complete homework and his grades fall and he wears the same clothes over and over. He also finds out that many of the children from the trailers, such a class bully Kevin Richards, live temporarily in the shelter and he now sees why Kevin is not prepared for classes, as his teacher points out in front of the class. This novel, as Paper Things, makes the reader aware of the full practical and emotional realities caused by homelessness.

Even though primarily a book about 9/11 and teaching the events of September 11 to students who were not alive in 2001, Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes also tells the story of Deja who lives in a homeless shelter with her family. Her father doesn’t work and the reason why is tied to his September 11, 2001 experience.

Sketches by Eric Walters is the story of adolescents who are homeless. Dana is a runaway and with her new friends Brent and Ashley, she learns to navigate street life. She becomes involved with Sketches, an agency that provides access to art supplies and maybe away off the streets.

​Sonya Sones’ latest verse novel, Saving Red, introduces us to Red, a homeless adolescent. Molly, the narrator, meets Red when she is counting the homeless for a school project. As she becomes more involved with Red, Molly, who has struggles of her own, decides that she will help Red get home to her family even though Red shows no inclination to leave the streets. Molly eventually realizes that Red is mentally ill (schizoaffective disorder) and worries about her safety on the streets. Saving Red presents two issues in contemporary adolescent life, mental illness and homelessness and the connection between the two.

3. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, about 20% of American children suffer from a diagnosable mental illness during a given year. Further, nearly 5 million American children and adolescents suffer from a serious mental illness (one that significantly interferes with their day-to-day life). Besides Seeing Red, there are many novels that feature main characters with mental health challenges.

Depression:
The Memory of Light by Francisco Stork is the story of Vicky, a teen experiencing depression whose failed suicide allows her to get the help she needs. The novel focuses on her rehabilitation process and that of her recovery group,  four teens who experience diverse mental health issues.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:
Fourteen-year-old Adam is a member of a support group for teens who cope with obsessive-compulsive disorder through a variety of rituals in Teresa Toten’s The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B. In this group Adam meets Robyn who is struggling with her mother’s death and tries to help her while dealing with his own family relationship challenges, including a mother who has mental health issues of her own and a younger step-brother who is displaying signs of anxiety.

In Finding Perfect by Elly Swartz, twelve-year-old Molly has rituals to help her find perfect. But when her mother moves away for a new job, the rituals increase and take over her life as she tries to keep this a secret and put everything in order so her life can be as perfect as possible.

In Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone junior Samantha McAllister hides a problem, her battle with Purely-Obsessional OCD. To maintain her popular lifestyle, she constantly worries and second-guesses herself and her choices—and keeps her secret from her friends at all costs. She meets a new group of students who befriend her, show her what is important, and make her feel more “normal.” This Poetry Corner allows her to express herself through writing.

Agoraphobia:
Morgan, the main character of Underwater by Marisa Reichardt, is suffering from a type of agoraphobia. The teen feels that she was partly to blame for a deadly tragedy at her school, although her part was unintentional, initiated by a good deed. Since that day she cannot move past the front door of her apartment. She can’t see friends, and she cannot go anywhere. She is afraid of living, feeling like she is underwater. Luckily a new friend moves into the apartment complex and tries to connect her back to the outside world.

4. On any given day, there are nearly 428,000 children in foster care in the United States. In 2015, over 670,000 children spent time in U.S. foster care.(childrensrights.org). During 2015, 269,509 children entered foster care (childwelfare.gov).
 
Lynda Mullaly Hunt’s One for the Murphys (This novel is represented in an early post) introduces Carley Connors, a most unwilling foster child. She is placed with a happy, loving family but doesn’t think she deserves this and refuses to accept her good fortune. She is also conflicted because she wants to be with her mother. Many times when we see or hear of unhappy foster children, we blame the foster system. But it is a difficult dilemma for children who sometimes feel guilty for being happy or keep their guard up in case they are not retained or in case they do go back to their biological family.

One of my favorite literary characters is Lonnie Collins Motion, the Locomotion of Jacqueline Woodson’s verse novel Locomotion.  I wanted to adopt him but was turned down because (1) fictional character and (2) Lonnie already has a wonderful, caring foster mother, Miss Edna.  Lonnie lost his mother at age 7, and 4 years later his teacher is showing him how to capture and work through his emotions through writing poetry.

Fourteen-year-old Matilda “Matt,” the main character of Kathy Erskine’s Quaking, is not technically a foster child. After her parents’ deaths, she has gone through every relative she has. Her last chance for a family is distant relatives Sam and Jessica Fox, and Matt is convinced she soon will be leaving them also. But the Foxes are Quakers and, in protesting the war, their meeting house and lives are threatened. Sam and Jessica help Matt to value herself and find her voice to stand up for the family she is growing to love. 

​Lesley Roessing taught middle school language arts for twenty years. She now serves as Founding Director of the Coastal Savannah Writing Project and Senior Lecturer in College of Education of Armstrong State University where she teaches a course on Bibliotherapy. Lesley is the author of four professional books for teachers: The Write to Read: Response Journals that Increase Comprehension; Comma Quest: The Rules They Followed—The Sentences They Saved; No More “Us” and “Them”: Classroom Lessons & Activities to Promote Peer Respect; and Bridging the Gap: Reading Critically and Writing Meaningfully to Get to the Core, as well as articles for a variety of publications. She is editor of Connections, the GCTE peer-reviewed journal, and a writes the Writing to Learn column for AMLE Magazine. She is an avid reader of Young Adult literature and loves sharing novels with other educators and readers. Reach her at [email protected]

If you follow my blog you know that I have a great deal of respect for Rich and Sandra. I think they are terrific writers who demonstrate the ability to do massive amounts of research to get the story right. They not only want the facts, they want the feel of the settings to mingle with the hopes and fears of the characters. Listening to them at conferences is always a joy. Last year at NCTE their passionate discussion of their research on Jonathan Daniels moved me tremendously. Rich described how Sandra kept working until they were able to stand in very place where Jonathan and African American civil rights workers were imprisoned. As I explored Bound by Ice, I wondered how many times Sandra ran out to sit in the snow to gain a level of empathy. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to find out that she did just that.

I have followed Rich for quite awhile. He has had an important career writing a variety of sports based books for adolescents. I say sports based, because they are much more that sports stories. Like the best writers in the genre the sport is a vehicle that allows the author and reader to have a dialogue about challenges and choice and the personal fortitude that one must develop in order to come out on top. If you don't know Rich as a sports writer, when you finish Bound by Ice, you should check them out.

The first book I read by Sandra was Muckers. This book is about a small town football team, but to say it is a novel about a sport is to ignore the power of this historical novel. Sandra's research into the real events and context of this football team from Hatley, Arizona proves her expertise as a journalist. From the beginning of her career as a novelist, she demonstrates that she can encase her research in a narrative that will engage adolescent and adult readers. In fact, Muckers, was the first book that I handed over to my social studies colleague, Paul Binford. Since then we have been collaborating on how young adult literature can help construct cross curricular activities between the Social Studies and the English classroom.  I guess we have to thank Sandra for acting as a scholarship matchmaker. So, once again, when you finish Bound by Ice, you should check out the rest of Sandra's books.

In short, both Rich and Sandra are authors you should be reading. Since winter is coming, why not start with Bound by Ice. 

Sandra Neil Wallace and Rich Wallace are the authors of the new barrier-breaking adventure book Bound by Ice: A True North Pole Survival Story (Calkins Creek), which has received starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus. The investigative nonfiction authors’ most recent biography, Blood Brother: Jonathan Daniels and His Sacrifice for Civil Rights, is an ALA Notable book and a Chicago Public Library Best of the Best. It earned a YALSA award nomination for Excellence in Nonfiction, was a Booklist Editors’ Choice, and was named one of Bank Street College’s Best Children’s Books of the Year. Blood Brother won the Parents’ Choice Gold Award, ILA’s Social Justice Literature Award, and the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. Visit the authors on Twitter: @SandraNWallace and @RWallaceBooks and online at www.sandraneilwallace.com and richwallacebooks.com
​

Today's YA Wednesday post is from a new contributor, Terri Suico. Terri is an assistant professor at St. Mary's College. Terri and I have been hanging around at the same conferences for several years. The questions she asks in the title are concepts I think about all of the time.  She frames the situation quite nicely in this post. She is also conducting a study around the topic and is soliciting participants to take a survey and perhaps do an interview. Perhaps you or, if you are teaching preservice teachers, some of your students would like to participate. Terri, thanks for the thoughtful post.

These are just a few of the very real comments I’ve heard when discussing the use of young adult literature in the English classroom. They might sound like something you would hear from a stereotypical and uncompromisingly traditional English teacher whose experience with YAL was during the era of formulaic series books. However, these remarks are from some of the teacher candidates I have worked with in different education programs. These individuals have been, to a person, thoughtful, well-read, and motivated. They’ve also shown great eagerness to teach and share their interest in literature. Their stated goals for teaching have included wanting to cultivate a love of reading in their students. Furthermore, they grew up and live during an era that YAL expert Michael Cart has called the second “golden age of young adult fiction” (CNN), with books like the Harry Potter and Hunger Games series gaining legions of readers and becoming entrenched in popular culture. These characteristics seem at odds with their vehement rejection of young adult literature and its place in the secondary English classroom. Rather than seeing YAL as being worthy of study in its own right or even viewing it as a way of getting students to enjoy reading, they see it as undeserving of serious consideration. On the other hand, I also have worked and currently work with future teachers who embrace YAL and see it as a vital and valuable part of the curriculum. 

These conflicting opinions are nothing new. Indeed, they mirror the battle over young adult literature that has raged since the genre first emerged in 1942. Concerns with YAL have often addressed its quality. In a December 1956 article for NCTE’s English Journal entitled “Literature for Adolescents – Pap or Protein?”, reading specialist and education professor Frank G. Jennings obviously decided it was the former, stating that “the stuff of adolescent literature, for the most part, is mealy-mouthed, gutless, and pointless” (p.526). This sentiment (or variations of it) has echoed through the years, with detractors of YAL decrying its lack nuance or complexity. 

In 2014, Slate contributor Ruth Graham caused an uproar in internet book circles when she wrote an article unambiguously entitled “Against YA: Adults Should Be Embarrassed to Read Children’s Books”. Besides perceptions of YAL’s sentimentality and simplicity, others have voiced concerns over its subversive content, such as sexuality and drug use. These concerns have led young adult books to be frequently banned and challenged according to the American Library Association.

​Young adult literature also has ardent advocates. Reaction online to Graham’s article was swift, with defenders of YAL ranging from Julie Beck of The Atlantic to Mark Medley of National Post to Elisabeth Donnelly of Flavorwire decrying Graham’s contentions. Book sales also attest to YAL’s popularity; a study released in 2015 by the Association of American Publishers found that “the area of largest growth for the trade [book] category was children and young adult,” with young adult books selling over 700 million units in 2014. Beyond journalists, bloggers, and buyers, YAL has also received support from the professional and academic realms. Besides promoting for scholarship in YAL, the NCTE and the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE (ALAN) champion YAL’s use in the English classroom and offer resources to help and encourage teachers to include it in the curriculum. The NCTE has reinforced this by embedding knowledge of adolescent literature into its teacher preparation standards. Books by educators and researchers, such as Teaching Young Adult Literature Today: Insights, Considerations, and Perspectives for the Classroom Teacher (reviewed here), edited by Judith A. Hayn, Jeffrey S. Kaplan and Karina R. Clemmons, provide additional insight into adolescent literature’s worth when working with adolescents and further substantiate its place in the curriculum. 

Considering the sometimes-heated back-and-forth between YAL’s detractors and its devoted champions brings us back to thinking about aspiring English teachers and their impressions on the books’ value as literature and place in the English curriculum. Do they, like the students quoted at the start of this post, align with Jennings and Graham? Or do they find YAL meaningful when it comes to reading and teaching? Furthermore, how did they come to form these views? What do these things mean for the future of YAL and its role in the English classroom? The research I’m doing seeks to answer these questions. Besides adding to the study and conversation on YAL, this information might also allow us to get a better sense of what the future holds for YAL, particularly in terms of its place in schools.
 
For those interested in participating, please visit the online survey (linked here) or contact me for more information. The survey takes around 5-10 minutes, and participants who complete it and include their contact information will be entered in a drawing for one of two $25 gift cards. In the survey, participants have the option to take part in a one-on-one interview to discuss their ideas in more depth. Those who complete the interview will receive a $15 gift card and will still be eligible for the survey drawing.

I love this time of the year. New classes are exciting. Meeting new faculty members and new students is invigorating. I also welcome the shift from summer heat to the moderate fall weather. On top of all of that, it is book award season. On Tuesday, September 12, 2017, the longlist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature (NBA) was announced. It was almost perfect timing. I was planning a post about the representation of race in the history of the first twenty years of this important and prestigious award.  So, I found myself scrabbling a bit to include the new information.

About a month ago, an article that I worked on with two graduate, Yunying Xu and Myra Infante Sheridan, was published. We were asking a simple question: How is racial/cultural diversity evident or not in the awards representing Young Adult Literature. As we explored the question, we focused in on the first twenty years of the NBA. That provided us with 20 winners and 5 books that made the short list each year for a total of 100 books. Many of us who teach and research Young Adult literature advocate for diverse books. We know that the representation is improving since the early research in 1965 by Larrick's “The All-White World of Children’s Books." Are the statistics significantly better? There is a sense that the publishing world is doing better, but what are the numbers? Each year the Cooperative Children's Book Center posts information about this issue.  However, there is very little actual documentation of the statistics as this issue directly relates to Young Adult literature. More has been done to document the disparity among children's literature.

After some trial and error, writing and rewriting the article was published in Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education in Volume 16 issue 1, you can find the whole issue here.  For direct link to our article,  Where Are the People of Color? Representation of Cultural Diversity in the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and Advocating for Diverse Books in a Non-Post Racial Society click here. Yes, it is a long title, but Taboo loves them.

Most of the post will be visual. Each cover image is link to Amazon where you can read reviews from readers and, in most cases, read excepts from reviews from professional review sources. 

In the article we advocate for diverse books and state the data about how diversity is represented among the 100 books and the 20 winners. In this blog post, I focus on the 20 winning books. In this first section, I show the covers of the nine books that have diverse characters.

All nine of the books are fantastic examples of quality literature. Don't misunderstand, I think the other 11 books are also great. Some of my favorite books are in that group. For example, most people get tried of me talking about True Believer and When Zachery Beaver Came to Town. And, on Thursday afternoon, my students will be discussing Holes.

The point of the paper, however, is to focus on representations of diversity. All of the books above feature a diverse main character, but not all of them are written by diverse authors. There is a whole debate about how and if writers should represent characters beyond their own experience and ethnic background. Again, the point of the paper is not to argue that issue, but to simply report the facts. Below, are the five diverse authors who wrote one of the winning books. Each image below is linked to the authors webpage with one exception. Victor Martinez is no longer with us and his image is linked to a Wikipedia page.

Neither the paper or this blog post should be interpreted as a critique of the work of any of the committees. We respect the hard work that it takes to sort through all of the books and to collectively arrive at a winner. Hopefully, the data can serve as a place for the conversation to begin as we discuss the need for diverse books. 

The blog post points briefly to the diversity among the 20 winners. The article deals with all 100 books and provides some context for the discussion around diversity in Young Adult literature and the a brief discussion about how diversity is being address in our current cultural milieu. In addition, to the discussion in the paper we have also provided a spreadsheet of all of the data that will be archive on the blog here for anyone who is interested.
In the final section of today's post you can find the current longlist for the NBA. 

The current longlist for 2017 has a great deal of diversity. As someone who teaches YA literature and research representations of diversity in this area, it is a very exciting list. I have read some, but not all of these books. My reading list for the next few weeks become a bit longer. The links below take you to a review on the Publishers Weekly website. (I good website to have bookmarked, by the way.) The cover images are linked to a place where you can by the book and see reviews by readers. I know that Sharon Kane and other teachers will be talking about these books in their YA courses over the next few weeks.

What Girls Are Made Of by Elana K. Arnold (Lerner/Carolrhoda Lab)
Far from the Tree by Robin Benway (HarperTeen)
All the Wind in the World by Samantha Mabry (Algonquin)
You Bring the Distant Near by Mitali Perkins (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum/Dlouhy)
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez (Knopf)
Orphan Island by Laurel Snyder (HarperCollins/Walden Pond)
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray)
Clayton Byrd Goes Underground by Rita Williams-Garcia (HarperCollins/Amistad)
American Street by Ibi Zoboi (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray)

I think the committee has done a wonderful job and I look forward to the short list in a few weeks. May some of the blog's readers would like to send in their comments about this list and the short list when it is released.
​Until next week.

My daughter was born on Christmas Eve. She was my first baby, and her older brother and sister were excited to meet her.
 
Did you catch that? I know it doesn’t make sense, but it is my family’s story. My first baby was my third child.
 
A year and a half before her birth, two precious toddlers became a part of my family through the foster care system. When my biological daughter was born, she was 100% their sister, never knowing anything else, yet legally she was merely another kid who lived in the same home they were placed in.
 
One day a judge signed a piece of paper. That paper made them “our children” and made the baby “their sister.” That paper had an extraordinary amount of power to clean up the mess and uncomplicate their web of family members.
 
Except that it didn’t.
 
Despite the language, despite the legality, they still have two moms and two dads and lots of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings. The paper made everything official and legal, but in reality, it changed absolutely nothing. Three years have passed, my eldest is now nearing middle-school (be still my mama heart), and life has failed to uncomplicated itself.
 
My experience is far from unique. In 2015 there were 427,910 children in foster care in the U.S (Full 2015 Report) . That number continues to rise. In my own home state of Montana, as of December 2016 there were 3,396 children in foster care (Adopt US Kids). In a state where the current population of youth under 18 is 113,353 (MT Population), that means almost 3% of our children are in the foster care system. There is no denying that these kids are in our classrooms and in the social networks of our students. Yet their experience is relatively unseen in the literature we teach. If students are expected to see themselves in some way in YA lit., what literary mirrors are available for foster-youth? How are they being represented to other readers? 

Runaway by Wendelin Van Draanen

​There are many things I love about this text. Although problematic if read the way I do in terms of youth agency and autonomy, it can also be read as the story of a young girl who overcomes unimaginable obstacles, never gives up despite the hardships she faces, and ultimately finds somewhere she belongs. I believe it would be particularly interesting in class discussion because of the difference in genre (it is written as a series of journal entries) and the importance of the English teacher for Holly’s growth (because, honestly, I am a bit biased). 

The Guardian by Joyce Sweeney

​Of the four texts, The Guardian is the most action-packed, complete with supernatural elements, motorcycles, an ex-con, and a kidnapping. But more than that, it demonstrates how much the complicated web of family can impact the foster-youth, albeit in extreme and unlikely ways. This text would work well in a classroom for many reasons, but the ambiguity of the title is something I would refer back to in order to keep students curious and engaged. Who exactly is the “guardian” that the title references? The answer remains unclear, even to the end. 

One for the Murphys by Lynda Mullaly Hunt           

​Although in many ways the most predictable text, this novel succeeds in one primary way: of the four texts, this one is the most self-aware of its presentation of “foster-kid” as a stereotype. Throughout the text the foster-youth is continuously comparing herself to the stereotype and trying to decide how, or if, she fits within it. For this reason, though the others have more depth in a literary sense, One for the Murphys may be the best starting point for addressing the way foster-kids are viewed in our culture and the inaccuracy of viewing people through a stereotype. (For interesting comparison, see also articles discussing the power of “stereotype threat”, such as this one by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson.) 

Touch Blue by Cynthia Lord

​From a strictly literary standpoint, of the four listed I most recommend Touch Blue. This novel is filled with deeper threads that are begging for discussion and analysis: the significance of the island location, the metaphor of the Monopoly game, the “depiction of rurality” (as discussed in this previous YA Wednesday post by Dr. Rob Petrone and Alli Behrens), the power of superstitions, the reversal of the child-to-adult narrative, and many others.  

Though each of the above texts could provide a valid starting point for the discussion around foster-youth, the simple and didactic nature typical of YA creates some potential problems that must also be addressed.
 
Despite the seeming variety, the storylines are very similar:

1. Something traumatic happens to put the youth in foster care.
2. The youth character doesn’t feel like they belong.
3. The youth character somehow rebels against the authorities.
4. The youth character realizes that life is better if they accept their place.
5. The end assumes everything is tied up neatly and they all live “happily ever after.”

 
In every one of these texts, the foster-youth is made to submit (willingly) to the systemic authorities before their lives can improve. It is only through giving up their agency that they are able to exercise any true agency, for it is at this exact moment in each of the texts that the foster-youth are able to claim any lasting change in their own lives.

Of course, for the most part, we want our youth to submit to their various authorities (particularly to educational authorities since that makes classroom management much simpler). However, I like to believe that as educators we want to teach our students how to think rather than what to think. This includes acknowledging that not every situation is black and white, but the grey line is one they must often consider. Sometimes submission will not, in fact, make everything better. Sometimes subversion is necessary. Sometimes...well, almost always, things are just not that simple.
 
Second, the assumption of “happily ever after” can be problematic, particularly for young readers who almost see themselves in the text. It can provide hope, but if their situation is not neatly worked out like those in the texts (it won’t be) I fear it can actually fuel a sense of hopelessness and self-loathing. “What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I get the happy ending?” Despite finding and reading books about foster-youth, few foster-youth will find their experiences in the texts. Based on my own experience with foster and adoption, it just doesn’t work the way it does in the books.
 
I believe the most successful approach to these texts would be acknowledging and addressing these concerns head on. Make each a topic of class discussion, and have students critically consider the benefits and drawbacks of the after-school special conclusions in not only these texts but much of YA literature, both in their tendency to teach a lesson that reinforces common power structures and the way everything wraps up so nicely in the end. ​

My kids are no longer in foster care. As of May 2014 they are part of our forever family. They may no longer be “foster kids,” but for the rest of their lives they will always be kids who were adopted from foster care. I want them to see their stories in the literature they read, but I want them to read them critically and avoid believing any narrative that is either too directive or too simplistic. As an educator I want students to see the texts not only as mirrors and windows, but also to understand that the view they get from each is a singular window to a singular situation, and not necessarily an accurate representation of the experiences of any individual or group. However, if we can get them to read critically, these books are great for beginning the conversation about the foster system and those who are most directly affected by it.
 
A final plea: If you are an author, please consider examining the foster-care system and creating a strong story around it. We need more options, particularly for an older YA audience.

Shauna is an adjunct professor at Montana State teaching writing and literature. She taught high school English for five years and this is her second year at MSU. She can be contacted at: ​[email protected]