I was fortunate to be invited as a keynote speaker at  2017 Convention of the Mississippi Council of Social Studies. My keynote focused on using YA nonfiction and historical fiction as point of curricular connection between English Language Arts and the Social Studies. I began my focusing on three people who will be keynote speaker at the 2017 National Convention of the National Council of the Social Studies in San Francisco (17-19 November). They have a host of great speakers this year. I focused on three: Daniel Ellsberg, Elizabeth Partridge, and Dave Isay. I love how there is strong focus at the NCSS convention on story. All stories have context within the domains of the social studies.

Below is the power point I used for the Keynote. The disclaimer is that the power point is not wordy, but you should be able to see the books and the connections I am making. I end with the notion that a teacher could build a unit connecting the experience of race in American through their experience in three moments: The American Revolution, The March on Selma, and the current discussions about the relationship between African American boys and the police. I need to thank both Paul Binford and Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil; we are all working a project that we hope will soon be published. The final slide represents ways to expand the connection between the Seeds of American Trilogy by Laurie Halse Anderson, The March Trilogy, by Lewis, Aydin, Powell, and All American Boys by Reynolds and Kiely.

In the session speech, I tried to inform social studies teachers about awards for YA nonfiction and historical fiction. I discussed several awards and spent some time discussing how much nonfiction made the short list of the National Book Award during the first 20 years. Again, the slides are not wordy and the one following Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is intended to show how themes of the book can connect to various aspects of the social studies.

In case anybody is interested Mississippi Social Studies teachers are fantastic. The folks at Mississippi State University wer great hosts. More importantly, they gifted my a cow bell! Hail State!) Thanks for following the blog. Please share with friends and colleagues.

It has been another busy week. Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday has some good news that is the product of an idea that began at the 2017 Conference on English Education (CEE) Summer Conference last June in Columbus, Ohio at The Ohio State University campus. Typical of past CEE conferences, it was a wonderful experience. The keynote speakers were insightful and sessions were an opportunity for renewal. Members of CEE often accomplish much of their work through the work of the organization's various commissions. 

CEE has commissions that have a specific focus on issues that members discuss in an effort to supply leadership and information for English Educators. They consist of the following:

• Commission on Social Justice in Teacher Education Programs 
• Commission on New Literacies, Technologies and Teacher Education 
• Commission on the Study and Teaching of Adolescent Literature   
• Commission on the Teaching of Poetry    
• Commission on English Methods Teaching and Learning   
• Commission on Writing Teacher Education   
• Commission on Arts and Literacies 

• Commission for Dismantling the School-to-Prison Pipeline    
• Commission to Support Early Career English Language Arts Teachers​

As you might guess, I have been participating with the activities of the Commission on the Study of Teaching of Adolescent Literature. Commissions often suggest and sponsor sessions during the annual NCTE convention. During the summer conference, each commission has the chance to hold planning meetings. Last summer, an idea surfaced that has circulated among the membership for several years. Members of this commission are extremely productive; they attend the ALAN workshop, participate and present at sessions during NCTE and other conferences, write articles for The ALAN Review, The Signal Journal, and Study and Scrutiny, and there have been a number of recent edited books with a great collection of chapters.

At the same time, there has not been a summit to explore what we collectively know about research and teaching of young adult literature. There are few large scale empirical studies and the research community hasn't yet claimed the same respect as literary scholars that has been achieved by those in the field of children's literature. We still work to promote young adult literature as valuable reading material for adolescents.  We continue to advocate for diverse books and free choice reading even as we try to collection information on how it is used in schools. Members in attendance at the two planning sessions, suggested it was perhaps time to explore what we know through the activities of a summit. Several of us--Crag Hill, Sarah Donovan, Michelle Falter, Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil, and myself, were charged with exploring the possibility of putting together a summit. We began brainstorming and meeting every few weeks on google hangouts.

We wanted to include the perspective of researchers, teachers, librarians, graduate students, and the community of YA writers as well. We wanted people to bring ideas and research projects, and suggestions for summarizing what we know. UNLV has agreed to help support this summit and a local committee of Las Vegas teachers and librarians will help us organize events for educators and students. Thursday will function as a regular conference packed with presentations and panels. Please consider submitting proposals. Friday will function as a EduCamp with the ideas and meetings of the day coming from the presentations and discussion from the previous day. Saturday will be more like regular YA conference with three author keynote with each keynote followed by an hour of breakout session linked to topics that appear in the author's books as well as a practical sessions that focuses on how to use these books in the classroom. Those who attend the whole conference will participate in all three days--Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

To accommodate local teachers, librarians, parents, and students, there will be the option to attend just the Saturday event. We have made arrangement for the three keynote authors for Saturday to also attend on Thursday and Friday as participants. We hope that the summit facilitates and open dialogue between everyone interested in young adult literature. Of course, there will be more details to come as the event approaches, but we hope you plan to attend now. ​

One of the members of the planning committee, Sarah Donovan, captures the excitement and anticipations that we all feel: 

As a doc student at UIC, I researched young adult genocide literature. I spent a lot of time trying to connect with the authors who wrote these books for their insight into the writing and publication process. I had always imagined a conference that would put researchers authors and teachers in the same room to talk about the craft and teaching of these books. Now I teach diverse literature in middle school and teacher ed, and because of this conference  I will finally have the opportunity to actually sit with some of our field's emerging and established authors, researchers, librarian, and teachers from across the country. What a gift this conference will be for us and for the students with whom we share these books.

We hope you will join us and authors--Laurie Halse Anderson, Kekla Magoon, and Bill Konigsberg as, collectively, we discuss our field.

.Check out Laurie on her webpage and on Facebook

Check out Bill on his webpage and on Facebook.

Check out Kekla on her webpage and on Facebook.

Please join us in Las Vegas. For more information you can email me at [email protected] and follow this blog.

This week's post is provide by Erinn Bentley and one of her students, Jessina Anderson. I don't know about you, but at the midpoint in the semester, I am ready for a fall break. If you don't have a fall break (we don't.) then it Isn't reasonable to fantasy about future trips or spend some time remember a past trip? Erinn has experienced something I am still dreaming about. She was able to do a study abroad experience and teach young adult literature at the same time. Thanks Erinn and Jessina for sharing your summer semester abroad with us.

This past summer, I was given the opportunity to teach my dream class, affectionately named the “Harry Potter Class” by my students. I gathered a group of undergraduate English majors and whisked them away to the magical city of Oxford, England to study YA literature. For seventeen days, our classroom became cobblestone streets, museums, gardens, cathedrals, and markets. We explored the very places that inspired iconic texts, such as the Harry Potter series, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and the Chronicles of Narnia.
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I anticipated that the students would be enthralled with the texts and entranced by the places we visited. The challenge for me as an instructor, though, was how to connect these two course components: literary study and study of the host country and culture. I wondered, How do I help students use the YA novels as “lenses” for viewing their study abroad experiences? In this blog, I will describe a few activities I developed in the hopes of fostering these learning goals. 

The first activity was the Alice in Wonderland Scavenger Hunt. As the birthplace of the immortal Alice, Oxford contains several sights related to Carroll’s novels. For this scavenger hunt, students were given a series of tasks to complete in their free time. Some tasks required students to visit Alice-related sights; others required student to complete activities related to themes in the novel. Finally, students took a “selfie” of each completed task to document their progress. Some tasks included:

• Who doesn’t love tea time? Take a selfie as you enjoy afternoon tea.
• At various times, Alice feels “too big” or feels “too small” compared with her surroundings. Take a photo of a place that makes you feel “big” or “small” in some way.
• Alice is often lost, which leads her to new adventures. Take a selfie of a time when you feel “lost” either physically or metaphorically.
• Find the Dodo bird and take a selfie.

​During the scavenger hunt, students were able to explore their surroundings through Alice’s point of view. By sharing their selfies, we all discovered new and interesting ways to view ourselves, the text, and Oxford. 

Another activity was the Harry Potter Sorting Hat. In this activity, students “sorted” experiences they encountered during the study abroad trip into one of three categories: Muggleish (ordinary or mundane), Magical (fantastic), or Made-Up (unreal or over-the-top). For each experience, students wrote a brief explanation on a notecard and posted that notecard in its respective category on a wall in our classroom.
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Interestingly, most students sorted the “touristy” sights in Oxford and elsewhere (e.g., Platform 9 ¾ , the London Eye, and Picadilly Circus) as Made-Up or Muggleish. The Magical experiences were the everyday ones, such as eating fish and chips at a local pub, or the experiences they encountered outside of our required field trips (e.g., visiting local museums, going to live performances, and venturing to favorite authors’ birthplaces). Through this activity, I was able to read students’ cards and literally see their study abroad perceptions, their impressions of their host country, and their moments of culture shock posted there on our wall.

In closing, I would like to share a course reflection written by one of my students, Jessina Anderson. Jess is a self-proclaimed Harry Potter fan, and when I asked her to describe the most memorable aspect of this course, I was certain she would talk about our Harry Potter walking tour in Oxford or our trip to the Warner Brothers Studios outside of London. Instead, her response was similar to her peers’ Magical experiences. That is, Jess focused on an everyday experience that was not a planned component of our course.
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Her response reminded me that my carefully crafted lesson plans and instructional activities may facilitate students’ comprehension of literary works; however, the most powerful learning experiences are often ones students design themselves. I thank Jess (and her peers) for showing me the importance of allowing students opportunities to “go off the syllabus” and make learning a personal and lived experience. 

I, Jessina, have spent my entire life doing walk-abouts in cities all over the country. I grew up as an Army brat, so my family has explored from the Pacific to the Atlantic. We loved to walk down to Pike’s Place Market in Seattle, the River walk in San Antonio, and even Broadway in Columbus, GA. Although each city had different buildings, businesses, and people, the atmosphere was always the same. There were advertisements for sports, movies, and politicians plastering the streets. People were hustling from one place to another without considering what was around them. Everything was either new and modern or old and rundown. It was always the same stuffing in a different wrapper.

In June of 2017 I was given the opportunity to study Young Adult Literature in Oxford, England. I recall the meetings about culture shock, and I remember thinking to myself that it’s an English speaking country with similar customs to ours. I didn’t expect much culture shock at all. However, I soon learned how wrong I was. I remember walking into downtown Oxford the day after arriving in England. I finally understood the meaning of the term culture ‘shock.’ It was as if the new world and the old lived in perfect harmony. There were smartly-dressed business people on cell-phones, and there were stores lining the streets with all the modern merchandise. On the other hand, time seemed to have frozen hundreds of years ago.

The buildings in the United States are just that, buildings. In Oxford the buildings are a storyline. Even without someone there to interpret the story for you, which we were very lucky to have, you can look at the details and they spoke for themselves. The carvings in the walls were full of characters and personality. One of the prominent buildings in Oxford, the Radcliffe Camera, had giant stone busts surrounding its perimeter. The detail in each man’s face was so distinct it was almost as if you could see what they were thinking at the time. There was careful consideration put into every centimeter of the statues. They were awe-inspiring. Furthermore, the whole city was full of them. Oxford streets were lined with men from the ages looking down at you. Nothing in my life has ever made me feel more connected to the past than admiring the way the British preserved their history.
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The architecture was just the surface of that admiration though. The love of classic literature is what really took my breath away. Where Americans line the streets with football team logos, British line them with Alice in Wonderland, Jane Austen, and museum artifacts. The posters were of plays and museum displays. The entire atmosphere was an appreciation for the past happily married to the present. For people, like me, that have a passion for classic literature it was emotionally overwhelming. Every street that we walked down was full of historical preservation. It was an experience unlike any other, and I will forever have a deeper appreciation for the contrast between classic and modern through the eyes of the British.
 
 

One of the best small conferences I go to is the one at Kennesaw State. This week, Bryan Gillis give us an introduction to the 2018 conference in March. The host of authors coming this year is terrific.  I hope more of you will consider joining me this coming March. Bryan has also contributed in the past. You can find his post here. 

​For the past 26 years, the Kennesaw State University Conference on Literature for Children and Young Adults has created magical two-day experiences for teachers, preservice teachers, public and school librarians, media specialists, and school administrators in which they have had opportunities to listen to and interact with highly acclaimed children's and young adult authors as well as attend presentations from master teachers and experts in the field on all facets of literacy instruction. 

​It has been my honor and privilege to be a part of the Kennesaw State University Literature Conference for the past ten years. I am very proud of the work my colleagues and I have done to make ours one of the best literature conferences in the country. It is with pride and a bit of sadness that I announce that this will be my last year as director of this incredible conference. As such, I want to thank everyone who has helped make the conference so successful. First, thank you to the KSU Bagwell College of Education and our dean, Dr. Arlinda Eaton who has been so incredibly supportive. To our conference executive board, Nancy Gillis, Natasha Thornton, Sanjuana Rodriguez, and Nora Schlesinger, who work to make sure that every aspect of the conference runs smoothly and efficiently. Thanks to all of the amazing teachers, librarians, media specialists, and administrators who continue to attend each year, and of course, a special debt of gratitude goes out to all of the authors who have graced our conference with their presence. 

​Here is a partial list from the past ten years- Gene Luen Yang, Jacqueline Woodson, Andrew Smith, Chris Crutcher, Ashley Hope Perez, Hans Wilhelm, Chris Lynch, Laurie Halse Anderson, Chris Crowe, Deborah Wiles, Jerry Pallotta, Tom Leveen, Alan Sitomer, Phil Bildner, Kate Messner, Marc Tyler Nobelman, Herman Parrish, Carrie Ryan, Eileen Christelow, T.A. Barron, Kevin O'Malley, Joseph Bruchac, Jay Asher, Matt de la Pena, Lisa McMann, Ned Vizzini (Rest in Peace, Ned), and Bill Konigsberg. 

I want to encourage you to attend and submit a proposal to present. all of the information for registration and proposal submissions can be found at the link below. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at [email protected].  We hope to see you there!
 
Registration closes March 1, 2018
 
Call for Proposals closes February 2, 201

I have had the blank page open on the computer for about an hour. I can’t seem to focus. That has been the case for going on three days now.

The first thing I heard Monday morning as the alarm went off was: “50 dead in Las Vegas Shooting.” I asked my wife, “Did you hear that?”  I grabbed my phone and realized I had a host of text messages, missed calls and my Facebook notification number was unusually high. I was touched by how many people reached out. Thank you.
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I am a Las Vegas native. Moving back to work at UNLV has been a joy. I have been able to reconnect with some people and hope to do more of that as time goes on. We are closer to family and that has been rewarding.

​This tragedy has been difficult. It will continue to be difficult for many people here in Las Vegas, but in many other communities as families and friends deal with loss and recovery. I can’t begin to count the number of times I tear up as I hear a story about the event. I am proud of the work of all first responders, event staff, hotel staff, people who stood in line to give people, those who offered clothes food, and the people at the event who immediately became neighbors in the truest sense of the word. People who, without question, began to carry one another’s burdens.  

Mr. Rogers shares with us that his mother taught him to “look for the helpers.” That has been easy to do in Las Vegas. Try to ignore the sensationalized drama of some of the news media and look at the nameless people who have just carried on. I know a retired police officer who spent all day Monday ferrying water and donuts to first responders.  
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I have listened to my students, who as young teachers or preservice teachers, explain how they have help their students, their friends, and their families. I am proud of them and of all teachers who respond to the emotional needs of people around them. Not only with this event, but with the waves of sadness and despair that accompany many of their students at different times and as a result of different events.
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One of the helpers I have found even before today is Kathryn Erskine. In all fairness, I have been planning on talking about her work today for several months. She has a new book coming out next week, but we will get to that in a minute. I was going to rave about how much I like her work. I love Mockingbird. I know our class discussion of this work on Oct. 17, 2017 will now be radically different for a group of preservice teachers reading YA literature just two weeks after this tragic shooting.

I agree with Kathryn, I am sick of it. Yet, I will carry on. I have learned that even when students ignore our assignments, disregard our advice, talk behind our backs, text beneath their desks or just sit with a look disinterest they look to teachers to provide meaning in time of chaos. Students see us as anchors of sanity in a world that is often confusing. They look to us to say something soothing and to carry on with hope. They don’t look for us to be helpers. They already think we already are. It doesn’t matter if we also feel grief; we do. It doesn’t matter if we hurt for the loss that might directly touch our lives or lives of others; we do. ​

I believe that Kathryn Erksine’s novels embrace Faulkner’s six as well. Writing novels that embrace these qualities is work. Sure, as readers we often marvel at the grace and beauty of a book. Sometime a passage, a paragraph, or a sentence forces us to stop and let the words wash over us again. This happened to me as I read Kathryn’s The Incredible Magic of Being. Julian’s direct experience with the world helped me see the world as a place of magic; as a place where people might be able to create the magic they need. I need a little bit more of that right now. ​

We Make It Look Easy…
 
…at least, we try.  As authors, we don’t want you to know how many thousands of hours it took to write and rewrite a book or how many walks we had to take to clear our heads or how much of the research isn’t in the actual story but serves to inform us (about 95%).
 
We simply want you to be sucked into the story, enjoying a smooth ride from start to finish.  There should be no bumps – no thinking to yourself, “there’s no Cracker Barrel off that interstate in Michigan,” “no 14 year old talks like that,” “Empire didn’t premiere until 2015;” in short, we have to get the facts right.  If you find even one error, we’ve lost our credibility.  You’ll be looking for more potential errors, which takes your attention away from the story.  We want you happily lost in our world.

We also have to get the emotion right.  That takes some research, too, as well as soul searching.  How would a boy with albinism be treated in mid-14th century England?  And how would he feel about himself?  What if his father was supportive, protective, even indulgent but his aunt had nothing but disdain for him?  Who is this boy and what is he made of?  Often, there’s a little of us in our characters.  Every character, actually.  We need to go back to that place where we felt those emotions and relive them, even if they’re painful – especially if they’re painful.  We need to figure our characters out and know their world view and what motivates them.  We can observe people, interview them, read about them.  We also need to walk around in their shoes.  If it’s a nine year old boy, there are books like Your Nine Year Old to give us an idea of developmental stages, but also books like Living with Intensity because maybe my nine year old is not quite like others.  If we’re writing about an actual person, we want to know as much about that person as possible.  If he’s an historical figure from 200 years ago and we have limited information, we need to understand the times.

For an upcoming novel, I had actual documentation of the young boy at Monticello who played with and was tutored by Jefferson’s grandchildren.  What I didn’t have was how he felt when Jefferson died … and he realized not only that he was enslaved but also that he would be sold away from his home and family.  We have his own words, mostly conciliatory and complimentary of Jefferson, but we need to put that in context because he would’ve been keenly aware that white society would be more than a little annoyed if he railed against a founding father.  His one statement, “I resolved to get free or die,” shows us the grit and determination he had which enabled him to survive his horrifying experience.
 
I thought a lot about this boy, walking the rooms and grounds of Monticello, imagining being in his shoes.  When I think about him, when I think about his mother … what would it have been like if my own son had been ripped away from me when he was eleven and I had to watch him from afar, not be able to hear his ideas, see him grow, feel his hug?  I can only imagine – and that’s the point, I can only imagine.  We don’t know what it was like to be an 11 year old boy who felt he had a rather normal, ordinary life like the rest of us and suddenly experiences the true horror of being enslaved, or what it was like for his mother and father, other family members, or anyone else involved.  Fortunately, most of us have never experienced slavery.  My job as an author is to try to experience the emotion myself and then put it into words so others can feel it, and in turn feel connected to the characters and, ideally, transfer that understanding to the historical and present day human experience and wonder how we could’ve gotten that way and how we can change.

Literature helps us feel and transcend an event to understand it more fully than reading facts or hearing a lecture.  A story asks us to go on a journey, sometimes an uncomfortable one, and bear witness to things we can’t ignore because if we do they will continue, in different forms perhaps, but they will continue unless we question them, grab them, shake them, speak out, take action, and refuse to accept a human condition that, ironically, kills humans.  We are all a part of it whether we caused it or not.  We are all responsible for it.  To ignore that is to ignore the human condition and our fellow humans.

​Obviously, then, we need to give you more than facts and emotion.  We need to write a story that engages you, keeps you reading, and maybe guessing, maybe even angsting. And if it’s going to teach you something, you shouldn’t even realize you’re learning about Quakers (Quaking) or autism (Mockingbird) or international adoption (The Absolute Value of Mike) or Civil Rights (Seeing Red) or Medieval England (The Badger Knight) or anxiety, not to mention a fair amount of science (The Incredible Magic of Being).  Ideally, a story will make you think, but that should be painless, too; in fact, we want you spurred to anger or commitment, seeing the similarities to real life, freely researching more on the topic and sharing it with others.  That’s when we know our hard work is done, that we’ve made the difficult look easy.

But we are truth-tellers, too, not just in the guise of a story but in person.  At school visits I tell students, “I started this novel in 1999 – before you were born – and it was published in 2013.  That’s how long it took to get it right.”  I talk about revision and how it’s now my friend.  Sure, I resisted it, rationalized my mistakes, but then I realized that “re-vision” means seeing it again, as if for the first time, giving me a chance to turn it into something I’m proud to put my name on.  As a former trademark attorney, I know that a brand name is important.  I want people to see mine and think “quality” and “worth reading.”

How long does it take to write a book?
Someone invariably asks. I answer honestly, sometimes to gasps.

Where do you get your ideas?
Anywhere, everywhere—in the shower, on a walk, driving past someone who walks hunched over – what’s his story? Is he hurt? Is it physical or emotion? Is it temporary or permanent? Where’s he going? How is he feeling? What makes this day different for him than any other?

Why do people die in your books? 
Because people die in real life.  Because we have to learn how to keep living even after death, or after any kind of loss.

Did this really happen to you? 
Not this, exactly.  Probably something like it, though, even if it was the death of a relationship, or feeling trapped, or feeling ignored, or feeling scared, or any of the myriad emotions that the people – characters – in my books experience.

How much money do you make?
About a dollar on hardbacks, maybe ten cents (or less) on paperbacks.

That’s all?  Then why do you write?
While some may write for the thrill of it or the challenge or to quell demons, I think many of us who write for young people want to give hope, encouragement, and a refuge.  I certainly took solace and looked for answers in books, still do, and I want to share that companionship with others.
 
We don’t always get it right.  I certainly don’t.  I cringe at every passage that I should’ve written better.  In fact, except for short sections I’ll read aloud if asked, I can’t read my books once they’re published – my muscles would lock up from excessive cringing.  But we do try.  We try to make story look easy.  We have to write because we really don’t have a choice.  It’s more a question of who we are, not what we do.  It’s how we reach out to other human beings, hoping to entertain, yes, but also join forces, spread passion, and connect with those around us, and those who are still to come because really, we’re all connected.  Story is what connects us all in this crazy, wonderful, frightening, funny, miraculous human drama.

I am touched by how many people have reached out to check on me, my family, and my city. I am sad. I think it is safe to say that I am a bit confused and disoriented by the shooting in Las Vegas. 

I am thinking of families that will be dealing with tragedy. I feel for teachers all over who will meet children who will feel a less safe in their city. I ache for those who will be teaching students all over who have lost loved ones due to this event.

By extension, I can't help but think of Syria and other places that are fraught with violence. Bless them.

Many are still recovering from the effects of the Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. As we know, the effects of Maria will be effecting Puerto Rico for weeks to come. The earthquakes in Mexico also have left people mourning.

Schools are too frequently subjected to the violence; yet they are also places of healing. Places where administrators, teachers, and staff greet and comfort children and families.

I just want to direct people to two place on the blog that have helped me reflect on loss and tragedy.

The first is my response to the shooting in Orlando. Never did I image they I would be so close to such a tragedy.
Say His Name!
The second is a post by Dr. Shelly Schaffer about school shooting.
Humanizing and Understanding School Shootings: How YA “School Shooting” Literature Provides Multiple InsightsThank you for caring.