As I thought about the event, I approached Sandra who put me in touch with one of the marketing people at Simon and Schuster and Paula Wiseman Books, Sarah Woodruff. When Sarah heard about the event she help make 13 copies of Between the Lines available for the winners. It is a generous offer from Simon and Schuster and a great way to add to the celebration of the art and these wonderful artists.

It was fun to talk with some of the winners. I explained a bit about the book and took a few pictures for the blog. All of the winners are listed at the Silver State Schools Credit Union announcement. Unfortunately, I had another holiday event to run of to before the night was over. Next year, I will schedule it first and spend more time with the winners. Below you can get a glimpse of some of the winners with the book and their art. 

In the meantime, I invite you to look at the other work of Sandra Neil Wallace and Bryan Collier. Two people who are making their way in the arts: one as a writer and one as an artist.

Until next week.

Melissa is one of the best teachers I know. When she was a graduate student at Louisiana State University, it was a joy to teach with her. She has great passion for her students whether they are still in high school or at college. She has had great success as a teacher and has reached many students. To her credit, she is not content to sit with the results of just reaching many of her students. Instead, she continues to try and figure out how to inspire more of them. Below, she tells an important story. A story of not having everything turn out just right. Frankly, it a story that those of us who have taught for any length of time are familiar with. We all have classes where we don't quite reach all of the students or don't reach them as successfully as we would have liked. I love Melissa's willingness to report when things don't go just the way we planned them. Even more, I love that she is still showing up every day and trying again.

I started a new job at a different high school this year. I was hired for many reasons, one of which was to raise the test scores of a particularly low-achieving group of juniors, in addition to teaching the honors Freshmen (my fave!).
 
To call this school rural is an understatement. I have cows as my neighbors, the football field is affectionately known as “The Pasture,” and there’s an actual barn, where FFA students sell handmaid wreaths, poinsettias, and mandarins at Christmas time. I was the “new kid” coming in, and boy did they resent me.
 
So in I come with my brand-new bookshelves and my boxes upon boxes of all the Young Adult literature that I have amassed over my years of teaching. I also had recently framed my brand-new Reading Specialist certificate that I proudly earned during my doctoral program in English Education at LSU. I was ready for the year, or so I thought…
 
I’ve taught reluctant readers before, but this was a whole new ballgame. “I hate reading” was the mantra. And boy, did they mean it. I took the entire class to the library the first week to check out reading books—whatever they wanted—and it took longer than I imagined. Mostly, the students hung out among the back shelves and talked. Very few came to ask me for recommendations (they didn’t know me, after all), the rest picked out what looked tolerable to them. My brilliant idea of 10 minutes of reading time each day (which I had definitely lobbied for with my administration, by the way) was now appearing to be a form of torture, not a privilege.
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I thought if I made it clear how much I value reading, then they might too. If they saw me reading, then they would read too. And if I made an assessment worth a lot of points, that they would take reading seriously. Instead, it was the opposite—barely any of them finished the quarter reading assignment because most of them didn’t finish their books! I thought the page requirement for juniors was reasonable, but I never bothered to figure out how well they could read and whether or not they would read. Their grades tanked. I needed to reassess the situation. 

Confronting Difficulty
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I did everything wrong. Everything I swore I’d never do, I did. Everything I learned from my gurus--Gallagher, Kittle, Miller, Beers—went out the window as I struggled to get these kids on board with reading. Didn’t anyone want to hear a Booktalk about my latest YA find? Didn’t anyone care what I was reading? These kids didn’t want to read the latest and greatest—hell, they didn’t want to read period. 

So I refuse to give up. I am not a teacher because I give up on kids. On the contrary. I may not be crazy enough to think that I will turn them into Literature majors, but I will continue allowing (forcing?) them to read for 10 minutes every day. I will take them to the library and give them suggestions. And I will keep my classroom bookshelves stocked with all the YA lit that Dr. Bickmore’s blog—and everyone else I follow—recommends. All the John Green, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Lauren Oliver. The Natasha Preston, Kiera Cass, and Alyson Noel. All of it.

Because I am an English teacher. I love books and I love kids. And when I can get the right nook in the right hands…the magic happens. And if I can do that for even one student, then I will have succeeded. 

Melissa Gulden is a high school and college English teacher in Northern California.
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 Until next week.

I love this time of year and all of the holiday fun. Okay, I still have to grade a bunch of student work; I have all of those "end of the semester" meetings; I am consulting with graduate students: I need to plan syllabi for the next semester; NCTE proposals are due soon; ALAN proposals are due soon; and I am planning for next year’s ALAN workshop.

While I still have a lot to do, I love considering all of the books I have read this year. I made my end of year picks a tiny bit early. I was lucky enough to give a couple of presentations last Saturday at a Clark County School District event for middle and secondary literacy educators. The day's keynote speaker was Ernest Morrell. He was fabulous and I always learn something that helps me when I listen to his scholarship.

When I started making picks in 2016 I thought I would pick 5. Well, I couldn't do it. Instead, I focus on the books that I can’t stop thinking about or talking about during the course of the year. It always seems to be more that 5. I admit I am a bit narrow in my focus. I tend to read realistic fiction with a focus on race class and gender, that are written for older adolescents. I also find myself reading more and more nonfiction. 

I readily admit that excellent books are abundant in middle grades, science fiction, in fantasy and other genres. It is hard to read everything. I rely on others to guide me. It is worth reviewing the weekend picks that others have selected during 2018. Another place to look is at the recommendations suggested by others through other blogs. I recently had my attention drawn to Dr. Michael Macaluso’s blog post. He points to his top 10 resources for finding multicultural books. His suggestions provide excellent advice.
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As you prepare for the holidays and look for gifts I hope you consider some of the books listed below. Without a doubt these are powerful texts. If you only read these 7 books in the course of a year, you would have plenty to think about. I love that The Poet X won the National Book Award, but I am a little bit proud of myself that it was on my list of my best books before the award. Many of these books  received high praise during the year, and they deserve it. The one book that is under represented on this list is Too Shattered for Mending. It is Peter Brown Hoffmeister’s second YA novel and it is fantastic. It might be the one I would select above all of the others if I was forced to do so. I don’t have to so it will have to remain a tie among them all. I just think that not enough people have been exposed to this book yet. Maybe this post will help remedy this situation. Please read it. Read everything on the list, you won’t regret it. In fact, I think that after reading you will be looking to share these titles with others.

Pick #1 Jeff Zentner The Kirkus Review Goodbye Days

Pick #2 Elizabeth Acevedo The Kirkus Review The Poet X

Pick #3 Elizabeth Partridge The Kirkus Review Boots on the Ground

Pick #4 Aisha Saeed The Kirkus Review Amal Unbound

Pick #5 Nic Stone The Kirkus Review Dear Martin

Pick #6 Peter Brown Hoffmeister The Kirkus Review Too Shattered for Mending

Pick #7 Joy McCullough The Kirkus Review Blood Water Paint

This week we welcome back Mark Lewis as a guest contributor. His previous contribution was about YA adult literature that investigates Urban spaces. I hope you will revisit that post as well. Mark is one of the first scholars I meet as I began my work as and academic and he began his. We are constantly running into each other and I am always better for the exchange. Mark is also one of group of scholars alone with Dr. Rob Petrone and Dr. Sophia Sarigianides who have develop and strive to explain a youth lens. Their contributions are significant. Now, let's turn to Mark's new post.

​Recently, I have been reading a stack of graphica aimed at middle school-aged readers. As a young reader, I never was that interested in comic books—I was more into The Hardy Boys and The Black Stallion series—and only begrudgingly joined my friends to go see the latest Superman movie. Even as a middle school teacher, although not restricting my students from reading comics and graphic novels as part of their independent reading, I continually encouraged them to “move on” to chapter books. My use of quotation marks is to not only to indicate my exact words, but also as an indicator of how I viewed such literature—it was a bridge to more rigorous reading; one that should be burned once its utility was fulfilled. 

s I hope my list has shown, middle school graphica is doing well in including stories about more than boys, superheroes, and monsters. These stories are diverse, both in terms of content and representation, and in providing appealing options for young readers of all backgrounds. ​
Mark A. Lewis, Ph.D.A
Associate Professor of Literacy Education
Loyola University Maryland
malewis2@loyola.edu

​Until next week.