Occasionally, I walk to campus or take a lunch break by strolling down to the student union. As a casual observer, I believe it would be easier to count the students, those walking alone at least, who are not wearing ear phones as opposed to those who are. Many students seem to migrate from one place to the other as they tune in to their self-selected rhythms. I don't blame them; I do it myself. Yesterday, I took a three mile loop home while listening to the Pandora Blues radio station. I enjoyed Albert King, B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Buddy Guy and The Mick Fleetwood Blues Band and their music kept my walking pace at 3.6 miles an hour.
I have to admit, I frequently think about connections between music and YA. Music is an interest I share with my son, a music educator, and we have been writing about the connection. We have a chapter appearing in the 2nd edition of Teaching Young Adult Literature Today: Insights, Considerations, and Perspectives for the Classroom Teacher by Hayn, Kaplan, and Clemmons. It should be available at NCTE; keep your fingers crossed. Our chapter is entitled Music and the Young Adult Novel: Assessing How Adolescents “Read” the Music of Their Lives. We loved working on this chapter and in it we highlight how several novels capture adolescents engage with music. Just yesterday, we finished a second chapter for a book edited by Greathouse, Eisenbach, and Kaywell entitled Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the Content Areas (Due out summer of 2017). This time, we focus on how a teacher might engage students in music education using YA fiction. We use an exciting new novel, Brendan Kiely’s The Last True Love Story to demonstrate a cross-curriculum project that engages students in an ELA classroom that might be radically different from what you have tried in the past.
I have to admit, I frequently think about connections between music and YA. Music is an interest I share with my son, a music educator, and we have been writing about the connection. We have a chapter appearing in the 2nd edition of Teaching Young Adult Literature Today: Insights, Considerations, and Perspectives for the Classroom Teacher by Hayn, Kaplan, and Clemmons. It should be available at NCTE; keep your fingers crossed. Our chapter is entitled Music and the Young Adult Novel: Assessing How Adolescents “Read” the Music of Their Lives. We loved working on this chapter and in it we highlight how several novels capture adolescents engage with music. Just yesterday, we finished a second chapter for a book edited by Greathouse, Eisenbach, and Kaywell entitled Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the Content Areas (Due out summer of 2017). This time, we focus on how a teacher might engage students in music education using YA fiction. We use an exciting new novel, Brendan Kiely’s The Last True Love Story to demonstrate a cross-curriculum project that engages students in an ELA classroom that might be radically different from what you have tried in the past.
I hope the announcement that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature has increased everyone’s excitement about the “highbrow” possibilities of popular culture (see a current discussion here). It has for me. I quickly added 5 early Dylan CD to my collection. As many of you understand, Young Adult literature often struggles to gain acceptance among the keepers of the literary canon. Nevertheless, we know that YA literature meets readers where they are and where their interests happen to be. It introduces them to ideas they care about and can move them up a reading ladder to lifelong reading. Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in a high schools knows that many adolescents are connected to music—choir, band, school dances, school musicals, their listening devices, the piano lessons at home, the band they experiment with, and the bands and singers they follow. Can we connect these interests with our instruction in ELA settings? Well, of course we can.
I am also adding a new resource page to Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday called Music and YA. My son and I have collected a list of YA novels that engage with music in one way or another. We keep finding more and more. If you know one, please leave a comment. We will add the list to the webpage soon as well as other resources that can help teachers use music to engage students in the ELA classroom. I would be amiss if I didn’t mention another new resource for Music and the ELA classroom. My colleagues Lindy Johnson and Chris Goering have a new text, Recontextualized: A Framework for Teaching with Music. It has been a useful addition to my own thinking about this subject. By the way, Chris plays a mean guitar as a side gig.
I am also adding a new resource page to Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday called Music and YA. My son and I have collected a list of YA novels that engage with music in one way or another. We keep finding more and more. If you know one, please leave a comment. We will add the list to the webpage soon as well as other resources that can help teachers use music to engage students in the ELA classroom. I would be amiss if I didn’t mention another new resource for Music and the ELA classroom. My colleagues Lindy Johnson and Chris Goering have a new text, Recontextualized: A Framework for Teaching with Music. It has been a useful addition to my own thinking about this subject. By the way, Chris plays a mean guitar as a side gig.
To get the resource collection started, I am going to discuss some of the books that we have found along our writing journey. Some we have written about and others we haven’t yet.
First, there are a group of books in which music is a source of connection between characters, a source of entertainment, and a release from the pressures of daily life. This specific group contains books that are fairly well known. In addition, the fan base has created playlist and fan fiction for most of these four books. These are books that I think about quite frequently. Music helps set the tone and mood in each book. Two of them, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, have been made into movies. In both cases, the importance of music is easily seen through the plot, the settings, and the sound track of the movie. For the other two in this group I have selected Burn Baby Burn and Eleanor and Park. Meg Medina’s Burn Baby Burn is set in Queens in 1977 in the midst of the Son of Sam murders. Dancing and Disco help set the context for the mood and tension of this wonderful novel that was on the long list for the national book award for young people’s literature. Last, but certainly not least, in this group is Eleanor and Park. This lovely book captures a story of young love bound together by music which initial connects them. There are multiple avenues that one could use to discuss the novel—characterization, feminism, class issues, racial divides, etc. The gift of music that Rainbow Rowell has add to this novel provides an added level of textured opportunities for non conventional activities and assessments.
First, there are a group of books in which music is a source of connection between characters, a source of entertainment, and a release from the pressures of daily life. This specific group contains books that are fairly well known. In addition, the fan base has created playlist and fan fiction for most of these four books. These are books that I think about quite frequently. Music helps set the tone and mood in each book. Two of them, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, have been made into movies. In both cases, the importance of music is easily seen through the plot, the settings, and the sound track of the movie. For the other two in this group I have selected Burn Baby Burn and Eleanor and Park. Meg Medina’s Burn Baby Burn is set in Queens in 1977 in the midst of the Son of Sam murders. Dancing and Disco help set the context for the mood and tension of this wonderful novel that was on the long list for the national book award for young people’s literature. Last, but certainly not least, in this group is Eleanor and Park. This lovely book captures a story of young love bound together by music which initial connects them. There are multiple avenues that one could use to discuss the novel—characterization, feminism, class issues, racial divides, etc. The gift of music that Rainbow Rowell has add to this novel provides an added level of textured opportunities for non conventional activities and assessments.
The next group of books has adolescents engaged with music as spinners, the term my son and I started using for a DJ. For a number of years now, people have added to the world of music by working as a DJ, adding beats for rappers, and by expertly sampling and mixing rifs from such greats as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Michel Jackson. In Coe Booth’s Tyrell the title character's entire mission centers on his successful completion of an after hours dance party. In the second book, Leila Sales’ This Song Will Save Your Life the main character, Elise, after suffering bullying and despair, finds herself through her ability to spin records and engage crowds at a night club. Both books are fine examples of novels that have well developed characters engaged in issues that go beyond their passion for music. Again, while an analysis could cover—race, class, bullying, isolation, and several other foci, including our students’ connection to music offers added texture to activities and assessment. Just imagine the variety of ways that you might have students respond to musical references in both books. What songs might they imagine that both Tyrell and Elise would be listening to and adding to their playlists?
Our next group of novels imagines adolescents engage with performers and performance. How many kids have imagined themselves strumming a guitar, banging on a set of drums, screaming out a teen anthem like Eddie Vedder or providing backup vocals for the likes of Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Elton John, or The Rolling Stones. All of these novels are great reads and some of my personal favorites over the last several years. I don’t think you can go wrong with any of these choices. Gordon Korman has a great reputation for entertain adolescents and he doesn’t leave us wanting with Born to Rock!. Breakout by Kevin Emerson remains one of my favorite discoveries from last year’s ALAN Workshop. The main character, Anthony, remains one of the most genuine YA voices I have encountered over the last year. In addition, Kevin is great fun and if you happen to be in the Seattle area you just might find him playing with others in an impromptu gig. O’Malley’s graphic novel series highlighting Scott Pilgrim, is another great read. Perhaps the most well-known of the series is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World because it was the title of the movie based on the characters. The last novel, Amplified, by Tara Kelly rounds out the group. This novel is unique in that it features a female protagonist trying to join a bad. She is on her own; choosing to play her guitar instead of attending college. This book chronicles an odyssey of self-discovery and guides the reader through the various challenges of joining a band.
To conclude, I will highlight three pairs of books. All three pairs of novels share something in common that is very interesting. In each case, the author has produced real music to accompany the second novel in the series. Fictional musings about music have turned into the production of real music. The first pair consists of John Green and David Levithan’s Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Levithan's follow up work. Even without the first books connection to music, it is a magical romp. As a follow-up, Levithan has developed the musical script that was the brain child of Tiny Cooper, a friend of one of the two Will Grayson’s. Levithan remains one of the most innovative and creative voice in YA literature, both as an editor and author. This effort with Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story serves as an inspiration for the adolescents who read both. What more could we want for our students than to let them imagine creative possibilities?
In the next pairing. Tanuja Desai Hidier follows up her wonderful book Born Confused with Bombay Blues. Both novels are wonderful multicultural efforts. I ran into her first novel over ten years ago and now that I am studying musical influences in YA literature I have found it again. I also found out that Tanuja wrote an album for Born Confused entitled When We Were Twins. It was an added surprise that I found out that she has combined Bombay Blues with Bombay Spleen, an album full of songs based on the novel. I find this combination of creative efforts fascinating. In reality, her life’s job is a multifaceted arts project. It is worth the time to explore her website and explore what she is up to next. Can you imagine some of your most independent and creative students doing a project around the characters, themes, symbols, music, and cultural allusions in Hidier’s work? The possibilities would be undeniably joyful.
My last pair is King Dork and King Dork Approximately by Frank Portman. King Dork is one of the books that I love beyond rational explanation. It makes me laugh out loud, I want to read passages to my wife who thinks I am crazy, and I tell every group of students about this crazy Holdenesque character. I first discovered this novel when I was researching novels that were similar in tone to The Catcher in the Rye. I was pleasantly surprised by the musical subtext that drives the novel and provides a great deal of the comedy. What you might not know yet about this author is that Portman is more readily known in the bay area as Dr. Frank, the front man for The Mr. T Experience (MTX). Dr. Frank has been playing punk music for more years than he probably likes to talk about. Now, if you buy King Dork Approximately you can also get the new sound track. This album makes Tom Henderson’s, the novel’s main character, experience as a want to be rock star complete and real. I recommend that you follow Dr. Frank on Facebook. Who knows, MTX might be playing a gig near you.
Stay tuned, there will be quite a few more connections to music and YA in Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesday.
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