I hope I am not the only one who is overwhelmed with the details of finishing a semester. I have meetings, grading, new book contracts, next semester plans and couple of other details. The most important event of the semester was our son’s graduation from Arizona State University with his Ph.D in Music Education. We spent this past Monday and Tuesday attending his commencement and convocation meetings. It was a great time and it is important to mark these occasions. He and his family have worked hard over the last four years and he also just finished his first semester as a music education professor at the University of Central Missouri. Milestones are great. It was nice to attend to the festivities, but it is now time to pay the piper. Unfortunately, I have a pile of work calling me.
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Now, let’s get back to Young Adult Literature. One of the joys of this semester has been teaching a group of undergraduates about young adult literature. These students have been awesome. They have worked hard and have read a great many books. You can see the list of books they explore at this link.
We have discussed book primarily using the lenses of race, class, and gender. During our last session, I asked the 35 students to rate the 23 books they read from 1 to 23 based on which book they enjoyed the most. I have only rated the frequency in which the books appeared in the top five. I am happy to report that every book was placed in the top five at least twice. Hurray, it looks like I picked some winners. They are all books that I love and that I hoped these future teachers will love and find useful as well.
Four books pulled ahead of the others in terms of how often they appeared in the top five. They are Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine with 20, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie with 18, The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton with 16, and American Born Chinese by Gene Yang with 13.
We have discussed book primarily using the lenses of race, class, and gender. During our last session, I asked the 35 students to rate the 23 books they read from 1 to 23 based on which book they enjoyed the most. I have only rated the frequency in which the books appeared in the top five. I am happy to report that every book was placed in the top five at least twice. Hurray, it looks like I picked some winners. They are all books that I love and that I hoped these future teachers will love and find useful as well.
Four books pulled ahead of the others in terms of how often they appeared in the top five. They are Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine with 20, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie with 18, The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton with 16, and American Born Chinese by Gene Yang with 13.
Four other books were all placed in the top five 8 times. These are also wonderful books. They are I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier, Holes by Louis Sachar, Brown Girl Dream by Jaqueline Woodson, and Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina.
Again, I haven’t had time to really rank which books rated the best overall. That will come later. For the time being, you should have some books to read if you don’t know these—which I hope you do. At the very least you have books to over your students that range from some classic to some more recent texts.
Until next week.
Until next week.
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