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Registration is open for the virtual Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature!  Plan on April 21, 2023, 8:30-5:30 CST.  

Don't worry, it is easy to find.  Just go to YouTube and search for Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday.

Register here!

My First Undergraduate YA Literature Class in Five Years: What did the Pre-Service Teachers Like?

12/13/2017

3 Comments

 
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.
​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.
3 Comments
Nicole Cvetnich
12/13/2017 09:33:05 pm

Thank you for a great semester, Dr. Bickmore! I absolutely fell in love with YA lit.

Reply
Jill
12/14/2017 01:37:43 am

Steve, I no longer teach children's lit (boo), but how do you distinguish between children's and YA--I didn't open your link yet, but 2 of the books in the second row are decidedly not YA--does that matter? (I love all of them. Holes was on my children's lit syllabus 15 years ago at UGA). (congrats to your son. Missed seeing you this fall! AERA?)

Reply
William
12/18/2017 09:25:41 am

Hey Prof, I was wondering; what's your take on the old "Penny dreadful" stories they used to publish back in the 1800's? according to what I read they were aimed mostly at young boys. Any opinion on using them in todays classrooms?

Reply



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    Dr. Gretchen Rumohr
    Chief Curator
    Gretchen Rumohr is a professor of English and department chair at Aquinas College, where she teaches writing and language arts methods.   She is also a Co-Director of the UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. She lives with her four girls and a five-pound Yorkshire Terrier in west Michigan.

    Dr. Steve Bickmore
    ​Creator and Curator

    Dr. Bickmore is a Professor of English Education at UNLV. He is a scholar of Young Adult Literature and past editor of The ALAN Review and a past president of ALAN. He is a available for speaking engagements at schools, conferences, book festivals, and parent organizations. More information can be found on the Contact page and the About page.

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    Meet
    Evangile Dufitumukiza!
    Evangile is a native of Kigali, Rwanda. He is a college student that Steve meet while working in Rwanda as a missionary. In fact, Evangile was one of the first people who translated his English into Kinyarwanda. 

    Steve recruited him to help promote Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media while Steve is doing his mission work. 

    He helps Dr. Bickmore promote his academic books and sometimes send out emails in his behalf. 

    You will notice that while he speaks fluent English, it often does look like an "American" version of English. That is because it isn't. His English is heavily influence by British English and different versions of Eastern and Central African English that is prominent in his home country of Rwanda.

    Welcome Evangile into the YA Wednesday community as he learns about Young Adult Literature and all of the wild slang of American English vs the slang and language of the English he has mastered in his beautiful country of Rwanda.  

    While in Rwanda, Steve has learned that it is a poor English speaker who can only master one dialect and/or set of idioms in this complicated language.

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