For the past three weeks my mind has been revisiting A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. As I mentioned last week, this wonderful novel was one of the books featured at the Youngstown State University English Festival. Facing death and the feelings that surround the event is not easy for adolescents. It is always shocking, difficult, isolating, and perhaps lonely. For adolescents who experience death for the first time it can be traumatic and confusing. By the same token, I am not sure that, as adults, we are more prepared. As I prepared to talk to students and teachers in Youngstown about this book, I contemplated the fact that my own parents are aging - 87 and 84. Am I prepared? Have I thought about my own reactions?
While at Youngstown I fell ill, stomach flu, bad food, whatever it was, something hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. I felt inadequate and not as upbeat and energetic as I often am and certainly not everything that the organizers hoped I would be. It was mainly one bad day, but I felt my own mutability. My own limitations and waning strength. Now, a week later, life has been a whirl wind with more events.
My dad called with news that his older sister, 91 years old, was not expected to last through the week. My wife and I began to think about how we would be able to help my parents. They were great travelers until my dad turned 80, and then they slowed down. Now, it is a bit of an ordeal—medicines, being comfortable, navigating strange places. Then on Tuesday my wife got a call. Her aunt’s husband, one of her father’s closets friends for years, had just past at 89. My wife was close to them and their children and she needed to go help her own aging father. Within the next few hours, my Dad called and his sister was gone.
What does his have to do with Young Adult Literature? First, YA novels are great for adults. The real secret is that I read these novel because I like them. I am moved and engaged. Second, the by product is that I get to act like reading and writing about books is a profession. Third, they help me navigate my own emotions and reactions to real life events.
While at Youngstown I fell ill, stomach flu, bad food, whatever it was, something hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. I felt inadequate and not as upbeat and energetic as I often am and certainly not everything that the organizers hoped I would be. It was mainly one bad day, but I felt my own mutability. My own limitations and waning strength. Now, a week later, life has been a whirl wind with more events.
My dad called with news that his older sister, 91 years old, was not expected to last through the week. My wife and I began to think about how we would be able to help my parents. They were great travelers until my dad turned 80, and then they slowed down. Now, it is a bit of an ordeal—medicines, being comfortable, navigating strange places. Then on Tuesday my wife got a call. Her aunt’s husband, one of her father’s closets friends for years, had just past at 89. My wife was close to them and their children and she needed to go help her own aging father. Within the next few hours, my Dad called and his sister was gone.
What does his have to do with Young Adult Literature? First, YA novels are great for adults. The real secret is that I read these novel because I like them. I am moved and engaged. Second, the by product is that I get to act like reading and writing about books is a profession. Third, they help me navigate my own emotions and reactions to real life events.
Through all of this, I should have been producing a YA Wednesday, we were finishing teaching our courses for the week, attending those ever present university meetings, preparing to travel to the two funerals, and making sure we have contacted everyone. Then there was a YA announcement that trumped anything I might have been able to say in a YA Wednesday posting.
S. E. Hinton will be speaking at the ALAN Breakfast during NCTE 2017!!!
What a gift. As I live in the reality of my own life and the demands on my emotions, I have been doing a mental rereading of The Outsiders. Indeed, we are all subject to the ravages of time; Nothing Gold Can Stay. But, if anything has a chance at longevity, it is, as Shakespeare suggests in Sonnet XVIII, the written word:
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
S. E. Hinton will be speaking at the ALAN Breakfast during NCTE 2017!!!
What a gift. As I live in the reality of my own life and the demands on my emotions, I have been doing a mental rereading of The Outsiders. Indeed, we are all subject to the ravages of time; Nothing Gold Can Stay. But, if anything has a chance at longevity, it is, as Shakespeare suggests in Sonnet XVIII, the written word:
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Hinton’s novel along with other novels, most notably, Lipsyte’s The Contender and Head’s Mr and Mrs Bo Jo Jones, marks 1967 as a year of transition for the viability and growth of young adult literature. Specifically, The Outsiders helps us think about how the themes of the novel remain accessible and timely with adolescents today. Is it shocking to us to remember that the original teens who read this book in 1967 are at least in their sixties? What is it like to feel alienated, to lose a parent, to watch a friend be both immature and heroic? Are the emotions that are central to this book or other young adult novels dated? A few years ago Dr. Angelle Hebert, an associate professor at Nicholls State University did her dissertation at LSU on the reading prospective of African American male students who identified as reluctant readers. The dissertation is entitled "Give me something that relates to my life": Exploring African American adolescent identities through young adult literature can be found here. While Angelle tried to use novels like Walter Dean Myers’ Monster to provide what she hoped would be culturally relevant and approachable texts, The Outsiders surfaced over and over again as a text the participants both liked and wanted to discuss.
As I browsed other books from the year, it becomes clear that 1967 was a pretty good year for books all around. A quick look at goodreads shows the most popular 200 books of 1967. Number one is Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (adult?), number two is The Outsiders (YA?) and number three is E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (childrens?). Not bad company. I put question marks behind each classification, because I feel like it is time to realize that the labels are too often divisive. I believe people find books when they are ready for them, even if they have been taught to hate reading, and are nurtured and guided to books that are developmentally appropriate. I started Moby Dick four or five times before I ever finished it in college. I can’t imagine my life without that narrative in my mind. Furthermore, I am glad that I have the image of my middle school persona trudging home from the bookmobile with that heavy tome. I gave it a try and then another, and another, until I read it. Not because I was assigned the novel—I never was—but because I wanted to be part of the conversation of the discovery. I am glad that I endured.
Among the other gems in the goodreads list were Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, Scarry’s What do People Do All Day?, Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions, Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, Harris’s I’m OK – You’re OK, Fiztgerald’s The Great Brain, Potok’s The Chosen, Derrida’s Of Grammatology, O’Dell’s The Black Pearl, Iceberg Slim’s Pimp: The Story of My Life, Peck’s Are you in the House Alone?, Wilder’s The Eighth Day, Freire’s Education for Critical Consciousness, Lowell’s Life Studies and for the Union Dead, and McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage. What a great year. One final book that set me on my heels a bit was Jonathan Kozol’s Death at an Early Age. For fifty years he has been sounding the watch cry about effects of poverty in education. It looks like 1967 is a year with books worth revisiting.
At the very least, I hope you will join me as I revisit the four pivotal YA novels (The Outsiders; That Was Then, This Was Now; Tex; and Rumble Fish) by S. E. Hinton between now and November.
You see, I ramble. I am soaring through family memories as I write this and prepare to engage with family at the funeral. I will see cousins and others that I haven’t seen for years. Yes, I feel the loss, but I relish the opportunity for renewal. I have literally become, like Y. B. Yeats, in his riveting poem, Among School Children, “a sixty-year old smiling public man”, as I wander through schools talking with students about what they like to read and encouraging teachers to offer more compelling choices.
At the very least, I hope you will join me as I revisit the four pivotal YA novels (The Outsiders; That Was Then, This Was Now; Tex; and Rumble Fish) by S. E. Hinton between now and November.
You see, I ramble. I am soaring through family memories as I write this and prepare to engage with family at the funeral. I will see cousins and others that I haven’t seen for years. Yes, I feel the loss, but I relish the opportunity for renewal. I have literally become, like Y. B. Yeats, in his riveting poem, Among School Children, “a sixty-year old smiling public man”, as I wander through schools talking with students about what they like to read and encouraging teachers to offer more compelling choices.
RSS Feed