Trending Now: YA, Current Events, and Taking Action

This week's guest contributor is Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil. Like many of our posts over the last couple of months, she points to books that helps adolescents think about current events and how to move to understanding or to action. This post also reminds us about the abundance of quality "informational" YA texts.

Recently, I was contacted by a middle school social studies teacher who asked me to recommend young adult nonfiction texts that would help his students understand and respond to current events. Using resources such as The Nerdy Book Club, The National Book Award nominations, and YALSA, I created a list, and I’ve shared a few of my picks below.

Which current events?
Our current news cycle can determine which events to explore. For appropriate, grade-level, nonfiction texts, Newsela proves to be a valuable, relevant, cross-curricular resource.  

Given Trump’s recent immigration order, This Land is Our Land: A History of American Immigration by Linda Barret Osborne can help students familiarize themselves with the history, attitudes, and current policies on immigration. Additional, immigration-related book suggestions from previous YA Wednesday blog entries are here.
​

​To better comprehend human rights violations that may result in the necessity of fleeing one’s country, A Long Way Gone:  Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,  Lost Boy, Lost Girl: Escaping War in Sudan, and graphic novel Child Soldier:  When Boys and Girls are Used in War are good possibilities.  

For students that followed the last election closely, Hillary Rodham Clinton: A Woman Living History by Karen Blumenthal introduces students to American politics.  The text is fully  updated to include the 2016 election. 

​Acknowledging the sugar consumption habits of most Americans, Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science by Marc Aronson considers the global impact of sugar as well as broader food justice themes.

To address the recent attention on the Dakota Access Pipeline project and accompanying protests, an unconventional nonfiction text is the award-winning Looks Like Daylight: Stories of Indigenous Kids by Deborah Ellis, which shares the daily lives, interests and opinions of Native American young people. 

It’s been mentioned on YA Wednesday before, but deserves a mention again: for students following nonviolent demonstrations such as the Women’s March on Washington, Lewis, Aydin and Powell’s March graphic novel series provides a historically accurate, compelling, and inspiring background.
 
Moving from current events toward advocacy
Along with interest and engagement, the above texts can bring feelings of helplessness and apathy.  Indeed, our goal is to not only help students know about what is happening in our world, but also help students form opinions and take action. The texts below can help students consider their work as well-informed, passionate agents of change.

​Michael Burgan’s Breaker Boys: How a Photograph Helped End Child Labor tells the story of photographer Lewis Hine, who used his art to bring new awareness to child labor.  Hine used his camera to educate others on the challenges of the working poor.  Overall, Hine’s story affirms the power of visual images and reminds us that our talents can change the world. 

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai describes Yousafzai’s active advocacy on behalf of girls’ education, peace, and human rights.  Simply put, Yousafzai can inspire bravery and action in both global and local contexts.

Eyes Wide Open:  Going Beyond the Environmental Headlines considers how politics, psychology, history, economics and the media affect environmental issues, and specific ways that a person can use this information to make an impact.

The Teen Guide to Global Action by Barbara A. Lewis helps students consider which issues they plan to tackle and provides suggestions on how to mobilize. Be A Changemaker: How to Start Something that Matters by Laurie Ann Thompson follows a similar path.
 
The suggestions above are in no way comprehensive; you can easily find--and add suggestions to--a more complete list here.  Overall, my hope is that quality YA nonfiction texts can help our students “read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently” (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R.10), but with an increased interest, newfound mastery of current events, and intense hunger for social change.

Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil
Aquinas College
ghr001@aquinas.edu