A few week’s ago I asked a couple of question on Facebook and through an email blast. They were: What are you reading this summer? and What new books might you add to your syllabus?
Thank you. I had more responses than I could respond to or that I can repeat here. The most frequently mentioned book was The Hate U Give. It is next on my “to read” stack. It has been there for a few weeks. I am almost done with A. S. King’s terrific book, Still Life with Tornado. Both books have great reviews and come highly recommend by readers I trust. Indeed, both of these books showed up as answers to my query. Angie Thomas’s debute novel has a future. After all, both Jason Reynolds and John Green provide a vote of confidence on the cover. That puts her in pretty good company.
Thank you. I had more responses than I could respond to or that I can repeat here. The most frequently mentioned book was The Hate U Give. It is next on my “to read” stack. It has been there for a few weeks. I am almost done with A. S. King’s terrific book, Still Life with Tornado. Both books have great reviews and come highly recommend by readers I trust. Indeed, both of these books showed up as answers to my query. Angie Thomas’s debute novel has a future. After all, both Jason Reynolds and John Green provide a vote of confidence on the cover. That puts her in pretty good company.
I have to admit, I took a break from YA and read a few books from the list of authors I read to relax. Here is a glimpse of some of the books for my summer indulgence. I had to catch up with Walter Mosely’s Easy Rawlins series so I read Rose Gold. I also checked off the 15th novel, Endangered, in C. J. Box’s Joe Pickett series. (If you don’t have time to visit the wild country of Montana or Wyoming, you can read about it right?) I also caught up with Dave Roicheaux in Creole Belle, James Lee Burke’s nineteenth novel tracking the adventures of Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel in and around New Iberia and New Orleans. This represents a few of the series that I dove back into this summer. The good news, there is a more recent novel in each of these fine series waiting for me at the library.
Let's see what people are reading. Again, I had a great response. I settled on four readers who had an industrious and interesting lists. In the future, I will come back to what might go into a future syllabus.
Niki Allanah Blaylock listed the following on her bookshelf: Mosquitoland, (David Arnold); Three Dark Crowns, (Kendare Blake); Wolf by Wolf, (Ryan Graudin); Every Day, (David Levithan), History is All You Left Me (Adam Silvera); and (Jeff Zentner)'s newest book, Goodbye Days. I have got to say, I love Niki’s list. I have read about half of these and love them. I highlighted Zentner’s The Serpent King as a YA Wednesday weekend pick a couple of weeks ago. The rest are added to my list of books to read.
Niki Allanah Blaylock listed the following on her bookshelf: Mosquitoland, (David Arnold); Three Dark Crowns, (Kendare Blake); Wolf by Wolf, (Ryan Graudin); Every Day, (David Levithan), History is All You Left Me (Adam Silvera); and (Jeff Zentner)'s newest book, Goodbye Days. I have got to say, I love Niki’s list. I have read about half of these and love them. I highlighted Zentner’s The Serpent King as a YA Wednesday weekend pick a couple of weeks ago. The rest are added to my list of books to read.
One of the blog’s great friends, Katie Riemersma Sluiter, has been reading some great books as well. Her list includes: Between the World and Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates); Everything, Everything (Nicola Yoon); Speak (Laurie Halse Anderson), and Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock (Matthew Quick). Coates’ book has had a large affect across the United States. For those of us in English Language Arts community it might be even more impactful. There has been an ongoing discussion about diversity in classrooms, in books, and in educational policy. Yoon’s book is still on the rise with the release of the movie and her second book, The Sun is also a Star is also fantastic. Speak has a track record in the world of YA literature that would be hard to match. However, if you ignore the rest of Anderson’s works you are making a big mistake. Quick is one of my personal favorites. I was glad to see Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock on the list, I think it doesn’t get enough attention.
Raven Jade is one of my former students at LSU and is now teaching in the Baton Rouge area. She is an industrious fireball and responded with the following: "I've been reading YA retellings of fairy tales and myths. I'm opening up the year with a unit on archetypes, so I was hoping to find some fun examples of adaptations to spur discussion. So far, I've read Entwined--retelling of the 12 Dancing Princesses (Heather Dixon), Cruel Beauty-Cupid and Psyche (Rosamund Hodge), The Percy Jackson series (Rick Roirdan) The Goddess Test series-Persephone and Demeter (Aimée Carter), A Forbidden Wish-Alladin (Jessica Khoury), and A Promise of Fire-Greek myths (Amanda Bouchet). I know I'll be having students identify archetypes in YA, but I haven't decided if I'll have them actually read anything specific yet." I absolutely love it when I find new teachers working hard to create exciting curriculum for there students. Thanks Raven. Keep track of your efforts and you can report in a future blog post.
For my final choice I share what June Pulliam sent. June teaches in the English department at LSU. She frequently teaches young adult literature and is an expert in horror fiction. You can find her past contribution to this blog here and she is scheduled for another post for Halloween 2017. I thought her summer reading was diverse and very interesting. Her response: “This summer I am reading Mississippi Trial, 1955, by Chris Crowe; American Street, by Ibi Zoboi; Bar Code Tattoo, by Suzenne Weyn, and When Dad Killed Mom, by Julius Lester. I haven't made up my syllabus for the fall yet, but I think I might include Randa Abdel-Fattah's Does My Head Look Big in This?” Her list reminded of old favorites and suggested others that I need to add to my list.
To conclude, I want to that everybody else who sent in reading suggestions. There are quite a few more books we could talk about, but time evades me. By far, the most common suggest is the The Hope U Give. If you haven’t read it, it is clearly time to join the party.
To conclude, I want to that everybody else who sent in reading suggestions. There are quite a few more books we could talk about, but time evades me. By far, the most common suggest is the The Hope U Give. If you haven’t read it, it is clearly time to join the party.
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