DR. BICKMORE'S YA WEDNESDAY

Podcasts and Young Adult Literature

8/12/2026

Meet Our Contributor; Rebekah Buchanan

Rebekah Buchanan (she/her) is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University and a former Roving Scholar Fulbrighter to Norway (2018-2019). Her research focuses on literacy practices and activism in youth culture, specifically through zines and music and rural teacher education. She has written extensively on popular culture in the classroom, youth’s out of school literacy practices, music-based pedagogy, and punk. She is currently the Vice Chair of NCTE’s The Rural Assembly on English Literacy and Language Education (TRAELLE). She is a host on New Books Network and contributes regularly to School Library Journal and Library Journal.

Podcasts and Young Adult Literature by Rebekah Buchanan

Podcasts are a great way to learn about new books and authors—both for yourself and your students. After a slight dip in 2022, the number of podcast listeners—and viewers—has steadily been on the rise. 58% of American’s have listened to at least one podcast a month so far in 2026—an all-time high. With the weekly podcast consumers at 130 million people, podcasts are becoming one of the fastest growing ways Americans consume their information and learn about the world. Even more interesting is that research shows that 64% of 12–34-year-olds are monthly podcast consumers. (Edison Research, 2026). Introducing students to podcasts about books allows them to hear from authors and explore genres and texts they might not have thought about reading before. It’s a platform they may already be using making it even easier for buy-in.

There are many different podcasts that focus on talking with young adult authors and combining podcasts with audiobooks, whole class novels, choice reading, and even writing assignments like podcast reviews are great ways to bring podcasts about young adult books into the classroom. Penguin Teen has a well-established podcast, We Are YA. Book Riot’s podcast Hey YA brings news about things happening in the YA world. 88 Cups of Tea talks with writers about craft and has a series focused on young adult authors.

I wanted to also introduce you to a new podcast channel I host on New Books Network. “The New Books Network is a consortium of author-interview podcast channels dedicated to public education. Covering 100+ subjects, disciplines, and genres, we publish 70 to 100 episodes every week. The NBN reaches about half a million people every month; NBN listeners download close to 1 million episodes a month.”

Recently, New Books Network launched a channel for Young Adult Literature. On the channel I talk with authors about their books, writing process, and inspirations. The channel just started in April, but I’ve had the chance to talk with some great debut authors as well as more established young adult writers. Since many of us are getting ready to return to the classroom and share summer reads and books we hope will inspire readers, I want to highlight some of my favorite debuts that might interest you and your students and some favorite interviews you might enjoy.

A Few Debuts

Brianna Jett’s Under a Carnivore Sky is a beautiful novel in verse. Sixteen-year-old Lili is a hunter in search of the monster who lives in the carnivorous swamp bordering her town. As long as the monster lives, it steals pieces of flesh from the adults of her town and until it can be stopped the town remains cursed by the monster. Lili meets Caleb who is desperate to escape the town and who will map the swamp for her as long as she helps him find a way out. Jett tackles themes of forgiveness, fear, and the price of hiding secrets. I especially enjoyed talking with Brianna about how much I loved the monster.

Inspired by a Moroccan folktale, Loretta Chefchaouni’s The Lustrous Dark introduces readers to Shay, they young protagonist training to be a midwife’s apprentice. In search of learning more about her past, Shay discovers her mother did not die but is instead addicted to the magical drug Snow. Betrayed by her birth mother, Shay must rely on a band of misfit ghouls to lead her to safety as she learns more about those in power in her world who control the magic and the revolution who want to eliminate it. As she finds her way through the forest with her new friends, she discovers herself and her newfound beliefs about her world and those in power. Chefchaouni uses this engaging fantasy novel to address addiction, family dynamics, political injustices and oppression, and feminism. We chatted about using fantasy to address these topics as well as the Moroccan inspirations in the novel.

L.L. Madrid’s My Lips, Her Voice is a dual voice novel where small town ghost stories and rumors of serial killers haunt a community. Cousins Audrey and Mara are not close Audrey wants to stay in the small town of Copper City while Mara can’t wait to leave. But, when Mara’s body is discovered in the town’s old mine and Mara’s spirit returns with the ability to hijack Audrey’s body at will, the two must learn to “live” together in Audrey to find out the town’s secrets. Audrey and Mara must work together to find the latest missing girl before it’s too late. Madrid brings readers into the world of the twins, Mara struggling to reclaim some of the life she once had and Audrey fighting for her own bodily autonomy. The novel combines horror and mystery with themes of generational trauma, LGBTQ love, town secrets, and supernatural abilities. Leigh and I talked about rural communities and writing horror.

Some Favorites from Established Authors

There are so many fabulous authors out there. I loved talking with Jason Reynolds about Soundtrack. We might have gone down a bit of a music rabbit hole if you want to hear us geek out about it.

I’m a sucker for a good mystery. Plus, my love for Lois Duncan novels draws me to anything involving high school and murder. Lish McBride’s Most Likely to Murder has the best high school yearbook superlatives ever.

Two books that I loved that brought art and art history to the classroom are Sayantani DasGupta’s latest middle grades Theft of the Ruby Lotus that is a love letter to New York, museums, and immigrant families and Elana K. Arnold’s haunting Holloway with an autistic protagonist who travels to France during World War II and learns of art, love, and acceptance.

Jilanne Hoffman and I talked about her middle grades Heartland and writing about the rural Midwest, environmental justice, family farming, and alternating timelines. We have a shared appreciation for how the farm crisis of the 1980s has made a lasting impact on current farming and our love for the Chicago Cubs.

Author and illustrator LeUyen Pham talked with me about the process of illustrating graphic novels with writing by Jennifer Lee and Gene Yang. Students interested in illustrating and graphic novel and picture books are structured will love this conversation.

There are many podcasts out there. The Young Adult channel on New Books Network is just one. Find one you enjoy, subscribe to it, and find more books to add to that ever-growing TBR shelf.

Citations

Edison Research. The Podcast Consumer 2026. (June 4, 2026). https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-podcast-consumer-2026/.

Teaching the Hero’s Journey with YA and Middle Grades Literature

8/5/2026

Meet our Contributor: Margaret A. Robbins, PhD

Teaching the Hero’s Journey with YA and Middle Grades Literature
by Dr. Margaret A. Robbins, PhD

The hero’s journey is a well-regarded and well-established story structure. Many educators and writers tend to associate it more with science fiction, fantasy, and other forms of speculative fiction, or otherworldly fiction. While it fits very neatly with speculative fiction, the hero’s journey can also work well with realistic and historical fiction, though sometimes with slight alterations. The two main texts I have recently used to teach the Hero’s Journey in Grade 7 Humanities are The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. It’s rewarding to see students apply this plot concept to the specific texts we have read.

The Hunger Games

Of the two novels, The Hunger Games is the one that more traditionally follows this story structure, and it’s encouraging to see Katniss Everdeen and other empowered female protagonists take the lead in dystopian literature, which is a trend I’ve noted in some of my other work over the past ten years. In our class discussions of the novel, my students have pointed out that while Katniss has an “ordinary world” in District 12 and a “call to adventure” at the reaping, she does not fully refuse the call because she volunteers to participate in the Hunger Games to save Prim from a brutal fate. She does, however, show hesitation, particularly when she has to say goodbye to Gale and her family and is forced to board the train, along with Peeta, to the Capitol. The Panem primary city, known as The Capitol, is an extended metaphor for an extreme form of capitalism in which only the very wealthy can succeed and thrive, while many residents in the districts struggle to survive.

As the story progresses, the hero’s journey continues. Katniss and Peeta have a “meeting with the mentor” with Effie Trinkett and Haymitch Abernathy on the train, although Katniss also meets a very crucial mentor, Cinna, a little bit later in the story. When the train parks in the Capital city, Katniss crosses the threshold into a world she’s unfamiliar with and where most of her adventures will take place. Most students agree that Katniss’s “test, allies, and enemies” begin with the tributes being evaluated, when she gets to scope out her competition. The innermost cave is entering the arena itself. Students have had differing perspectives on “The Ordeal” and “The Reward,” but the consensus has been that the ordeal is the games themselves, particularly the final showdown with Cato, and the reward is when Katniss and Peeta finally win the games.

Arguably, the road back is when Katniss prepares to go home, and “the resurrection” is when Katniss tells the stretched truth on national television, which is that she was so madly in love with Peeta that she wasn’t thinking straight with the berries stunt that allowed both her and Peeta to win the Hunger Games, albeit to the dismay of President Snow, Panem’s corrupt leader. The audience seems to buy it, at least for the time being. President Snow seems less convinced, and that’s a plot point that gets more developed in the second novel of the series, Catching Fire. The Return with the Elixir occurs when Katniss and Peeta return to District 12, though they both have to accept the fact that their relationship, along with their relationships with others, will be different.

Chains

One of the beauties of Laurie Halse Anderson’s novel Chains is that it shakes up the traditional heroes and villains archetypes, at least to a degree. In many writings and stories about the Revolutionary War, American readers often perceive the Patriots as the “good guys” and the Tories/Loyalists as the “bad guys.” However, as a reader, I felt at least some sympathy for some of the Loyalist characters and questioned the motivations of some of the Patriots. I think that is part of what makes Halse Anderson a great writer: Even when writing a novel that follows some traditional elements of the hero’s journey, the reader still questions the good guy vs. bad guy binary, at least in terms of wars and political situations. In a politically polarized moment, it is even more important to question such binaries.

At the beginning of the novel, Isabel and her sister Ruth had lived in slavery; their owner was kinder to them than many others. However, they lost both of their parents and did not have their freedom or certainty about what their future held, so they are subjugated. When Mr. Finch, their former owner’s crooked nephew, sells the girls to Mr. and Mrs. Lockton of New York against their will, they are forced on a “call to adventure” they can’t refuse, even after a family friend named Jenny tries to buy them, but can’t afford to outbid the very affluent loyalist Locktons. Additionally, Miss Mary Finch had promised both girls their freedom in her will, but her nephew Robert refuses to acknowledge this and will not allow Isabel or anyone else to see the will.

Isabel has a few figures in the novel who serve as mentors, such as Curzon and Lady Seymour, Mr. Lockton’s kind elderly aunt. Yet Curzon and his owner, Patriot soldier Mr. Bellingham, sometimes cannot keep the promises they make to Isabel for spying on the Locktons, so the reader questions Curzon’s motivations as a mentor figure.

When Isabel and her younger, more naive sister Ruth arrive in New York, they cross the threshold of unfamiliarity. Their main enemy, and the one most strongly disliked by my students, is Madame Lockton. She is cruel and unreasonable to both girls, particularly toward the willful Isabel. Becky Barry is the family’s indentured servant and tries to be their ally. But although she tries to protect the girls from Mrs. Lockton's wrath, she sometimes steps back to avoid conflict, making her role as an ally inconsistent. Mr. Lockton is more rational than his wife in the way he treats the family’s slaves and servants. However, his dangerous secrets, including his involvement in an assassination plan on George Washington, bring danger to everyone who lives in his home, ultimately making him more of an enemy. Additionally, he does not treat his wife well, which adds fuel to the fire.

I would argue that the most trustworthy mentor for Isabel is “Grandfather,” the elderly enslaved Black man at the well who advises her against claiming herself as a “Patriot” or a “Loyalist,” and instead urges her to pursue her own freedom. His metaphor of finding the River Jordan is an important one related to the quest for freedom. Although Madame Lockton is a vile enemy, I would argue that the worst enemy of the book is the institution of slavery.

The innermost cave could arguably be Lockton’s home, and the ordeal is likely when Mrs. Lockton and Isabel have a particularly harsh encounter, and Mrs. Lockton has Isabel branded with the letter “I” for insolence. As is the case with many series novels, the “Road Back,” the “Resurrection,” and the “Return with the Elixir” might not be fully realized until the second or third book. Halse Anderson’s “Seeds of America” series continues with the books Forge and Ashes. At the end of Chains, Isabel escapes with Curzon with the intent of finding Isabel, who was sold down south by Mrs. Lockton. Although the next steps of her journey are unclear at the end of Chains, Isabel makes the empowering last name change from Lockton, forced upon her by Madame Lockton, to Gardener, in honor of her mother, who loved the outdoors, and to claim her freedom by refusing her past names of Finch and Lockton. We, as readers, do not know what is next for Isabel, Curzon, and Ruth, but we do know that Isabel is determined to find her freedom, along with Ruth’s.

Even though the “allies and enemies” in Chains are sometimes questionable and in flux, Isabel has a consistent quest for freedom throughout the story. Perhaps it is good for young adolescents to understand that sometimes, there’s no clear enemy or ally in a story. Sometimes the roles shift, and one has to figure out whom to trust on the journey to self-discovery and freedom. Over time in the first novel, Isabel learns to trust herself first and others second.

Complexities of The Hero's Journey

The Hero’s Journey is not always entirely linear or traditional in fiction. However, Joseph Campbell’s story structure is an important tool for better understanding narrative and plot arcs. For students who do well with visual manipulatives, they can create posters of the hero’s journey and/or the traditional, popular plot diagram and apply it to the stories they read. Analyzing both the hero’s journey and the plot diagram can help students see how plot and characters work together to tell compelling stories. Overall, understanding the hero’s journey is important for better understanding the story arc and how it works with characterization to tell a compelling story. Through writing prompts and discussions, students can also reflect on their own present and potential future hero’s journeys.

References

Anderson, L. H. (2008). Chains. Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

Collins, S. (2008). The hunger games. Scholastic Press.

Docimo, K., & Littlehale, K. (n.d.). Plot diagram: Story structure, examples & templates.

Storyboard That. https://www.storyboardthat.com/articles/e/plot-diagram

Villirilli, D. (2025, October 14). The hero's journey: 12 steps to a classic story structure. Reedsy.
https://reedsy.com/blog/guide/story-structure/heros-journey/

Read Any Good Dissertations, Lately?

7/29/2026

Jeffrey S. Kaplan, PhD, is Associate Professor Emeritus in the School of Teaching, Learning, and Leadership in the College of Community Innovation and Education, University of Central Florida, Orlando and Senior Adjunct Professor/Dissertation Chair/Methodologist for College of Doctoral Studies, Grand Canyon University, Phoenix, Arizona. His research interests include the teaching of reading and writing, and specifically the teaching of young adult literature across the curriculum. Dr. Kaplan is Past President of the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (2012-13), a division of the National Council Teachers of English and the co-editor of Teaching Young Adult Literature Today: Insights, Considerations and Perspectives for the Classroom Teacher (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012, 2016) and Chair National Council Teachers of English Standing Committee Against Censorship (2014-17). He can be reached at [email protected]

Read Any Good Dissertations, Lately? by Jeffrey S. Kaplan

Read any good dissertations, lately? I have. In my retirement (achem) years, I spend my days reading, writing, traveling, hiking, walking, and reading dissertations. As an adjunct faculty member with the College of Doctoral Studies of Grand Canyon University (Phoenix, Arizona), I have the privilege and honor of working with graduate students pursuing a doctoral degree. Although the disciplines vary, the objective is always the same – the pursuit of a noble idea.

As a faculty member for nearly thirty years in the College of Education and Community Innovation at the University of Central Florida, Orlando, I taught undergraduate and graduate students preparing to become teachers, administrators, and educational leaders. I served on honors thesis and dissertation committees, each underscored by dedicated students and teachers empowered with the notion – that ‘truth’ matters. The pursuit of scholarship – for the sake of scholarship is a lonely pursuit – but that doesn’t make it any less noble or worthy.

I bring the notion of ‘truth’ and ‘nobility’ up for a reason. We are under attack. Scholars, academics, and students – all desiring to know more about their subject matter – and to separate what is known from what is not known – are seemingly treading water in an arena where ‘truth’ becomes susceptible to public opinion. And ‘public opinion’ becomes subject to ‘whim.’

Do you think it is true? Well so, be it.

What does this have to do with young adult literature? Plenty.

I have always been attracted to people who have gone to the wall for an ‘idea.’ Money is important – and we all know that when it comes to paying the ‘rent’, noble ideas can always go so far. But when it comes to exploring the truth – and those who have the privilege to do so – academics, scientists, reporters, - the pursuit of the truth is an ambition filled with complexity and desire that few can dispute has merit beyond words
.
To stand next to someone who has devoted their life to an idea – no matter how tenuous and vague that idea might be – is awesome. Where would we be without Galileo? Einstein? Martin Luther King, Jr? Judy Blume? Or Robert Cormier?

Robert Cormeir

Robert Cormier, you say? Robert Cormier was an American writer and journalist (1925 – 2000) known primarily for his ground-breaking novel, The Chocolate War (Pantheon Books, 1974) about one teen’s lonely and embattled quest to defy a request to comply with his private school’s culture and fundraiser. Refusing to sell chocolates for an annual school fundraising event, Jerry, a freshman attending a fictional Catholic high school, defies convention and refuses to sell – in direct confrontation to students and an administrator who he senses is using intimidation to force his cooperation.

Because of The Chocolate War’s frank language, violence, and sexual ponderings, this haunting fictional work of adolescent angst remains consistently on the lists of top challenged books for young adults. After all, open defiance of cultural norms is always a safe bet for having a book land on a list of works most censored by adults refusing to let kids reads work of significant consequence. And this work was no exception.

(I know. My mother, a seventh-grade English teacher, taught this book to her students – but not before receiving permission from her administrators and parents alike. Better to be safe, than jobless..)

Dissertations and the Pursuit of Truth

And so it is with scholarship. The truth matters. I chair and review dissertations – whether they be in education, health, psychology, or business – that for the most part, research issues of social justice. The students I work with – many of them educators, nurses, social workers, business owners, and the like – are all imbued with a sense of purpose and desire to pursue a noble ambition for its own sake. They want to make their mark in the world – by researching, writing, and sharing – a personal and professional pursuit of their version of what is true and right and just.

And nothing could be ‘nobler.’

The same is true with the many educators and scholars I have known who are devoted to the study of young adult literature. Their lives – and their stories – remain most impressive to both those who know them well – and those who know them for the good work they have done – and continue to do. They – meaning the professionals who share at local, state and national conferences – and contribute to state, national, and international peer-reviewed journals – do so not for monetary reward – or even recognition – but, for the glory of sharing the truth to those who care – and those who aspire to do the same.

Dissertation writing is not an easy task. As I tell my students, writing a dissertation is a long, technical document – which comes with its own vagaries and stylistic peculiarities. No two dissertations are the same and no two dissertations will remain immutable. Research is always changing – and today’s version of what is true and good is always changing. What we know today to be relevant and real, will often be surpassed tomorrow by a new discovery or new author.

Yet, what remains constant is the pursuit of the ‘truth.’ And what that means to our field of study – young adult literature and the teaching of young adult literature – is our guiding “north star.’ True, our teaching is always being challenged – but our vision of what is true and good is always noble and worth pursuing.

Recent Dissertations about Young Adult Literature

A quick glance at the handful of recent dissertations about literature for adolescents reveals how immutable scholarship can and should be. For how intriguing these titles are:

Falling Down the Stairs & Finding Vitality: Exploring Student Response to Banned Books Through Political, Feminist, & Schoolish Discourses in a High School Book Club
Priske, Katie
The University of Iowa ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025. 32164571.

Emerging Agency in Caribbean Young Adult Literature
Ramos Muñoz, Elvin
University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras (Puerto Rico) ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025. 32400182.

“It’s Time to Get Personal”: Cultivating Spaces of Acompañamiento With Latinx Youth Through Latinx Young Adult Literature Book Clubs
Saco, Sandra Mariella
Arizona State University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025. 31997904.

Drawing the Line: Visible and Invisible Disability, Identity, and Intersectionality in Award-Winning Graphic Novels for Teens
Nixon, Gwendolyn C
The University of Alabama ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025. 32118113.

So that it Might Be Different For You: The Intersection of Adolescents/CE, Legal Culture, and Sexual Violence in Young Adult Literature
Fine, Jamie M
. Stanford University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2023. 31049681.

Storytelling, Identity Development, and Decolonial Pedagogies: Frameworks for Teaching Indigenous Literatures of the Great Lakes to Young Adult Readers
Cary, Katie M
. The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2022. 29208295.

And these are only a handful of powerful and recent dissertations that can be found online – most notably in the dissertation search engine – ProQuest. Each dissertation is worthy of our applause – and each worthy of skimming, perusing, highlighting, and sharing – for the insights they provide for our knowledge, our profession, and our understanding of what makes a more human and empathetic society of learners in pursuit of what is true and good for young people.

Unsung Scholars

The same is true for the unsung scholars – leaders in the field of young adult literature – who put pen to paper (so to speak) – and illuminate what they know to be true and good and insightful – about the study of ‘good books for good kids.’

There are many, many seminal works about the study of young adult literature that deserve our praise. They deserve commendation for the comfort they bring us and the insights they share about what it means to be a scholar of reading for adolescents. Some of the innumerable notable works include:

Literature for Today’s Young Adults (Pearson, 2012) by Alleen Nilsen, James Blasingame, Kenneth Donelson, Don Nilsen

How Young Adult Literature Gets Taught (Routledge, 2022) edited by Steven Bickmore, T. Hunter Strickland, and Stacy Gaber

Identity, Criticality, and Advocacy in Young Adult Literature (Routledge, 2026) edited by Stefany Comfort Maher and Alice Hays

The Oxford Handbook of Young Adult Literature (Oxford University Press, 2026) edited by Victor Malo-Juvera and Crag Hill.

Young Adult Literature in Action (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Rose Brock

As said, I have mentioned are only a few of the numerous books, dissertation, monographs, research articles, opinion pieces, and the like by emerging and established scholars. These everyday heroes spend their days (and evenings) working tirelessly to spread their concept of the ‘truth’ about the power and agency involved in studying and advocating reading for adolescents. There is no immediate reward or glory in their pursuit – only the satisfaction of a job well-done.

There is ‘no golden rainbow’ or “corner office with a panoramic view’ waiting for my dissertation students when they finish their research. Often, they return to the same position they had when they started. Teachers return to their classrooms, nurses return to their rounds, social workers to their casework, etc.; they simply leave with the satisfaction of a job well done – and the feeling that they have accomplished something ‘noble.’

In Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, Jerry, our young hero, is inspired to rebel against his conspiring and cruelly manipulative school pranksters and one accommodating vice-principal. Inside his school locker hangs the inspiring quote by the renowned T. S. Eliot– “Do I dare disturb the universe?”

And indeed, he does. And so do the many educators of young adult literature in pursuit of the truth.

Are We Canning the Laughs?: A Brief Investigation of the Current Landscape of Humorous YA Literature

7/22/2026

Meet our Contributor: Natalie Tate

Natalie Tate is a Brigham Young University master's student whose interests include children's literature, young adult literature, folktale studies, and environmental criticism. She received her undergrad in English from BYU and a master of library science from Texas Woman's University. She is currently the editing director of Whirligig, a new BYU children’s magazine, and loves to spend her free time with her two best friends (who also happen to be her husband and 20-month-old son).

Are We Canning the Laughs?: A Brief Investigation of the Current Landscape of Humorous YA Literature by Natalie Tate

From my earliest days as a reader, I was drawn to books that made me laugh. I remember having my mother read Sandra Boynton’s Blue Hat, Green Hat over and over. I couldn’t get enough of the turkey who—oops!—inevitably wore his clothes wrong. As a teen, I read every single book Janette Rallison penned. I read her humorous rom-coms, especially It’s a Mall World After All, over and over again. And a love of humor continues to stay with me through my adult years. On our honeymoon, my husband and I read Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) together, sometimes laughing so hard together that we cried. But as I’ve reflected on humorous contemporary teen novels, I’ve mostly come up dry.

My youngest sister, still a teen, asked me recently about humorous young adult books similar to My Lady Jane. She confided that this was the type of funny that she wanted to read more of but that it seemed impossible to find. What I think she was looking for, and what I’ve constrained my search to find, is books in which humor is a major element—books that, if giving a summary, inevitably include the word “funny” in the description. (Although I realize that my definition of what constitutes a “funny” book is somewhat simplistic, I feel that it serves my purposes within this brief investigation.) I had a hunch that my sister was on to something when she expressed the difficulty of her funny YA book search. Where were the funny books for teens? And that’s what led to this investigation into the world of humor in contemporary young adult literature.

Has the Funny Dwindled?

Back in 2000, librarian Teri Lesesne opined that younger readers had an ample array of humorous literature, but that it was in “terribly short supply” for middle-grade and high school students (p. 60). That was 26 years ago, and for middle-grade students in the decades since then, humorous literature has become particularly notable. For example, bestsellers include Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Raina Telgemeier’s Smile, Lincoln Peirce’s Big Nate, Dana Simpson’s Phoebe and Her Unicorn, Tom Angleberger’s Origami Yoda, and Rachel Renée Russell’s Dork Diaries. Yet, while humorous literature for middle-graders has become plentiful, I haven’t noticed a similar shift in young adult literature.

In 2010, librarian Alison Follos opined that “humor is the missing ingredient in middle and high school education” but that it’s not the type of book with which teachers and librarians “overload [their] stacks” (p. 37). In a short article from Kirkus in 2018, one YA editor wrote of fond memories of humorous YA lit from her youth, but remarked that these days, “funny young adult books are strangely thin on the ground” (Simeon, para. 2). And in the recent 2022 SLJ article “Show Me the Funny,” Emily Mroczek-Bayci remarked that “doom, gloom, and romance” are what take up most of the shelves in the YA section, leaving little room for anything else, let alone humor. The librarians cited in her article beg publishers for more humorous YA lit, feeling it has dwindled over the years (pp. 30–32). The professionals—librarians, publishers, and reviewers alike—all articulate a lack of humorous young adult literature as both a present reality and as a problem to be solved.

Is It Because Teens Don’t Like Humorous Books Anymore?

To tackle this first possibility, I looked for any recent studies that could tell me about teens’ reading preferences regarding humor. Unfortunately, data is limited. The most recent “evidence” purporting teens’ preference for humor is from 2022, and the evidence is anecdotal. Librarians point to the enormous popularity of humorous middle-grade books—for example, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, which has spent hundreds of weeks at the top of the NYT bestsellers list—and argue that kids’ love of humor doesn’t suddenly disappear when they hit teenage status (Mroczek-Bayci, 2022, p. 30).

The next discussion of humor and teens that I found was from an entire decade earlier. A casual 2012 report looked at twelve- to eighteen-year-olds in one book club who self-selected books to review. The books that teens said were funny were more than twice as likely to be reviewed as the books they said were sad. Since self-selection implies favoritism, the author determined that the teens were drawn to funny literature (Herald, p. 216). In 2009, Publisher’s Weekly surveyed teens to determine their reading preferences. Sadly, the survey failed to ask about humor. However, in a subsection asking about favorite elements of graphic novels and manga, teenage responders picked humor as their second favorite element, only defeated in the polls by romance (Fitzgerald, p. 23). While there’s scholarly literature about teens’ relationship with humor from the ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s, it seems to have almost completely disappeared in the last 15 years. Why have scholars stopped surveying teens to determine what they like to read?

One possibility is that we’ve pivoted to sales numbers to determine young adult preferences. Yet, there may be serious issues with this approach: According to WordsRated statistics from January 2023, 55% of YA lit buyers are over 18 years old. And lest one believe this crowd is buying YA lit for the teens in their lives, 78% of them say they’re buying it for themselves. If publishers, librarians, teachers, authors, and scholars are looking to sales to determine what teens like, they’re making a mistake. What they’re really seeing is the reading preferences of adults. In fact, of the YA lit buyers over 18, 51% are between 30 and 45 years old (Curcic, “YA consumer structure”). Maybe it’s naïve to believe that publishers should consider something more than sales statistics when determining what YA lit to offer. And yet, shouldn’t young adults’ book tastes be important to YA publishing divisions? Teens’ book preferences seem to be ignored or, at best, only partially considered. Noting this lack of teenage preferences should be important for us, especially if we are hoping to listen to and be respectful of teenage wishes.

Is It Because Publishers Don’t Want to Publish Humorous Books?

I begin this section with an anecdote from a colleague who is a published author. This colleague wrote a funny story that he submitted to publishers, but none of them chose to pursue his manuscript. The response was either, “I thought it was hilarious, but the rest of my team didn’t get it,” or “My team thought it was funny but I didn’t get it.” If everyone at the table doesn’t find the manuscript funny, publishers may fear that it won’t land with teens. But humor isn’t one-size-fits-all. Young adult author David Lubar explains it well:

Tragedy is universal. Comedy is subjective. If a novelist throws a dog under the wheels of a truck, every reader will feel sad. If the truck is an Oscar Mayer Weenermobile, some people might find that funny. If the hot dog truck swerves, misses the dog, and runs over a pack of PETA members, a different group of readers might be amused (Gill, 2007, p. 63).

If publishers are waiting for the funny book that pleases everyone, they’re going to be waiting for a long time.

And yet, as stated earlier, unabashedly humorous middle-grade fiction is immensely popular. In an article published in February of 2024, Publisher’s Weekly observes the year’s trending topics in books for children and YA. Unsurprisingly, “books with humor have been popping” (O’Sullivan, 2024, “Tracking trends”). Yet, PW only mentions this trend with an eye toward picture books and middle-grade graphic novels. Although unabashedly humorous books for teens would surely be written differently than unabashedly humorous books for middle-grade kids, if humor is trending in middle-grade, I can’t help but wonder why publishers don’t see its potential popularity for teens.

Admittedly, I had difficulty finding answers to this question. One lead was an editorial piece about humorous novels for adults published in the UK. The editorial opined that despite humorous literature’s “enormous popularity with readers,” publishers are cautious. Why? Because while humor can be funny, some people can also find it offensive (Larman, 2020, para. 4). An author writing a character who tells an off-color joke may be criticized as sharing their character’s viewpoint. No publisher wants to be accused of promoting hate speech, an allegation that could spin out of control and cause serious damage to the reputation of a publishing house.

And yet, if causing offense is the worry, Alleen and Don Nilsen—the godparents of academic humor studies in the US—believe that this can be avoided. In their “Humane Humor Rules,” they provide the following guidelines:

A. Never target the victim,
B. Always target an individual’s strength, not weakness,
C. Never target a quality that a person can’t change (such as gender, ethnicity, etc.),
D. For tragedies and major embarrassments, allow for emotional and temporal distancing,
E. Don’t offend your audience; sometimes self-censoring is necessary (Wilkie, p. 116).

It’s true—humor can hurt and demean others but, if used appropriately, laughter can also be healing.

Is It Because Librarians Don’t Like Humor?

Recently, I attended a lecture about teaching YA lit to college students. The professor talked about a new difficulty in her YA lit class—namely, that a large percentage of students didn’t manage to read the required YA books, citing seasonal depression and the books’ triggering content. All of the books on the professor’s required list addressed important issues like the Holocaust, rape, and racism. All of the books were also well-respected pieces of YA lit. Reassuring her students that all of the books ended hopefully didn’t seem to help. Another colleague at the lecture, knowing that I was studying funny YA lit, asked if I knew of any funny books that could mitigate the effects of so many serious, difficult books. “Is there actually any funny YA out there that’s literary enough to add?” the lecturing professor asked. She seemed surprised when I told her that there were several I could recommend.

The sentiment that funny books are neither educational nor literary isn’t new. In her 2010 article, librarian Alison Follos dared other librarians to help change the perception that humor is lesser literature. “Clever wit,” she added, “often addresses the most compelling themes” (p. 37). Take Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens, for example. The author self-describes the book as a discussion of misogyny, corporate influence in American politics, the commodification of society, society’s homogenization, and the effects of these topics on teens’ “self-esteem, racial and cultural identity, sexual orientation, gender expectations, and unrealistic norms of beauty” (Herald, 2012, p. 217). Hearing this list of heavy topics, you might assume that Bray wrote a very heavy piece of fiction. Yet, according to the review journals, this book was a clever, funny literary success, its difficult themes written in a highly readable story about teen beauty queens stranded on an island (Dobrez, 2011; Heppermann, 2011; Kirkus, 2011; Publisher’s Weekly, 2011; Tran, 2011).

In exploring librarians’ perceptions of humorous YA lit, I also decided to take a look at Printz Award winners and honor titles. The Printz Award is one of the most prestigious awards for YA books, awarded yearly by the American Library Association to a title that exemplifies literary excellence. Since its establishment in 2000, the award has had 27 winners and 111 honor titles. I wanted to know how often, if ever, the Printz had been awarded to funny books. Since I couldn’t read each title myself, I used professional book reviews and reader reviews from Goodreads to decide whether the books I hadn’t already read merited a place on the funny list. I looked at top reader tags like “funny” and “humor” to determine whether readers thought that humor was a major element in each title.

I found that in the award’s 25-year history, two humorous YA books were winners: Going Bovine in 2010 and American Born Chinese in 2007. Additionally, ten humorous books were honor titles over the years: Grasshopper Jungle in 2015, Dodger in 2013, Tales of the Madman Underground in 2010, both The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and Nation in 2009, Repossessed in 2008, An Abundance of Katherines in 2007, both Fat Kid Rules the World and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things in 2004, and Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging in 2001. In total, twelve funny YA books have managed to make it to the top of a prestigious literary list. The Printz committees responsible for recognizing these titles didn’t find humorous YA lit synonymous with lesser literature. Yes, funny and literary YA books do exist and are acknowledged by the librarian community.

I did find it interesting to compare the frequency of humorous lit that made the list in the ‘00s (7 titles) with the past ten years (0 titles). The difference felt substantial. But librarians have already proved that they would give the Printz to humorous titles that merited it. I suspected that the lack of humorous titles winning the Printz in the past ten years may have had more to do with a decrease in the number of humorous books being published than from librarians’ sudden distaste for humor.

Is It Because Authors Aren’t Writing Humor?

In editor Laura Simeon’s short article from 2018, she began with recent news regarding the Wodehouse Prize. The Wodehouse Prize is arguably the most prestigious award given to authors of humorous literature for adults. In 2018, the judges announced that no book submitted that year had been funny enough to merit a place on the shortlist, let alone declared the winner. Simeon wondered if the lack of humorous literature (such as her favorite book as a teen, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ was “a sign of our times” (para. 1). A discussion of the 2018 Wodehouse prize ordeal found in The Guardian posited another interesting insight: that while lighthearted, carefree Wodehousian comedy is on the decline, authors are still writing books that have funny parts—they’re just primarily about dark and unhappy subject matter (McAloon, 2018, para. 2). It felt to me like Simeon and The Guardian were saying something important.

To test this theory, I decided to study the YA books of fiction that I’d read with publication dates from within the last 15 years—196 books in total. Then, I starred books that I’d reviewed that included words like “laughed,” “funny,” and “humor.” There were 19 YA titles that included something I found funny—this amounted to 11% of the 196 books. Of these 19 titles, 9 included difficult subject matter: death of parent(s), cancer, antisemitism, gun violence, depression, grief, body shaming, racism, islamophobia, ableism, physical abuse, verbal abuse, poverty, and death of a friend. Of the other 10 titles, 7 were recommended for middle-graders and younger teens. Only 3 humorous YA titles recommended for teens of all ages did not include difficult subject matter, two of them written by the same authors (Appendix).

The humor found in the young adult books that I’d been reading seemed to corroborate The Guardian’s insight: Authors had been writing humor in the past 10 years—I just hadn’t noticed because the books were primarily focused on dark subject matter. Of course, YA lit that tackles difficult subject matter with a sprinkling of humor isn’t anything new. For example, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, a humorous YA novel about two wisecracking outcasts—one who is dealing with serious parental abuse—was a hit in 1993. The Pigman, another humorous YA novel, again about two funny teen outcasts who tragically burn bridges with their only adult friend, was published in 1968. I could add many, many others. YA lit that tackles difficult subjects with humor may be on the decline, but it doesn’t seem to be endangered. This is wonderful news! Author Joan Bauer notes that humor can breach topics that are “fiercely serious” and can bring teens “hope and redemption” (Lesesne, 2000). It’s comforting to know there are recently published books for teens that find humor, even in trying circumstances. Teens, and all of us, can appreciate a little uplift in difficult situations.

Yet lighthearted, carefree humor for teens of all ages (for example, books like A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag or Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging) seems to have become exceedingly difficult to find since the 2010s. Some might argue that this type of YA literature doesn’t provide a mirror to the realities of a contemporary teen’s life, that it’s not as important for teens as funny YA lit that addresses hard topics. But sometimes, teens may want a break from the mirror and from the “death, doom, and depression” of other books. They want to laugh without reservations. If we take away humorous YA escapism, we take away an outlet (Cart, 1998; Vanesse, 2000).

Curiously, several authors known in the past for their humorous YA escapism have disappeared from the YA sphere. Gordon Korman’s last YA novel, The Juvie Three, was published in 2008. Since then, he’s continued writing funny novels, but each one is firmly entrenched in middle grade. Janette Rallison, whose YA rom-coms were in high demand in the ‘00s, seems to have left YA behind and moved exclusively into adult chick lit. Maybe these authors and others like them got tired of writing YA and were looking for something new, or maybe publishers or the market itself pushed them out. In any case, there’s a hole on the shelf. Teens need authors and publishers to reinstate humorous YA escapism.

Areas for Further Study and Concluding Thoughts

Admittedly, my investigation of the current humorous YA lit climate has been brief and incomplete. Still, it has raised important questions: Where are the current studies about teens’ reading preferences? Is it possible for teen preferences to be given priority in the current market? Why the seeming reluctance to publish light, escapist humor in YA lit despite its enormous popularity for middle- and grade-school students? We still have work to do to answer these important questions. I’m grateful to the many teachers, librarians, and scholars in the past who have dedicated their time to understanding humorous YA lit. Now it’s our turn to fill the gap.

References

Cart, M. (1998). Carte blanche: What’s so funny? Booklist, 95(8), 742.

Curcic, D. (2023, January 30). Young adult book sales statistics. WordsRated. https://wordsrated.com/young-adult-book-sales/

Dobrez, C. (2011). Beauty queens. Booklist, 107(18), 46.

Fitzgerald, C. (2009). What do teens want? Publisher’s Weekly, 256(43), 22–26.

Follos, A. M. G. (2010). Taking humor seriously. Library Media Connection, 28(4), 36–37.

Gill, D. (2007). True talent: An interview with David Lubar. Teacher Librarian, 34(5), 62–63.

Heppermann, C. M. (2011). Beauty queens. Horn Book Magazine, 87(4), 140–141.

Herald, D. T. (2012). A funny thing happened. Voice of Youth Advocates, 35(3), 216–218.

Kirkus Reviews. (2011). Beauty queens. Kirkus Reviews, 79(8), p. 677.

Larman, A. (2020, May 5). Where is the Waugh or Wodehouse of our time? The Critic. https://thecritic.co.uk/where-is-the-waugh-or-wodehouse-of-our-time/

Lesesne, T. S. (2000). A passion for humor: An interview with Joan Bauer. Teacher Librarian, 27(3), 60–62.

McAloon, J. (2018, May 17). Fiction remains funny – the best comedy is found in dark, unhappy novels. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/17/fiction-wodehouse-prize-comic-novels

Mroczek-Bayci, E. (2022). Show me the funny. School Library Journal, 68(6), 30–33.

O’Sullivan, J. (2024, February 2). What’s ahead for kids’ books in 2024? Publisher’s Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/94246-2024-children-s-publishing-outlook.html

Publisher’s Weekly. (2011). Children’s books: Fiction. Publisher’s Weekly, 258(45), 39–44.

Simeon, L. (2018, June 17). Where are all the funny YA novels? Kirkus Reviews. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/where-are-all-funny-ya-novels/

Tran, A. (2011). Beauty queens. School Library Journal, 57(7), 92–93.

Vanesse, D. (2000). On taking ourselves too seriously, and other tragic mistakes. The ALAN Review, 27(2), 27–28. https://doi.org/10.21061/alan.v27i2.a.7

Wilkie, I. (2021). Short interviews. Comedy Studies, 12(1), 115–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/2040610X.2020.1850099

Book References

Angleberger, T. (2010). The strange case of origami Yoda. Amulet.

Barnes, J. (2009). Tales of the madman underground. Viking Books for Young Readers.

Boynton, S. (1984). Blue hat, green hat. Boynton Bookworks.

Bray, L. (2009). Going bovine. Delacorte Books for Young Readers.

Bray, L. (2011). Beauty queens. Scholastic.

Crutcher, C. (1993). Staying fat for Sarah Byrnes. Greenwillow Books.

Going, K. L. (2003). Fat kid rules the world. Penguin Books.

Green, J. (2006). An abundance of Katherines. Dutton Books for Young Readers.

Hand, C., Ashton, B., & Meadows, J. (2016). My lady Jane. HarperTeen.

Jenkins, A. M. (2007). Repossessed. HarperTeen.

Jerome, J. K. (1889). Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog). J. W. Arrowsmith.

Kinney, J. (2007). Diary of a wimpy kid. Amulet.

Korman, G. (1987). A semester in the life of a garbage bag. Scholastic.

Korman, G. (2008). The juvie three. Hyperion Book.

Lockhart, E. (2008). The disreputable history of Frankie Landau-Banks. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Mackler, C. (2003). The earth, my butt, and other big round things. Candlewick Press.

Peirce, L. (2010). Big Nate: In a class by himself. HarperCollins.

Pratchett, T. (2008). Nation. Doubleday.

Pratchett, T. (2012). Dodger. HarperCollins.

Rallison, J. (2006). It’s a mall world after all. Walker Books for Young Readers.

Rennison, L. (1999). Angus, thongs, and full frontal snogging. Piccadilly Press.

Russell, R. R. (2009). Dork diaries: Tales from a not-so-fabulous life. Aladdin.

Simpson, D. (2014). Phoebe and her unicorn. Andrews McMeel.

Smith, A. (2014). Grasshopper jungle. Dutton Books.

Telgemeier, R. (2009). Smile. Scholastic Graphix.

Townsend, S. (1982). The secret diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13¾. Methuen Books.

Yang, G. L. (2006). American born Chinese. First Second.

Zindel, P. (1968). The pigman. Bantam Books.

Appendix
YA Books with Heavy Themes and Humor that I’ve Read (Published in the Last 15 Years):

Blum, I. (2022). The life and crimes of Hoodie Rosen. Philomel Books.

Bowling, D. (2017). Insignificant events in the life of a cactus. Sterling Children’s Books.

Ellis, A. D. (2014). The end or something like that. Dial Books.

Feder, T. (2020). Dancing at the pity party: A dead mom graphic memoir. Dial Books.

Murphy, J. (2015). Dumplin’. Balzer + Bray.

Nayeri, D. (2020). Everything sad is untrue: (A true story). Levine Querido.

Reilly, K. J. (2021). Four for the road. Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

Schmidt, G. D. (2023). The labors of Hercules Beale. Clarion Books.

Stevenson, N. (2015). Nimona. HarperTeen.

Appendix
Funny YA Books I’ve Read (Published in the Last 15 Years):

Craft, J. (2018). New kid. Quill Tree Books. (Younger teens)

Craft, J. (2020). Class act. Quill Tree Books. (Younger teens)

Fahmy, H. (2021). Huda F are you? Dial Books.*

Hand, C., Ashton, B., & Meadows, J. (2016). My lady Jane. HarperTeen.*

Hand, C., Ashton, B., & Meadows, J. (2021). My contrary Mary. HarperTeen.*

Martín, P. (2023). Mexikid. Dial Books. (Younger teens)

Morita, K. (2020). I’ve been killing slimes for 300 years and maxed out my level. Yen Press. (Younger teens)

Muth, J. J. (2019). Stanislaw Lem’s the seventh voyage. Graphix. (Younger teens)

Santat, D. (2023). A first time for everything. First Second. (Younger teens)

Stroud, J. (2021). The outlaws Scarlett and Browne. Knopf Books for Young Readers. (Younger teens)

Trojan Horses and Real Talk with Rex Ogle

7/15/2026

Meet our Contributor:

Julie Hoffman, Ed.D. (@HoffieCup) is a Literacy and Social Studies Teacher Instructional Leader (TIL) with Springfield Public Schools. She is also an adjunct professor in the Teacher Education Program and the Department of English and Modern Languages at University of Illinois Springfield. She earned her Doctor of Education in literacy from Judson University in 2018. She is currently President of the Illinois Reading Council (IRC). Her research interests include urban education, social and emotional learning, young adult literature, poetry, and empathy. She believes that children’s literature and poetry can be a message of perseverance and hope and believes that we thrive when we invest in ourselves and others.

Meet Rex Ogle:

REX OGLE is an award-winning author of more than a hundred books, comics, graphic novels, and memoirs—most notably Free Lunch (winner of the ALA/YALSA award for Excellence in Non-Fiction), Abuela Don’t Forget Me (ALA/YALSA award for Excellence in Non-Fiction finalist), Road Home (a Micheal Printz Honor and Stonewall Honor book), and middle grade graphic novels Four Eyes and Pizza Face.
Under his pseudonym REY TERCIERO, he also re-imagines classics as modern and diverse graphic novels, including Meg, Jo, Beth, & Amy, Northranger (nominated for both Harvey and GLAAD Media Awards), and Dan in Green Gables (nominated for a GLAAD Media Award).
Born and raised in Texas, Rex now lives in Los Angeles where he writes every day—when he’s not reading X-Men, gaming with friends, or chasing his dog, Toby, trying to score a hug.

Trojan Horses and Real Talk with Rex Ogle
An interview by Julie Hoffman with Rex Ogle

Julie: Hi, Rex, Thanks for spending some time with me.

Rex: Hi, it’s good to see you.

Julie: Okay, Let’s dive in. So many books, so little time. I want to focus on your YA, mostly, but I know you have a new book that just came out. Absent. Let’s start with that.

Rex: Well basically, doing all of these school visits— talking to students and teachers and librarians— I was asking, “What are some of the biggest problems kids are facing today?” And it seemed like the two biggest ones right now are not going to school and social media. And I was like, ‘Well, social media is big to tackle. But, I know about not going to school. For me, when I was a kid I was not always able to make it to school because my parents were out looking for jobs. It was my job to take care of my brother who was 10 years younger than me. And of course I'd go to school and my teachers would be like, “You’ve missed two or three days,” and I would be like, “Yeah, and I did all my homework. I can ace the exam.” But they would just frown at me, like, they were really judgy about it. I was so young, and I didn’t have the voice to explain, “Hey, I’m not making it to school for reasons that are out of my hands.”

So I started thinking about that, and came up with the idea for Absent. Three different boys living under the poverty line who cannot make it to school for three different reasons. One because he's being bullied within an inch of his life. One because he has two brothers he has to take care of and he can't make it to school on time. And the third one because his dad's in jail and his favorite teacher quits, so he feels like no one loves him. Because I know some kids aren’t “readers” yet, I wanted to play with the format. Since I already write novels and novels-in-verse and graphic novels, I was like, “Let's put all three in one book.” Three protagonists—three formats. One kid wants to be an artist, so his story is in comic books. One kid wants to be a songwriter, so his story is in rap lyrics. And the third kid wants to be a doctor, so he keeps a journal.

I'm very very excited. I mean, I love all of my books, but this one is just like my little baby.

Julie: I love it! So with the graphic novel part, did you write the text and someone else illustrated it?

Rex: Yes, I cannot draw to save my life. I always work with other artists, and it's good. For the comic book artist it is a Black student, and I was like, “I don't feel comfortable directing exactly how the images will be. I want to find an artist who can convey the relationship between the boy and his father, because I thought that was important. And then, I’m half white and half Mexican, so the other two kids are Mexican and white.

Julie: Yes, yes. What’s funny is that In this conversation I definitely planned to talk through Memoir, and I was also wanting to talk about, like, exploring different formats. So now, well, you just covered all of it! Let’s keep going with Memoir, because I feel like that was kind of the beginning for you. You and I have talked about, well, at least two of your memoirs, so far. I told you how I couldn’t even make it through the foreword of Don't Forget Me, Abuela. We also talked about Road Home, and some of our kindred-spirit stuff. Let’s go back to the beginning and talk about “the Memoir that you didn't want to write” and how that kind of became a place to write your story and it became a place of healing.

Rex: So, as you know, at one point I was like well, I never wanted to write this stuff. I always wanted to be a writer, but I wanted to write fantasy or sci-fi or comic books. I love superheroes! That's the stuff I grew up reading, because with what I was dealing with at home, poverty-domestic-violence-home-instability-food-insecurity-etcectra-etcetera, I needed those books to escape from the real world. So growing up, I wanted to create books for others to read and escape from reality. Reality is a lot sometimes. It can be exhausting. It can be traumatic. It can be heavy. I wanted to give people an escape the way I had an escape.

Coming from where I came from, I didn't think I could do it on my own. I was rejected by all the MFA creative writing programs I applied to, which led me to move to New York City with a thousand bucks and a double bag, and I was like, “I'm going to work in book publishing. I'm going to learn everything about how to be a good writer because, obviously, I don't know.”
So, while I was in New York, I wrote 18 novels and 21 comic book series. Every single one? Rejected. It sucked. But . .. I think it was the Universe pushing me to write something that was not sci-fi, that was not horror, that was not Escapist. It wanted me to write something real, and that's why I wrote Free Lunch. And then you know, my publisher was like, “Do you have any other stories?” [Laughs] Yeah. Yeah, I have other stories! After Free Lunch, I promised myself that was it. But . . . then I wrote Punching Bag. And then I was like, that is it. But then I wrote Abuela, Don’t Forget Me when my abuela got dementia. And then he finally talked me into writing Road Home, and I was like, “That’s it! I’m done! No more memoirs!” And then I signed up with Scholastic to do a trilogy of memoirs for middle school. [Laughs again]

What Followed

Rex: Four Eyes, Pizza Face, and Fruit Cake (which just came out in April) is a graphic novel trilogy. It's 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade. Even though they take place at the same time as Free Lunch and Punching Bag, that is not the thesis. I wanted to give kids who are not ready for Free Lunch or Punching Bag a different story. It’s still me. You'll see the same characters. And you’ll see the poverty. Poverty is important for kids to see. In the first book, like, getting glasses? That was a huge deal for me because my family didn't have money for glasses. We basically had to beg my dad, who had left when I was five. That's not a good feeling—to feel like you have to beg for stuff when you’re a kid.

Rex: Then with Pizza Face, all my friends were on Clearasil and acne medication. I didn't have that option. So again, what I like is that I am writing memoirs that address one thing but they're talking about something else that I think is even more relatable. So many people in our country are living below the poverty line.

Julie: Yes, yes. I love that. I feel like even in your memoirs, I know that at first you were like, “I don't want to dip into the painful stuff. I don’t want to go there, or write something real.” But I also think, and I say this when I talk about authors who write for kids and write for teenagers, the books have that resilience and hope. The person who writes the memoir has the survivor story and gets to tell the story. Like, you made it. You're still here with us, and I'm so glad. I think that for your audience you always seem to make sure that you include that resilience and hope. So, in your story of. . . well, some really tough things that you've been through, how do you make sure that you include that?

Rex: I mean it's hard because I feel like with Punching Bag, like that was my Empire Strikes Back. Like, in the trilogy of Free Lunch, Punching Bag, Road Home, that was kind of a sad ending. I wanted there to be hope, but I wanted to be honest with my readers. Like, this is hard when there is violence in the home. It is hard, and it does not go away. There's not a happy ending at the end. But I can write an afterword. So, if the narrative itself is heavy, and doesn't necessarily have a happy ending, I still put the afterword. I survived this, you know. We can all survive whatever the world throws—I mean, see, even that? I want to self-correct, because some people don't survive everything the world throws at them. This world is hard. But I do hope that, you know, with all my books, that there is kind of a through line for readers. There are ways that you can help yourself. There are ways you can lean on resources that are out there. You know, if you have one family member that can help, lean on them. If you have one friend that can help, lean on them. We're all in this together. It's hard. Ugh. Sorry. I know I keep saying that life is hard.

Julie: It is, though. It is. I was thinking about when you said, “I want to self-correct” and how some of us don't survive. I was like, well, in fact, none of us do. Like, not one of us. 200 years from now, you are not going to be here. And, I'm not going to be here. None of us. But how do we make it more tolerable, and sometimes even joyful? When we're here, and it's all of those things you listed—leaning on each other. That's where the resilience and hope is. It is in each other.

Rex: Yeah, yeah.

Pen Name and Other Projects

Julie: Yeah. Okay, now let's talk about your pen name and some of your other books.

Rex: Rey Terciero. Fun fact. . . a lot of my pen names, I have like eight. [both of us laugh] Really, I only count Rex Ogle and Rey Terciero. All the other ones I was doing for work for hire back when I needed extra paychecks. Working in publishing, I made like zero dollars. I mean, making $35,000 in New York City is not a lot of money. So I did all this writing under pseudonyms.I was not supposed to be writing for other publishing houses, because it was considered a conflict of interest. And I'm like, “I gotta pay the bills.” So, I kept making up pen names and Rey Terciero is one of the ones that stuck. I got this idea to start doing classic reimaginings as graphic novels. The first one was Little Women—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. My co-creator, Bre Indigo is Black and they wanted a Black family. I was like, “Well, I can't write all of that, but how about we create this story together?” So, it's a mixed family, and of course there's a queer character. It’s like a modern day Little Women. This is more realistic to what people are going through. It’s part of what I am doing with Dan in Green Gables, which is Anne of Green Gables, but with the queer character. Northranger which is Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, or coming out next year, Count of Monte Cristo High. I want to reimagine these stories where kids are at. Twenty years of rejection pushed me. It was “Stop writing what you think will make you a New York Times bestseller, and start writing the books that you wanted to read as a kid.” As a kid I wanted to read comic books. I wanted to read graphic novels. Apparently that aligns with what kids want to read today. Maybe if they like Dan in Green Gables, they'll be like, “What's Anne of Green Gables?” In the back of every single one, I make sure that there is room for back matter, meaning an author letter about why I wrote it, then a page about the author, and a page about the original work.

To me that's very important. I want kids to be able to explore, to be like, “Ohh, this has an origin that I had no idea about!”

Julie: I love Dan. Do you have other classics that you're thinking about doing this with? I know you're super busy, and you're writing a ton, but like, do you have kind of a running list of eventual titles? And are we allowed to know?

Rex: I'm pulling up my spreadsheet now for you. I won't tell you everything. What I can tell you: The Odyssey: Long Way Home is an anthropomorphic version of the Greek Odyssey, but in the very first scene Odys, who is a little mouse. Odysseus—Odys—throws down a sword and he promises the gods he will never kill again. He will never do violence against another person again. They're like, “Ohh. Try to get home without using violence.” So, it's him fighting against his own need to hurt other people the entire way home. I actually wrote it in 2019, and the artist is still drawing it. It is beautiful—stunning. I don't know when it's coming out. It may be a minute. Let's see, what else am I working on? I'm working on a four part Jane Austen series that I cannot tell you about, even though I just said it. I have a list of some of my favorite books. I'll just tell you the original names: Romeo and Julie:t, Wuthering Heights, Scarlet Letter, Macbeth. I want to do something with all the monsters: Frankenstein, Dracula . . .

Julie: That would be a really cool series.

Rex: Yeah, I have another idea involving social media. What I love to do is like, Trojan horse some important messaging into books. I'm getting a tattoo of a Trojan horse soon, because I feel like that's what I've done my whole life. I present very white. I present straight. I present, I mean, maybe not wealthy but . . . I feel like my whole life I've been kind of Trojan horsing myself into helping myself. and now I'm trying to Trojan horse myself into helping others.

Julie: That is totally the vibe that I got from you the very first moment that I met you in person.

Rex: That I’m a Trojan horse? [Both laugh]

Julie: No. That you present as someone who is constantly doing the work to be the best, toward-healing human being that you can. And you write so that kids can find healing in stuff too. So yeah, Trojan horse.

Rex: I mean, not to be too serious, but the way I look at it is if it weren't for my abuela, if it weren't for books and stories, if it weren't for educators and librarians and teachers who encouraged me—it certainly wasn't my parents—if it was not for those people, I'd be in prison. I'd be dead in a ditch. I wouldn't be here. So as far as I'm concerned, it is my job to pay it forward. I feel like my abuela, who passed a few years back, is always in my ear being like, “No, you're not going to do that to make money. You're going to write this book over here instead, to help kids.”

When We Ride

Julie: OK, so earlier you were talking about writing in different formats, and I love that you went there with a YA novel. Tell us about that decision, that journey, that whole process.

Rex: So, when I wrote When We Ride, you know, I had sworn off memoirs. I went to my publisher and I was like, “My senior year is a really good story.” He was like, “I thought you said, ‘No more memoirs.’” So, we had a conversation about it. He liked the concept but the ending was all wrong. He's like, “Maybe you should go fiction,” and I was like, “I think you're right.” So, When We Ride is only 70% true. [Laughter] My senior year in high school I was living with my abuela. My best friend was a drug dealer. I used to drive him around to his drug deals because he did not have a car. I would sit in the car, doing my homework and filling out college applications, while he would go into college campuses and sell weed to college students. A lot of people were like, “Don't you know your best friend's a drug dealer?” I'm like, “Yeah.” They thought that made me a bad person by association. I was like, “Why is he a bad person?” They didn't know his life circumstances—why he was doing it. His mom has no job and we lived in Abilene, TX which is a small town, and a college town. There were no jobs. The college students sweep them all up because there's three universities. So, he pays his bills. He has a little brother to take care of. He puts food on the table. He is a 17 year old teenager. What else is he supposed to do? He hasn't failed society. Society has failed him.

Julie: Wow. Yes.

Rex: The point of the book that I want readers to take away, well, two things. One, when you look at someone who you judge, I want you to think about why you are judging them, and maybe what’s their real truth. Two, and maybe more importantly, I also want the kid who's like me to know that you have to have boundaries. I loved him. He was like a brother to me, but I had to draw boundaries. I was like, “I cannot jeopardize my future for your decisions.” His real name was Marshall. He would never have read prose.

And then, Tupac

Julie: Tell me more about Marshall.

Rex: He loved Tupac. When he used to hop into my car, he would pop a Tupac cassette tape into my radio. At first, I’d be like, “No, I don't like this music.” He was always like, “You're racist.” Oh, and by the way, he's white. That's the funniest part. Everyone assumes he's Black because he's a drug dealer. I say several times in the book he is white.

Julie: I picked up on it—blue eyes.

Rex: Yeah. There have been people who've been like, “Why did you decide to write about a black drug dealer?” and I was like, “Did you read the book?’

Julie: Some of their own racism kind of peeked through a little bit.

Rex: Yeah, anyways, he loved Tupac. He made me read Tupac's song lyrics. You know when you fold out the cassette tape? I loved the words. The words were like poetry. When I decided to write When We Ride, I felt like writing a novel-in-verse. It's a good way of meeting kids where they're at.

Julie: So, Tupac, he did write poetry. There's a whole anthology.

Rex: It’s under my desk right now. [Holds the book The Rose That Grew From Concrete up to the camera].

Julie: Look at that! Tupac! Yes, um, I feel like making the story accessible to students who don't identify as a reader yet is exactly what your novel-in-verse does. Did Marshall read it?

Rex: Oh, Marshall passed away right after right after high school.

Julie: Oh, I’m sorry.

Rex: He passed away from leukemia. This is one of the reasons why my publisher said my first ending was not a good ending. The cool thing is that I introduced him to my other best friend—the goody-goody girl that is in the book. She was vice-president of the student council. She was a straight-laced, good girl. They fell in love. They got married. Their daughter is my goddaughter. I did ask Casey and Madison's permission before I wrote When We Ride. I was like, “Is it okay if I put this out in the world? It's your story, too.”

What's Next?

Julie: I’m glad they agreed. Thank you for writing it. I read it in a day, because . . . well, it's so good. So, what’s next? More YA?

Rex: So, I have 21 books under contract. Only about half of them are written [laughs] The next book that I have coming out, that I'm both really proud of, and I have nightmares constantly about the NRA coming for me. It's called American Gun. It is the story told from the perspective of a Glock 19 as it makes its way across America from 1988 to 2028, and all the lives that it affects along the way. So, it changes hands 16 times over the course of 40 years. I grew up in Texas, you know. I was taught gun safety at an early age. This book has been on the back of my mind for a while. Especially with all the school shootings. I'm very excited about this book. It's taken more research than most of my books. The history of guns, I've been reading old articles from the 70s, the 80s, the 90s talking about gun violence in America. What else am I doing in the YA space? The Count of Monte Cristo High. What else do I have that's coming up? Oh my gosh. so much middle grade.

Julie: I know. That’s wonderful, too. We have students in the middle that need your stories.

Rex: Oh. There's one that I started working on a few months ago. I won't tell you the title, but it is about the cross intersection of homophobia, toxic masculinity, sexual assault, and suicide. Those are four very very heavy topics, but I've had this story in the back of my mind for a while. I want to talk about what it means to be a man in America, and by man, I mean a teenage boy. People are putting up these videos that are influencing thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of boys in America with these really negative messages about what it looks like to be a man. I just want to write books that give kids an alternative to that. I mean, obviously, I can't compete with social media, but I will try to put books in their hands that talk about the things that maybe other people aren't talking to them about.

Julie: Love it! So, I'm going to ask one last question that'll be like the end of the article and then I'm going to stop recording and we're just going to talk for a little off the record. You talked about being like a Trojan horse and getting a message to kids. You dip into how life is hard, and you're real. So, there are a lot of different messages overall that you have for our teenage readers. If you could just Trojan horse one last message for our teenagers, what’s the message?

Rex: I want every teenager in the world to know to take care of each other. Take care of each other and take care of yourself.

Who Gets to Be a Person in Hamlet? Companion Texts, Verse Novels, and Writing Our Way to Understanding

7/1/2026

Dr. Melanie Hundley is a Professor in the Practice of English Education at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College; her research examines how AI, digital and multimodal composition informs the development of pre-service teachers’ writing pedagogy. Additionally, she explores the use of AI, digital and social media in young adult literature. She teaches writing methods courses that focus on AI, digital and multimodal composition and young adult literature courses that explore diversity, culture, and storytelling in young adult texts.

She teaches AI and literacy courses including AI and Storytelling. Her current research focus has three strands: AI in writing, AI in Teacher Education, and Verse Novels in Young Adult Literature She is currently the Coordinator of the Secondary Education English Education program in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College.

Who Gets to Be a Person in Hamlet? Companion Texts, Verse Novels, and Writing Our Way to Understanding by Melanie Hundley

It is no secret that I love verse novels. As a reader, I am drawn to the way poetry slows me down and invites me to linger in a character's thoughts. As a teacher, I appreciate the opportunities verse novels create for students to notice how writers use language, structure, and silence to create meaning. As a teacher educator, I value the ways these texts help students move beyond summary and into interpretation.

Recently, while reading Hamlet with a group of students, I found myself returning once again to Joy McCullough's Enter the Body. McCullough's collection gives voice to Shakespeare's female characters, allowing them to tell stories that are often overshadowed by the narratives of the men around them. These poems do not retell the plays, rather, the poems enter into conversations with the events, with the characters, with the ideas presented. They invite readers to reconsider characters they thought they knew. They ask the reader to ask, “What if…”

Reconsidering Ophelia

As the students and I moved between Shakespeare's play and McCullough's poems, questions began to emerge: What do we actually know about Ophelia? Who gets to be a person in Hamlet? Is Hamlet a good guy? The discussions around Ophelia, her role, and her personhood were particularly thoughtful. At first the question of whether or not Ophelia is a person seemed simple. Of course she is. She speaks. She appears in multiple scenes. She influences the actions of the play

But the more closely we read, the more complicated the question became. Students could easily identify what other characters say about Ophelia. They could point to Laertes warning her about Hamlet. They could describe Polonius instructing her how to behave. They could analyze Hamlet's contradictory declarations of love and rejection.

Yet when we looked closely at the text, students noticed something important. We know a great deal about what others think of Ophelia. We know far less about what Ophelia thinks of them.
Much of what we learn about Ophelia comes through the words of the men around her. She is advised, directed, protected, criticized, and used. She is important to the plot, but her interiority her private thoughts, fears, hopes, questions, and desires that shape her experience, often remains just beyond our reach. In many ways, Ophelia functions as a daughter, a sister, a love interest, a source of concern, a symbol of innocence, and eventually a symbol of tragedy.

Reading the Poetry

But when does she get to simply be a person? That is one of the gifts of Enter the Body.

McCullough enters the spaces Shakespeare leaves open. She invites readers to dwell in the limited space Ophelia is allowed to occupy and imagine what exists beyond it. Rather than asking what Ophelia represents, the poem asks who Ophelia might be.

To explore the poem, we read it three times. The first reading was as readers.
We asked:

What do we notice?
How do we feel?
What lingers with us after we read?

Students responded emotionally to the poem. They noticed Ophelia's confusion, heartbreak, and uncertainty. They commented on the tension in the dialogue and the impact of the white space on the page. This reading invited students to experience the poem before analyzing it.

The second reading was as scholars.
We asked:

What lines stand out?
What literary elements do we notice?
What can we say based on the evidence?

Students began identifying patterns. They noticed contradictions in Hamlet's statements. They examined repetition, dialogue, and structure. They discussed how the poem shifted attention away from Hamlet's emotional turmoil and toward Ophelia's experience of the interaction. Their observations moved from reaction toward interpretation.

The third reading was as writers.
We asked:

What does this text model?
What does it inspire?
How does it help me make sense of something?

This reading changed everything. Students noticed how McCullough used fragmented dialogue, white space, and layered voices to reveal a character's inner life. They began thinking about what stories exist between the lines of canonical texts. They considered what becomes visible when we enter the perspective of a character whose voice is often overshadowed by others. Most importantly, they began writing. That third reading opened the door to some of the most interesting thinking of the unit.

Student Writing (Erica)

After reading Enter the Body, pp. 100-101, several students chose to write an updated high school version of the scene between Hamlet and Ophelia. What would it look like now? Erica wrote:

In the hallway, between classes

We passed each other and       paused,

I said               I have remembrances of yours
                        things to give back
You said          I never gave you anything
The world of the hallway shrank and grew, fell silent, echoed with your words
                                    *I can’t breathe.*
I said               You know right well you did. Sweet notes, perfume, a poem, your t-shirt.
                        They were the best of gifts
                                                but not now. Now, they mean…nothing.
You asked       Did you lie?
                        What?             *I can’t breathe.*
You asked       Were you faithful?
                        What? *I can’t breathe*
You said          I did love you…once.
                                    *I feel like I am drowning*
I said               You made me believe you did…but now…
You said          You shouldn’t have believed me
                        I didn’t love you.
                                    *I feel like I am drowning*
I thought         You were the liar.
You said          Women lie and cheat and make monsters of men.
                        You paint yourself as sweet and you are just a whore.
                                    *I feel like I am drowning*
I thought         I am not the one who pretended to love, who gave false words and false gifts.
                        Is it his grief? Or is he really just a jerk?
                                    I feel like I am drowning*

Erica’s poem opens, “In the hallway, between classes/We passed each other and paused” and quickly establishes the emotional intensity of a public breakup. We see the speaker’s confusion when the male partner in the breakup denies doing things she knows he did and then her pain when she is accused of things she did not do. Throughout the poem, Erica includes the repeated lines “I can’t breathe” and “I feel like I am drowning.” These refrains function as both an allusion to the play and an interior voice running alongside the spoken dialogue. Much like McCullough’s poem, Erica’s writing invites readers to do more than observe the interaction. She invites them to experience its emotional impact.

At first glance, Erica's poem appears to be a contemporary adaptation of Ophelia's encounter with Hamlet. But as I read it more closely, I realized she was doing something much more sophisticated. She was developing an interpretation. The poem captures a painful interaction between two people, but it also highlights something central to both Shakespeare's scene and McCullough's reimagining: the denial of shared experience. Just as Hamlet denies the letters and affection Ophelia remembers, Erica's speaker encounters someone who refuses to acknowledge a shared history. The poem also foregrounds the gendered accusations present in the original text. By the end of the piece, the speaker is confronted not only with rejection but with blame and dismissal.

Student Reflection (Erica)

What fascinated me most, however, was Erica's reflection on the writing process. After composing the poem, she wrote:

I was really thinking about Ophelia and wanted to write my essay about her and how she was treated by Hamlet, her father and brother. But I struggled to figure out what I wanted to say. I did poem pre-writing and that helped me think about how Ophelia is treated by the men in her life: she is used as a tool by her father, she is discarded as a girlfriend by Hamlet, and she is dismissed by her brother as unimportant. She doesn't matter to them until she is dead and then they think about her as a person. And even then she is more of a symbol than a person. She is never fully real to them.

I keep returning to this reflection because it reveals something important about writing and learning. The poem was not simply evidence of Erica's thinking. The poem helped create her thinking. At first, Erica was thinking about Ophelia's feelings. By the end, she was developing a theory about Ophelia's position within the play. She noticed that Polonius uses Ophelia as a tool.
Hamlet discards her when she no longer serves his needs. Laertes dismisses her concerns and agency. What began as individual moments became a larger pattern. By the time Erica wrote her reflection, she was no longer simply asking whether Ophelia was treated unfairly. She was asking whether Ophelia was ever allowed to exist as a full person in the eyes of the men around her.

Her observation is powerful: Ophelia doesn't matter to them until she is dead. Erica then pushes the idea even further. Even after Ophelia’s death, she is still more of a symbol than a person. This insight takes us back to the question that started our reading. Who gets to be a person in Hamlet? While many students focused on the women in the play, several did ask whether Hamlet was allowed to be a fully formed person or whether he was more of a symbol as well.

Student Writing (Cory)

Cory wrote:

I know.
A crown. A throne. A story.A kingdom.
Everyone knows.
They tell it
over and over.
The murdered king. The usurping brother. The grieving son.
I know my lines.
Then speak them.
You ask as if
they belong to me.
As if I chose them.
As if I woke one morning
wanting blood.
As if grief and vengeance
are the same thing.
I know my lines.
The murdered king. The wicked uncle. The rightful heir.
The son who swears
and remembers
and kills.
I know my lines.
Everyone else does too.
The guards. The court. My mother. Even the audience.
They wait
for me to say them.
To become them.
To mean them.
Then why do you hesitate?
Because you were my father.
Because I cannot remember
the sound of your voice
without hearing
the command beneath it.
Because I miss you.
Because I am angry
that I miss you.
Because I want
one moment
to be a son
before I become
your weapon.
I know my lines.
But I do not know
how to speak them
with your ghost
standing inside my grief.
I know my lines.
I just didn’t write them.

Student Reflection (Cory)

Cory said, “Hamlet seems lost in most of the play. He is trying to figure out what to do when none of it seems to be what he wants to do or what he planned. Everything is coming at him from the outside, everybody’s expectations are piling on him.” Cory’s observation feels like it gets at something essential in the play; he is focusing on the weight of the expectations on Hamlet. Everyone wants something from Hamlet. His father’s ghost wants revenge, Claudius wants obedience, Gertrude wants reconciliation, Ophelia wants honesty, Denmark wants stability, and the audience wants action. Hamlet is constantly responding to demands rather than pursuing his own wants. So when Cory says, “Everything is coming at him from the outside, everybody’s expectations are piling up on him,” he is describing a loss of agency that is surprisingly similar to what Erica noticed about Ophelia.

The difference is that Hamlet receives attention and authority while Ophelia receives marginalization and dismissal. Yet both are trapped by roles assigned to them by others. Ophelia is reduced to daughter, sister, and potential wife. Hamlet is reduced to son, prince, and avenger. Neither is fully allowed to exist outside those roles.

Final Reflection on Using Companion Texts

One of the reasons I continue to use companion texts such as Enter the Body is that they help students notice what literary analysis sometimes overlooks. They encourage students to ask not only what a character represents, but what has been left unsaid about that character's experience.
They invite students to enter the silences of a text. They encourage students to challenge whose stories are centered and whose stories remain at the margins. And, perhaps most importantly, they create opportunities for students to use writing as a way of discovering what they think.

For Erica and Cory, writing the poem was not preparation for literary analysis. the poem was literary analysis. It was through writing that they discovered their arguments. They did turn the poem into a well-developed essays, but the poem served as thinking and analysis for them. Sometimes the most important thing a companion text does is help students notice not what a character represents, but who that character might be. And sometimes the most important thing writing does is help students discover that person, too.

Reflections at the Conclusion of Pride Month

6/24/2026

Meet our Contributor: Roy Jackson

Roy Edward Jackson is an associate professor of education at Goshen College in Indiana with a focus on literacy. He holds degrees in English, Education and School Library Science. He is the author of the upcoming book, Reel Around the Fountain, published by Lethe Press.

Reflections at the Conclusion of Pride Month by Roy Jackson

As Pride Month draws to a close, I wandered across the street in my lovely town to the public library for some inspiration. While browsing the displays — not the stacks — I was struck by my own queer privilege in living in Goshen, Indiana. Goshen is an inclusive community, a city where I feel safe — something I never would have expected when I first moved here for a job, leaving a large city behind. The young adult section had wonderful LGBTQ+ titles on full display for readers to find. It made me think about how different that same library display would look if I traveled just 30 miles in almost any direction. Regardless of book bans or quieter, self-selected censorship, we know visibility is one key to combating the troubling decline in support for LGBTQ+ citizens that Gallup recently reported.

In the summer, I usually gravitate toward fiction as an escape from whatever's stressing me out at the moment. But as I browsed the displays, I was genuinely impressed by the nonfiction collection my local library had curated. It took me back to my teaching days and how rote February could feel, with the same handful of figures showing up in book after book — and how, over the decades, educators worked to broaden that scope and multiply the heroes we offered students for Black History Month. The same is true of the books I pulled off the shelf and got lost in that afternoon: so many names, so many remarkable contributions, so many heroes.

I love June and Pride Month, but as an educator, it saddens me that most students aren't in school when we could be celebrating, honoring, and teaching our queer histories. I hope some of these books find their way into classrooms next academic year.

Queer There and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World by Sarah Prager was one of the books I found myself completely absorbed in. It's exactly the kind of broadened-scope storytelling I was thinking about, the same impulse that pushed Black History Month beyond the same five names every February. Yes, Takei and Lincoln are in there, but so is Elagabalus, the teenage Roman emperor whose gender-defying reign reaches back nearly two thousand years and reminds you that none of this is new, queerness has always existed, only the willingness to name it has changed. There's Ma Rainey, the blues singer whose openness about loving women got buried under her musical legacy for decades. There's Alan Turing, a man whose mathematical genius helped win a war and whose own country later prosecuted him for who he loved.

And then there's Renée Richards, whose chapter felt almost urgent to read given the current moment. Richards, a trans woman and professional tennis player who fought for and won the right to compete in the late 1970s, feels less like history and more like a preview of the exact battles still being fought today, as the lives and rights of trans athletes are once again under attack. Reading her story now hit differently than it might have a decade ago. Prager doesn't limit herself to a narrow definition of queerness; she traces anyone who lived outside the gender and sexuality norms of their time, which means the book reads less like a single thread and more like a tapestry. I kept flipping pages thinking, why didn't I know this person existed? It's conversational, occasionally funny, and built for teens, which made me wish even harder that I had a classroom of students to hand it to.

Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known by George M. Johnson was another one I couldn't put down. Johnson, the author of the frequently banned All Boys Aren't Blue, weaves together twelve short biographies interspersed with their own personal narrative and poetry, and the effect is part history lesson, part memoir, part reclamation. It's a structure that lets you sit with the past and the present at the same time.

Johnson opens the door with names most of us already recognize: Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Zora Neale Hurston. But then the book does exactly what I keep coming back to in this whole project, it widens the lens. Alain Locke, often called the father of the Harlem Renaissance and the architect of so much of the movement's philosophy, gets his due as a gay man whose influence shaped a generation of Black artists and writers. Gladys Bentley, a blues performer who dressed in men's clothing and openly courted women onstage in 1920s Harlem nightclubs, decades before anyone was using the language we use now, gets brought roaring back into focus. Even Ma Rainey shows up again here, which made me realize how many of these queer histories overlap and echo each other once you start looking.

This book matters for another reason too. Even within our own community, the loudest, most visible voices in queer history have so often been cis, white, and male. Johnson's book is a direct counter to that imbalance, centering Black queer lives, and several trans and gender-nonconforming lives within them, as foundational rather than footnoted. Johnson's point, and it lands, is that the Harlem Renaissance wasn't just adjacent to queerness, it was one of the queerest eras in American cultural history, and most of us were never taught that part, and we definitely weren't taught who was actually in the room shaping it.

The next book on my stack was LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field: Striving for Equality by Kirstin Cronn-Mills, with an introduction by Alex Jackson Nelson, a trans man who works directly with LGBTQ+ youth in sports. And that's exactly the point I keep landing on with this reading session, it doesn't center the same handful of cis, white, male athletes whose coming-out stories tend to dominate the headlines. Cronn-Mills opens with the moment soccer star Abby Wambach kissed her wife on camera after the US women's World Cup win, then widens out from there: Michael Sam, the first openly gay man in the NFL and the first Division I football player to come out while still actively playing, which happened only a little over a decade ago, a fact that still stops me cold every time I read it. There's David Denson too, who came out as gay while playing minor league baseball for the Brewers.

What sets this book apart is that it doesn't stop at athletes. Cronn-Mills looks at coaches, families, and the institutions, the policies, leagues, and locker room cultures, that have been slow to catch up, even as individual courage outpaces them. Reading it now, with the rights of trans athletes specifically back under attack, felt less like a history lesson and more like a mirror held up to where we still are.

My education started in the past was only deepened, and complicated in the best way, by reading the present in Kimm Topping's Generation Queer: Stories of Youth Organizers, Artists, and Educators. The book is organized into six chapters, moving from organizers to artists to educators before closing with a call to action, concrete steps for how young people and the adults who support them can actually get involved. What Topping has done is take the everyday hero theme and place a giant magnifying lens on it, training that focus specifically on a generation I rarely see celebrated this way: queer and trans youth who are building change right now, not someday.

Prior to reading, I didn’t know one name in this book, and that alone says something. Their stories are now etched in my ethos. There's Blair Imani, a Black, bisexual, Muslim educator using her platform to make queer history and identity accessible to people who've never had it explained to them in a way that felt like it included them. There's Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender-nonconforming poet, comedian, and speaker who has turned vulnerability and humor into a genuine tool for changing minds. There are organizers who founded their own advocacy groups while still in high school, students who fought and won the right to safe restroom access for transgender peers, and the first transgender athlete to compete in NCAA Division I sports. Topping threads in brief histories of Marsha P. Johnson, Harvey Milk, and Sylvia Rivera too, so readers can see exactly whose shoulders this new generation is standing on. By the time I closed the book, I wasn't just learning new names, I was watching the same lineage of courage that built Stonewall and the AIDS crisis activism of the 80s continue, unbroken, into kids who are still in school right now.

What strikes me most, looking back at this stack of books, isn't just that I learned new names, it's how many new names there were. Breadth and depth, not just the same handful of figures rotated through every June the way February used to recycle the same five or six names for Black History Month. Lincoln and Takei are still there if you're looking for an entry point, but so are Elagabalus, Ma Rainey, Alan Turing, Renée Richards, Alain Locke, Gladys Bentley, Blair Imani, Alok Vaid-Menon, Michael Sam, David Denson, and so many youth organizers I'd never have found on my own. That's the shift that actually matters. Visibility isn't just about one Pride display in one library window, it's about sheer numbers, about how many lives get to count as part of this history instead of being the single token name a syllabus reaches for. The more names, the harder the erasure becomes to pull off, and the easier it gets for a kid scanning a library shelf in Goshen, or anywhere else, to find someone who looks like them already claiming a place in the story.

But we're already disadvantaging young readers by the simple fact that Pride Month falls in June, when school is out of session and these books are sitting on display instead of in the hands of students. And walking into a public library at all is a privilege, not every kid has reliable transportation, a parent with the time, or even a library branch nearby, for a whole range of reasons that have nothing to do with how much they might need these stories. School libraries and classroom libraries are the equalizer. They're the only guaranteed access point some students will ever have. If visibility and breadth and depth are the goal, then the real question isn't how we celebrate Pride better every summer, it's how we find room for these names, these histories, this many of them, during the school year, on the shelves students walk past every single day, when the students who need to see themselves in these pages are actually in the building to find them.

Saving Fiction in Where the World Ends

6/17/2026

Meet our Contributor: Chris Worthman

Chris states:

I write stories about adolescents struggling to become who they want to be in a world not of their making.

I’m a teacher,

father,

champion of youthful brilliance, and author of narratives with strong characters and smart plot lines that speak to the complexity of adolescent existence and the issues that shape their worlds.

I'm a proud Chicagoan of forty years, transplanted from a small town in central Indiana. I came to fiction writing after over thirty years of teaching at all levels--elementary, middle school, high school, and college. When I'm not teaching or writing, I support my neighborhood school and get outside no matter the weather for nature and urban hikes.

Saving Fiction in Where the World Ends by Christopher Worthman

I discovered the novels of British author Geraldine McCaughrean by chance. I was surfing the Internet, wiling away my time, reading blog book reviews, when I came upon one for The White Darkness. Like any good review, it piqued my interest in the book (Of course, vice versa, a good review can also dash a reader’s interest). From The White Darkness, I moved on to other McCaughrean young adult novels, reading enough of them to know American adolescents are missing out on a first-rate storyteller. When I got to Where the World Ends (Herein WWE), I wasn’t satisfied when I finished. I wasn’t ready to move on. I reread it… again and again.

WWE is historical fiction, based on a true event that I suspect even most British youth have never heard of. In 1727, eight boys and three men left their homes on the island of Hirta in the St. Kilda archipelago for Warrior Stac (aka Armin Island), a much smaller island (more like a rock sticking out of the sea) a few miles away. As part of an annual journey of two to three weeks, the boys and men—fowlers—were going to gather birds, bird eggs, bird feathers, and bird oil. Most of what they collected went to pay rent to the owner of the archipelago, who lived about forty-five miles away in Harris, Scotland. What wasn’t paid out as rent helped sustain the two hundred or so residents of Hirta.

Life on Warrior Stac was lived vertically. The rocky cliffs rose nearly two hundred meters out of the North Atlantic Sea. The fowlers ascended and descended its walls sixteen hours a day in search of birds and eggs. They lived in the larger hallowed out crevices of the stac—caves of sorts—subsisting on, as you might guess, birds and bird eggs, and using bird oil for lamp fuel.

The 1727 fowlers’ story, as both history and fiction, is that no one came to retrieve them after two or three weeks. We learn this early in the three-hundred page novel, with the remaining two-hundred-seventy-some pages about the nine months after, including the harsh North Atlantic Sea winter they survived. During those months, the fowlers continued to work, and the adolescents continued to carry on, as they’re want to do, arguing, missing home, and grasping for some substance of meaning that would explain what had happened. The younger ones cried for their mothers. The older ones jockeyed for authority. Silently and as a group, they asked what had happened, had they been forgotten, forsaken? Had the world ended? Something we might all have wondered if it were us. Something I would want my students to consider if I were teaching the novel. To step into those kids’ shoes, what must that have been like?

McCaughrean wrote in the Afterword: “What you have been reading is a true story…and there again, it’s not. Fiction is elastic: it stretches to encircle true facts and then crimps them into shape to create Story.” That, in a couple of sentences, captures McCaughrean’s style and what she does so effectively—create stories so real it could be me or you in there. Her stories, whether wildly fictitious or holding to a historical line, read as everyday and natural as the lives her readers live, only her characters are living in the direst of situations.

What I’ve written here so far about Hirta and the fowlers is true to the historical record. The story McCaughrean wrote, although a fictionalized account of that record, reads as true. There is nothing extraordinary or fantastic in the literary sense in what she wrote. Yet, it’s as if we are reading about another planet, inhabited by imagined witches and sea beasts, and by real birds, lots of birds, big and small. Everything else about the tale, real and imagined, is mundane and depressing, with moments of environmental terror smattered on top of a cold, dreary, wet existence.

It is the notion of what constitutes truth (fiction that conveys a truth or truths), and the role of story and memory as depicted in the novel, that keeps bringing me back to it. It is something much young adult literature is missing, that essential question, why do we tell ourselves stories, repeatedly? For our students, it is about getting them to ask more than why are we reading this. It is getting them to look at what stories we are constantly telling ourselves and why. We all have those stories. I’d like my students to recognize theirs.

No spoilers here about WWE. I’m not going to give away the plot or dénouement. I do want to make quick work of a couple of tropes that may pop into our heads when we read about adolescents trying to survive on a deserted island. First, the society the boys and men create does not break down and lead to chaos and violence. It does, however, crack and lead to disagreement, mistreatment, and emotional and psychological aggression. Quill, one of adolescents and the central character, is banished from the group for a while, and another, an adult, assumes religious authority and willingly uses it to emotionally and psychological abuse others and to hoard the most valuable resource: the tinderbox needed to start fires. Tense moments, yes, but they are reflections of the life being lived and not definitive of it.

Second, although there are tense moments of interpersonal disagreement and extreme physical duress, Warrior Stac life is mostly wet, cold, and mundane. The fowlers are used to the hard work and harsh conditions. They’re from North Atlantic Ocean island, and it’s 1727. They’re not used to boredom.

Other than the fact that what we’re reading really happened to boys and men in 1727, what makes this novel compelling is how much their survival is contingent on the stories the fowlers tell one another, particularly the stories Quill tells as keeper of stories, a designation bestowed on him for his penchant to respond to tension or chaos with a good yarn or anecdote. In moments like these, he asks, “Who wants a story?”

Stories become the lifeforce—individually and collectively, positively and negatively—that make the nine months of uncertainty of how and why they were abandoned, bearable,…that is, until the stories stop doing that. Stories hold the fowlers together until they tear them apart. In both cases, the stories are saving fictions.

Saving fiction… Saving, in this use, is an adjective describing what fiction does for us. The term may be author John Gardner’s, although I couldn’t find anything online attributing it to him. It is used, however, by the Dragon in Grendel to describe Grendel’s reason for existence. Of Grendel, the Dragon says,

You improve them, my boy! Can’t you see that yourself? You stimulate them! You make them think and scheme. You drive them to poetry, science, religion, all that makes them what they are for as long as they last. You are, so to speak, the brute existent by which they learn to define themselves. (pp. 72-73)

As readers of Grendel know, Grendel is the monster of Beowulf fame. He, along with his mother, terrorizes the Danes until Beowulf kills him. Beowulf, in turn, is killed by a dragon, but his heroic deeds live on in the form of stories or saving fictions. As the Dragon tells Grendel, the caricature of him created by the Shaper—the clan storyteller—provides cultural and historical relevance to the Danes as a great, heroic people. Grendel’s existence is substance for the stories the clan draws on to define themselves as a people. In effect, they created a “Grendel” apart from the real Grendel to sustain them and their existence.

We all have our saving fiction: think creationist stories, stories about cultural and national identity, stories showing what is the true and proper way to live.

WWE’s saving fictions are not as grandiose or dramatic, not of the monster-tearing-neighbors’-limbs-off tales, where life and death hang in the balance. They are stories told to retrieve a life balance gone askew, stories of home and family meant to sustain the fowlers when it appears home and family have abandoned them. They are imaginings of love and commitment that rest not so much on truth as on hope in the face of all odds.

Quill, as keeper of stories, is called on to tell tales of Hirta life, of kin and dogs and sheep and daily life. He also brings forth myths of creation and perseverance. And he carries within him his own saving fictions of Murdina, his first crush, whose relationship with him exists only in his head. Fittingly, it was Murdina who revealed the power of stories to Quill. Her allure was her storytelling.

Not all saving fictions are good for everyone. Just ask Grendel. We all have these types of stories, too, or at least we have heard them: think those that set us against them or those that proffer an absolute way of being or particular beliefs, making non-doers and non-believers worthy of banishment if not death.

In WWE, they are often the things of superstition (witches and sea monsters), religious parables (Revelations and the end times), and omens of darkness. Ultimately, they strip the fowlers of reason and empathy and imbue them with fear and suspicion of one another. And when that happens, the stories of hope and longing dry up, as there is nothing left to hold onto in the face of what is happening.

Near the end of WWE, Quill and readers are brought face-to-face with until-then imaginary Murdina. Quill and the others have returned home. Murdina wasn’t there but she returns. We have heard so much about her, that it feels odd to meet her in the novel’s last few pages. We learn, though, that it’s Murdina telling the story of the fowlers we just read. She says:

On the Western Isles of Scotland—maybe in other parts, too—the teller of a story must give credit to the storyteller from whom they first heard a tale. So. I who set this down had this story from Quilliam McKinnon of Hirta, and he told it only to me.

Thus, is the nature of saving fictions—born out of need to be told and passed on. In this case, it’s Quill’s story Murdina is telling. All this comes only after Quill had thought “the pretty lies of a storyteller had deserted him.” It takes Murdina to coax them back out and send them into the world as a measure of the strength and resolve of eight adolescents and three adults. Or was that McCaughrean? No matter. In this scheme, they are saving fictions. A fine truth for all of us to ponder. A fine idea to infuse in students.

Solving for M = Middle Grade (Multimodal Novels + Math Identity)

6/10/2026

Meet our Contributor:

Lauren Vandever, M.Ed, works as a district instructional coach in rural Oklahoma, but in her heart, she is always in a 7th-grade classroom. Lauren is also a Ph.D. student in Literacies and Language Arts Education at Oklahoma State University. With 12 years of classroom experience, she is passionate about growing educators, fostering teacher efficacy, and exploring multimodality and meaningful literacy practices that support student learning. Outside of studying and teaching, Lauren enjoys spending time with her wife, three dogs, and cat.

Solving for M = Middle Grade (Multimodal Novels + Math Identity) by Lauren Vandever

“Oh no! Sorry, I teach Reading. I cannot help you with your Math.”

I am guilty of saying that phrase more than once in front of a class of 7th graders. Anyone who has spent time inside a middle school has undoubtedly heard a similar phrase uttered by teachers and/or students. The myths of some people being “Math Brained” versus “Reading Brained” abound as educators and students dive deeper into the specialized content in many secondary schools. As a 7th-grade Reading teacher, I had firmly planted myself on the Reading Brain side of the aisle.

However, then I signed myself up to become our district’s first Instructional Coach. The middle school principal was all in, and his first task for me was to infuse more literacy into the classrooms. I was ecstatic! I could not wait to get first-person historical fiction into the hands of the history teachers or have students write short stories from the perspective of an atom. Until the principal and math department head showed up at my new office door. They wanted a novel to read in math class.

“Uh. Okay….” I replied. Luckily, I found my wits about me and asked just one question, “What do you want the students to get from a math novel?”

The department head said, “I want them to see that math applies to their real lives. Oh, and I read something on Facebook about math journaling.”

He turned and left, and I had a summer task ahead of me. Luckily, the fates were ready to handle this for me because I had also signed up for a Research in Children’s Literature class for my summer coursework. In that, my professor introduced us to Content Analysis. We had to embark upon our own content analysis, so I decided, why not? My professor was hesitant at first. She knew math instruction was not my passion, but she graciously stepped aside to let me solve both of these equations simultaneously.

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This summer of research developed into a very short list of books that involve math. I quickly learned two important pieces of information. One, there is an award called the Mathical Book Prize for books like this. Also, there are not very many books written the way I wanted. My content analysis ended with just ten middle-grade books being examined, as well as two major themes being identified. Six of the books focused on the main characters using math to understand the world around them, while the other four focused on middle schoolers learning to love math. Out of those four, only two featured math journaling.

The research was not very hopeful…..until I read one of the books: Solving for M by Jennifer Swender.

A Masterful Middle Grade Math Novel

Published in 2019, Solving for M is a heartfelt middle-grade novel. The story follows Mika, an artistic, introverted fifth-grader entering a new school year at Highbridge Middle School. On the very first day, Mika meets the coolest teacher I have found in a book: Mr. Vann. Mr. Vann uses every single moment of his class time and school calendar days to make sure students know that math is cool, and they are going to write about it. On the first day of school, Mr. Vann launches math journals with the students that have no rubrics, no minimum word count, and no grades. It is simply a place where they will write every day to explain how a math concept applies to their own lives. Oh, and adding pictures is highly encouraged.

Mika is very confused by this teacher’s requirement, but she loves to draw and jumps right in. However, Mika is not jumping right into the deep end of middle school. Her best friend is placed in the other pod and starts spending time with new friends. Mika has to learn to make new friends on top of starting a new school. But then, her mother is diagnosed with melanoma. Suddenly, Mika’s entire world is upside down.

And the only place she starts to feel safe to express all her emotions is her math journal.

The Triad of Multimodality

As I became fully enthralled by Swender’s (2019) novel and Jennifer Naalchigar’s illustrations, I realized this book was exactly what my principal and math department head needed because the author prioritized a multimodal structure.

In literacy education, multimodality is “... an interdisciplinary approach that understands representation and communication extend beyond written language, and that includes a multiplicity of modes” —including text, visuals, spatial layouts, and gestures (Serafini & Gee, 2017). When educators prioritize and accept multimodal literacy as a valid writing and thinking process, they are accepting that the “signs people use to convey meaning are always embedded in social contexts and with specific purposes…where each mode is capable of providing information in ways that other modes cannot” (Kachrorsky et al, 2017).

Traditional schooling often over-privileges the linguistic mode (reading and writing text), pushing visual and spatial thinking to the margins. However, research shows that when we allow students to process complex ideas using multiple modes at once, it lowers cognitive load and creates sticky, meaningful learning pathways (Mayer, 2001).

Through its deliberate mix of traditional prose and hand-drawn journal entries, Solving for M demonstrates a masterful application of multimodality by perfectly blending three essential practices from the Reading Brain, the Math Brain, and the Artistic Brain:

Mathematical Reasoning: Mr. Vann requires each of his students to not only illustrate and track math in their real lives, but he also requires them to explain their reasoning while transposing numbers across illustrations. Mr. Vann connects major concepts such as estimation, inequalities, measurement, etc., through the math journal.
Written Expression Mika uses written prose, captions, dialogue, graphic organizers, and more writing techniques to articulate the connection of mathematical concepts to the emotional realities of her mother’s cancer treatment.
Artistic Expression: Mika incorporates doodles, shading, character sketches, etc to give a physical shape to her understanding of mathematical concepts as well as her own overwhelming anxiety.

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In Mr. Vann’s classroom, math ceases to be a flat sheet of rote memorization or an endless pile of worksheets. Instead, math becomes a practical, creative tool for life. The students use variables to map their unpredictable lives rather than just solving for a meaningless “x”.

By witnessing Mika synthesize her artistic identity alongside mathematical concepts, the reader watches her math identity transform in real time. She discovers that she does not have to surrender her artistry or narrative to understand math; rather, her artistry is exactly what makes her math journal so profound.

Middle Schoolers’ Negative Trajectory

As I read through this novel, the juxtaposition of my education with the work Mr. Vann is providing did not go unnoticed. The work started to bring up several memories from my time as a middle school student. Two in particular stuck out in 7th-grade.

7th-grade was the first time I remember being corrected by a teacher for doodling on my paper. I doodled my notes because I need the connection of pictures and words to have meaningful notes for review later. However, my 7th-grade English teacher did not like that. She thought I was being lazy and ignoring her while I doodled. My way of learning was not valid for the traditional classroom.

The same year, I had a math teacher deny me the right to attend a math competition because I would not help them win. I had qualified for the competition. I had always been in advanced math classes. I had over a 100% in the class on that day. However, my math teacher decided that I was not good enough at math to help the school win, so I needed to just stay behind.

From those days forward, I was always a reading person because reading did not require note-taking or math. This academic trauma is an all-too-common occurrence for middle schoolers. John et al. (2023) defined math anxiety as a fear or tension that results from learning and evaluative situations involving math. Studies have shown that math anxiety peaks at the end of middle school and math identity declines throughout all of high school (Gentile et al., 2022). To put the numbers to it, 39% of teens believe math is an inherent characteristic of personality, and only 34% of teens say they enjoy math (Gentile et al., 2022).

These statistics align with my personal experiences with my math identity declining throughout middle school. For me, the determining factor was the teacher in the classroom. I wish I had had a Mr. Vann teacher who encouraged both of these skills. I might have become a math teacher, too.

Plotting New Pathways

Luckily, I found Solving for M while still working with middle school teachers and students. Finding this text inspired me to work through my own lingering beliefs about my math skills, and it ultimately returned me to the visual, artistic note-taking—now known in my doctoral work as sketchnoting—that brings me genuine joy and knowledge.

Solving for M offers all of these learning opportunities from page one:

Models and Prompts for Math Journaling: Math teachers can find numerous ways to create journaling prompts that open a door for students. Students can see how Mika visually depicted her mathematical reasoning alongside her written explanations. Students can try the prompts, use Mika’s journal as inspiration, and find ways to apply the concepts to their own lives.
Sketchnoting as Writing Strategy: Teachers of all content areas can use the novel to invite students to write, respond, take notes, and more through sketchnoting. Allowing students to blend text and drawings honors all learning styles and helps all learners try out new styles.
Discussion About the Middle School Experience: Swender (2019) dives into all the changes that middle schoolers are going through, as well as how learning is a daily process and does not fit into a box or neatly between the hours of 8:00-3:00. Mika’s journey opens up not only a discussion about school content, but also how students can process big emotions and changes.

Let’s Keep the Tally Running!

Here are some more resources to incorporate math novels and identity into your classroom

The Mathical Book Prize List: Explore the Mathical Book Prize archives to find targeted, age-appropriate fiction and non-fiction titles that champion mathematical reasoning for youth.
An Introduction to Sketchnoting: Check out resources like Rachel Smith's TEDx Talk, Drawing in Class, The Writing Mindset’s Sketchnoting blog post, or Tammy Gregor’s Ink and Ideas to learn how to integrate visual note-taking into your classroom pedagogy.
My Research Spreadsheet: Review my content analysis spreadsheet about the 10 books I dove into.

And drop a comment below about other books that will help students develop their identity as learners!

References

Gentile, A., Imbornone, A. M., Marvasi, M., & Sciortino, M. (2022). Math anxiety and math identity in adolescents: Longitudinal trends and educational implications. Journal of Adolescent Research, 37(4), 512–535. https://doi.org/10.1177/07435584211068123

John, A., Insouvanh, S., & Robnett, R. D. (2023). Math anxiety in middle schoolers: A fear or tension from learning and evaluative situations. Educational Psychology Review, 35(2), Article 45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-023-09765-x

Kachorsky, D., Goff, M., Talarico, L., Stewart, O. G., Hoelting, M., Tran, K., Lee, K., & Elwood, K. (2017). Exciting times for new scholars: Doctoral students consider the past and the future of multiliteracies research and pedagogy. In F. Serafini & E. Gee (Eds.), Remixing multiliteracies: Theory and practice from New London to new times (pp. 187–196). Teachers College Press.

Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139164603

Serafini, F., & Gee, E. (Eds.). (2017). Remixing multiliteracies: Theory and practice from New London to new times. Teachers College Press.

Swender, J. (2019). Solving for M (J. Naalchigar, Ill.). Crown Books for Young Readers.

Reading for Queer and Trans* Sustenance

6/3/2026

Meet our Contributor: Christian George Gregory Associate Professor, Saint Anselm College

Christian George Gregory is currently an Associate Professor of Education at Saint Anselm College and a former Lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. in English Education. He has written for English Journal, English Education, QED, and for both Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal and the Journal of LGBTQ Youth, where he serves on the Board. He has published chapters in edited collections on queer studies, banned books, Young Adult Literature, and the graphic novel, is a former Program Chair for the Queer SIG of AERA and serves on the judging committees for the NCTE’s REALM and ALAN’s Walden Awards. His research interests include expanding the canon of English Education, queer theory, and classroom discourse.

**Reading for Queer and Trans* Sustenance by Christian George Gregory**

As we move from the end of the academic year further into late spring and Pride month, as we contend with a world in flux, and as we consider the continued effort to pull books, particularly books with LGBTQ+ content, off shelves, I’d like to reflect on several notable YA books released this past year that reflect the experiences of queer and trans* youth in difficult times.[1] In this post, I highlight five authors whose work, published in recent years, experiments with genre, wrestles with personal and political issues, and provides moments of heroism, hope, and gleeful joy.

Compound Fracture, Andrew Joseph White

White’s work is nothing if not singular. Some may be at a loss to categorize or describe it. Here is one attempt: a West Virginian, Marxist-socialist, on-the-spectrum, trans-masculine protagonist, Miles (he/they), is caught in a Hatfield-and-McCoy-style revenge plot. And it’s a ghost story. The writing is raw, careful, and surprising. Here is just one arresting example of narration when Miles sees Saint, the ghostly walking dead from nearly a century ago:

When he turns to the house, I can make out the wound where the railroad spike came out at the back of his brain stem, the blood matted into his sandy hair. Now that I know he’s trans, I’m trying to find it in his features; in the size of his hands, in the way his face is built. He was never gonna get testosterone, so he had to work with what he had, and I think he did well with it. Or maybe that’s the weight of a century changing the body, the bones and the meat. I don’t know how this works.

Highly original and a bit outlaw, White ventures into this mixed genre of guns, violence, blood, and gore with abandon.

White also handles dual “coming out” stories. First is the ongoing journey of Miles, who self-identifies as trans* and later must contend with his forced, public outing. White composes the fallout with care, as when Miles’s family discusses this personal violation. The second “coming out” narrative focuses on Miles' awakening, with the guidance of his friends, to the possibility of being autistic.

Conceptually, the ‘open wounds’ of the body that run throughout the work feel specific to the psychic/physical experience of how the trans* bodies must be reconfigured (ripped, stitched, healed) in the process of becoming. In this matrix of ghosts and gore, I am reminded of trans* author Susan Stryker, who writes that “we have done the hard work of constituting ourselves on our own terms, against the natural order. Though we forego the privilege of naturalness, we are not deterred, for we ally ourselves instead with the chaos and blackness from which Nature itself spills forth” (p.254). Much like Styker, who here liken herself to Frankenstein’s monster, White has created a work is without question a book of radical queer/trans* ideas. During a time when don’t say trans' is the order on high, authors like White are even more essential to shelf and protect.

A Constellation of Minor Bears, Jen Ferguson

Ferguson’s novel is a complex exploration of anger, attraction, and guilt. Graduating senior Molly is coping with her ambivalent feelings about a climbing accident that befell her brother Hank, possibly due to the negligence of their mutual friend Tray. After the accident and graduation, Trey and Molly trek across the United States. Ferguson's writing is nuanced, thoughtful, and engaging. Here is Trey, for example, thinking through his relationships:

But honestly I think things will get better. Between me and Molly. With Hank as he keeps healing. With the land. The planet. I even believe that water will show up when we need it, maybe around the next bend. Shit like that, it trends upward. (p.55)

Ferguson’s writing, here in the voice of Trey, has a surprising depth. Equally as impressive is when Ferguson writes in the voice of Hank, and his chapter headings titled “AITA,” an initialism I had to look up that stands for “Am I the Asshole?”

There are also meaningful exchanges between Molly and Brynn (p. 143) that foster an open dialogue about body positivity amid fat-shaming. Ferguson’s work would appeal to a wide variety of readers, not merely queer readers, as the cross-country excursion is, by turns, an adventure story and extended group therapy session. Such moments of YAL, those that embed peer-to-peer counsel, remind me of how essential such moments are of “queer sustenance” (Gregory 2026). Here, authors sustain and support queer identities by depicting peer-to-peer discussions on identity, acting as a reflective or aspirational mirror of queer counsel. Beyond in-scene counseling, the book itself, which threads ‘campfire’ discussions throughout, serves as bibliotherapy. For queer and trans* teens, works like these serve as another help hotline and lifeline.

I Can’t Even Think Straight, Dean Atta

Like Atta’s prior work, Black Flamingo (2020), this verse novel work excites in many ways. Kai, a half-Greek, half-Jamaican young gay man, thinks through his life, family, and potential love interests. Fresh and witty, the work demonstrates a command of verse while driving the plot forward. The second half, in which Kai comes to realize he has been in love with his best friend, Matthew all along allows Atta to write scenes that incorporate easy, charming banter between them, and I burst out laughing more than once. In this way, the reader roots for their success, and the scene in which Matthew comes out to “the Boys,” his pack of straight friends, was unexpected. Nervous, Matthew feels the high stakes of disclosure when, in fact, his friends are completely accepting of his sexuality.

The work tackles many issues relevant to queer growth and formation. One episode has Kai attend the lecture on “how to get published” from a visiting queer writer, which allows Kai a queer mentor. Additionally, Kai’s prickly, combative nature offers greater complexity. He falsely accuses his teacher of homophobic behavior, which his teacher responds to with great sensitivity. As both Atta and the teacher know, queer youth are in formation and sometimes need guidance. The teacher demonstrates an active knowledge of how to manage anger and de-escalate situations, a skill so crucial today. Like other books mentioned in this post, this work provides several queer exemplars of how to navigate one’s identity, coming out, anger, ambitions, and ultimately, the world.

Coffeeshop in an Alternative Universe, CB Lee

Lee’s rom-com fantasy involves Kat and Brenda, who live in parallel universes: one magical, the other, “normy.” By chance they meet one day in Kat’s coffeeshop as Brenda completes her college scholarship application down to the deadline. Kat enters with a “pick-me-up” coffee, made with a mysteriously glowing shot that, in fact, picks Brenda up. The subsequent pages keep the pair apart, until they reconvene in the aisle of a magical Target.

The marriage of rom-com and parallel-universe genres is fresh, and once the fissure is breached, Kat and Brenda catch a vibe, and the stakes, with all sorts of manna surges and beasts to vanquish, climb higher. Some of the magical world-building places it in the realm of fantasy, but when Kat speaks about the nature of magic--with “surges,” “power,” and “matrixes”--the narrative reads like code for AI. In this way, Lee reaches for allegory on the carbon footprint and dangers of technology on the environment.

While the pacing lags a bit and the rules of the world and its portals were left unexplained or only clarified after the fact, Lee’s work is remarkably upbeat and spirited. For instance, Kat and Brenda cast a spell to shrink the dragon (chapter 28), who is lured into submission by the shiny object of the sax. They succeed, but inadvertently and comically enlarge Brenda’s cat, Fancy. There is also a nice piece of writing in which the mind of Brenda and the dragon merge. So, the romance is charming, the set pieces are unexpected, and the overall effect allows Lee’s work to reside in queer joy, adventure, and fantasy.

The Closest Thing to a Normal Life, Michael Méndez Guevara

First-time author Méndez Guevara, a former teacher, has written a readable, clever, steadily paced work that does something I haven’t seen recently: it frames its narrative with epic violence, as the parents of protagonist Ethan-Mathew are killed in a terrorist attack on reporters. The work then narrates the more subtle microaggressions that escalate in San Antonio, Texas. By focusing on the escalation of racist and homophobic speech, Méndez Guevara maps how hate speech engenders greater violence, thus tracing violence back to its nascent source.

The primary characters are nicely drawn. Head cheerleader CC, a bestie of Ethan-Matthew, is a charmer, and love interest and goofball Reid is an unexpected queer construction: star runner, caring, hopeful to express his feelings for Ethan-Matthew, and someone who responds with great heart when Ethan is triggered by guns and the prospect of gunfire (Méndez Guevara, p. 166). The grandparents who raise Ethan-Matthew are wonderful and not at all homophobic, though we learn that they were a bit racist. Some of the teachers are Marvel villains or heroes, with little nuance. For instance, the journalism teacher is completely unprofessional and petty. On the flip side, the librarian is heroic--creating a food bank and a Starbucks-like retreat from the world's worries.

Overall, the writing is clean and clever; the set pieces--the sleepovers, the rucksack hike, the first running tournament, the alternative anti-prom dance--are fresh and engaging. What the work does successfully is identify the simultaneous forces at play in our country right now: MAGA rhetoric and the persistence of inclusion and progressivism. In this way, it is a book of this year and time. Guevara brings us inside Ethan-Matthew’s authentic and quirky approach to journalism, which includes a New Yorker-like profile piece on a student who works in tire repair and an editorial that depicts the racism at the ball game. Overall, an engaging work with insight and heart.

Against Slings, Against Arrows, Pride

What provides hope now in 2026 in queer and trans* YAL is that authors are responding to our unsettling history in real time. The writing featured here addresses hate speech, the increase in violence as a result, the destabilizing of queer interior states, and the need for peer-counsel, solidarity, love, and yes, curative fantasy and escape. Pride is a complex condition in queer history. As I have written elsewhere, pride “is an antidote to shame” (Gregory, 2026). Pride month, often viewed as a celebration with flags and parades, is also a defense, “an armature against heteronormative, homophobic, and transphobic structures” (Gregory, 2023). Queer and trans* folk need pride to counter the onslaught of threats. And while such threats have intensified these past years, queer and trans* YA authors have responded, even amid banning and the threat of erasure, to tell our stories.

References

Atta, D. (2025). I can't even think straight. Quill Tree Books.

Atta, D. (2020). The black flamingo. Balzer + Bray.

Ferguson, J. (2024). A constellation of minor bears. Heartdrum.

Gregory, C. G. (2026). Queer shame, pride, and joy: How YAL parasocial relations are essential for queer sustenance. In M. Panozzo and P.W. Eaton (Eds.), Battle of the bans: Narratives of reading and engaging with banned books (pp. 57–72). Myers Education Press.

Gregory, C. G. (2023, June 22). Queer shame, pride, and joy. Dr. Bickmore’s YA Wednesdays. http://www.drbickmoresyawednesday.com/

Halberstam, J. (2018). Trans*: A quick and quirky account of gender variability. University of California Press.

Lee, C. B. (2025). Coffeeshop in an alternate universe. Feiwel & Friends.

Méndez Guevara, M. (2025). The closest thing to a normal life. Piñata Books.

Stryker, S. (1994). My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: Performing transgender rage. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1(3), 237–254.

White, A. J. (2024). Compound fracture. Peachtree Teen.

1] I use the terminology trans* here. For Halberstam (2018), trans* embraces the “unfolding categories of being organized around but not confined to forms of gender variance” and the asterisk refuses “to situate transition in relation to a destination, a final form, a specific shape, or an established configuration of desire and identity” (p. 4). I use trans* and here the asterisk with the acronym (QT*YAL) to indicate the variety of emergent identities and possibilities of more.

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Meet Our Contributor; Rebekah Buchanan

Podcasts and Young Adult Literature by Rebekah Buchanan

A Few Debuts

Some Favorites from Established Authors

Citations

Meet our Contributor: Margaret A. Robbins, PhD

Teaching the Hero’s Journey with YA and Middle Grades Literature ​by Dr. Margaret A. Robbins, PhD

The Hunger Games

Chains

Complexities of The Hero's Journey

References

Read Any Good Dissertations, Lately? by Jeffrey S. Kaplan

Robert Cormeir

Dissertations and the Pursuit of Truth

Recent Dissertations about Young Adult Literature

Unsung Scholars

Meet our Contributor: Natalie Tate

Are We Canning the Laughs?: A Brief Investigation of the Current Landscape of Humorous YA Literature by Natalie Tate

Has the Funny Dwindled?

Is It Because Teens Don’t Like Humorous Books Anymore?

Is It Because Publishers Don’t Want to Publish Humorous Books?

Is It Because Librarians Don’t Like Humor?

Is It Because Authors Aren’t Writing Humor?

Areas for Further Study and Concluding Thoughts

References

Book References

Appendix​YA Books with Heavy Themes and Humor that I’ve Read (Published in the Last 15 Years):

AppendixFunny YA Books I’ve Read (Published in the Last 15 Years):

Meet our Contributor:

Meet Rex Ogle:

Trojan Horses and Real Talk with Rex OgleAn interview by Julie Hoffman with Rex Ogle

What Followed

Pen Name and Other Projects

When We Ride

And then, Tupac

What's Next?

​Who Gets to Be a Person in Hamlet? Companion Texts, Verse Novels, and Writing Our Way to Understanding by Melanie Hundley

Reconsidering Ophelia

Reading the Poetry

Student Writing (Erica)

Student Reflection (Erica)

Student Writing (Cory)

Student Reflection (Cory)

Final Reflection on Using Companion Texts

Meet our Contributor: Roy Jackson

Reflections at the Conclusion of Pride Month by Roy Jackson

Meet our Contributor: Chris Worthman

Saving Fiction in Where the World Ends by Christopher Worthman

Meet our Contributor:

Solving for M = Middle Grade (Multimodal Novels + Math Identity) by Lauren Vandever

A Masterful Middle Grade Math Novel

The Triad of Multimodality

Middle Schoolers’ Negative Trajectory

Plotting New Pathways

Let’s Keep the Tally Running!

References

Meet our Contributor: Christian George Gregory Associate Professor, Saint Anselm College

Reading for Queer and Trans* Sustenance by Christian George Gregory

​Compound Fracture, Andrew Joseph White

​A Constellation of Minor Bears, Jen Ferguson

I Can’t Even Think Straight, Dean Atta

Coffeeshop in an Alternative Universe, CB Lee

​The Closest Thing to a Normal Life, Michael Méndez Guevara

Against Slings, Against Arrows, Pride

References

Dr. Steve Bickmore​Creator and Curator

Bickmore's ​Co-Edited Books

Archives

Categories

Blogs to Follow

Teaching the Hero’s Journey with YA and Middle Grades Literature
by Dr. Margaret A. Robbins, PhD

Appendix
YA Books with Heavy Themes and Humor that I’ve Read (Published in the Last 15 Years):

Appendix
Funny YA Books I’ve Read (Published in the Last 15 Years):

Trojan Horses and Real Talk with Rex Ogle
An interview by Julie Hoffman with Rex Ogle

Who Gets to Be a Person in Hamlet? Companion Texts, Verse Novels, and Writing Our Way to Understanding by Melanie Hundley

**Reading for Queer and Trans* Sustenance by Christian George Gregory**

Compound Fracture, Andrew Joseph White

A Constellation of Minor Bears, Jen Ferguson

The Closest Thing to a Normal Life, Michael Méndez Guevara

Dr. Steve Bickmore
Creator and Curator

Bickmore's
Co-Edited Books