DR. BICKMORE'S YA WEDNESDAY - PICKS 2026

DR. BICKMORE'S YA WEDNESDAY

Weekend Picks for March 6th

3/6/2026

March is reading month! Professor Dan Stockwell kicks off the month for us with a thrilling mystery.

Dan Stockwell

Dr. Dan Stockwell, a former high school English language arts (ELA) teacher, is an assistant professor of English Education at California State University, Bakersfield. Dan serves as a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Secondary Section Steering Committee. In addition to his book, Teaching for CHANGE in the ELA Classroom, published by Routledge in 2025, Dan has published in NCTE’s English Journal and in the California Association of Teachers of English’sCalifornia English journal. Visit Dan’s website for lesson plans and teaching ideas.

We welcome Professor Stockwell back to the blog this month, and thank him for his contributions to the YA community!

The Black Queen by Jumata Emill

The Black Queen by Jumata Mill is an exciting, carefully-crafted thriller that I did not want to put down. As I read this captivating mystery, I made multiple guesses to solve the murder, but Emill’s book is so well plotted that I never figured it out until the end. Emill doesn’t cheat the reader with pointless or manufactured “twists.” All details and clues connect–just not how I initially thought.

This novel features strong characterization of nuanced characters. The chapters alternate between the two protagonists, Duchess and Tinsley, who have clear and authentic voices.

Though Duchess and Tinsley are not friends, each for her own reasons–Duchess to solve the murder of her best friend and Tinsley to clear her own name, has the same goal. So these two high school seniors become unlikely allies. Emill uses believable dialogue to bring these dynamic characters to life and to emphasize themes about racism, class, privilege, and justice.

The Black Queen is an outstanding mystery, but its nuanced exploration of powerful themes makes it linger with readers even after the mystery is solved. The biggest issues the novel explores are, tragically, not even close to being solved.

Jumata Emill

Weekend Picks for February 27th

2/27/2026

Roy Jackson

The end of February is here, and contributor Roy Jackson concludes the month with another great recommendation: This Is My America by Kim Johnson.

To remind our readers, Roy Jackson is a writer and educator whose scholarship and prose have appeared in various outlets. He holds degrees in English and Education, including an MFA from Youngstown State University. He is currently an assistant professor of education at Goshen College.

Our many thanks to professor Jackson for his important contribution to the blog this month and reminding us that "History has a way of latching on to you."

This Is My America by Kim Johnson

“History has a way of latching on to you. Like touching a hot stove – you only need to do it once before you know better” (p. 269).

Kim Johnson’s (2020) novel, This Is My America, confronts the hot stove. And as a reader, I couldn’t look away. Positioning my racial and gender privilege as a reader required careful attention while engaging with this novel, and it is a practice I look forward to modeling for my students. At my college, we take pride in our commitment to social justice and restorative practices, and for those of us who benefit from white American privilege, reading novels like this demands intentional reflection and deliberate steps.

This Is My America opens with seventeen-year-old Tracy Beaumont writing a letter to Innocence X, a legal advocacy organization, on behalf of her father, who is on death row in Texas for the double homicide of a white couple. Tracy’s father maintains his innocence, and she hopes the organization can investigate his case to prevent an unjust execution.

Tracy’s efforts draw public attention, and she and her brother Jamal are interviewed on television, bringing her family’s story into the spotlight. The media coverage adds pressure. Throughout the novel, Tracy navigates threats and intimidation from those invested in keeping the official narrative intact.

Jamal is a talented track star who plans to attend college nearby to stay near the family. When he is accused of murdering a white woman in a case that mirrors their father’s conviction, Tracy becomes determined to protect him from a similar fate. She continues writing detailed letters to Innocence X, highlighting inconsistencies, racial bias, and misconduct in the investigation of her father’s case, while also preparing to fight for Jamal.

Her persistence, careful documentation, and courage eventually attract the attention of Innocence X, who begin formally investigating the family’s cases. The organization uncovers evidence that exposes flaws in the justice system and racial bias, working toward justice for her father and protection for her brother.

Throughout the story, Tracy confronts systemic racism, personal danger, and the emotional toll of advocating for her family, while also highlighting the broader reality that Black men and women are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States. Her resilience and determination shine as she faces overwhelming obstacles within a system stacked against her family.

The book concludes with a robust Author’s Note that provides both essential historical context and insight into the artistic choices Johnson made in crafting the novel. This serves as a starting point for me as a reader and educator, particularly for those who are witnesses to the harms of mass incarceration in the United States but are not directly affected by it. Johnson shares her personal testimony from when she was twelve, recalling the beating of Rodney King by the LAPD and the officers’ subsequent acquittal: “I felt their rage. Their pain was my pain” (p. 391). From Jonny Gammage and Eric Garner to the so-called War on Drugs and the Crime Bill of 1994, Johnson frames historical narratives and legislative practices as systemic injustices disproportionately targeting Black Americans—both then and today.

Johnson points out that “as of April 1, 2019, there were 2,637 inmates in prison who are sentenced to death, across thirty-two states. African Americans make up 13 percent of the US population but are 42 percent of the people on death row. It’s important to acknowledge that, nationally, 95 percent of prosecutors are white” (p. 397). This Author’s Note at the end of the book makes for an incredible pre-reading activity for readers of racial privilege to examine how systemic bias is pervasive in the US legal system, not only among death row inmates but in incarceration rates overall. An examination of these stories and facts sets the stage for all readers to understand how this impacts them as they provide their own testimony or witness the injustice of this system.

Kim Johnson

And while these statistics and mentions in the Author’s Note matter as a manner of foregrounding necessary information for all readers, the YA novel’s human story matters just as much, if not more. It is the human toll and costs that this system of injustice enforces on the citizens of this country that resonate with me as a reader. This toll is expertly depicted in the novel.

There are many poignant entry points for young readers in this novel, but I think the idea of compounded trauma, the weight and burden placed on marginalized individuals within systems of injustice, is particularly important. The protagonist, Tracy, cannot be a typical American teen; her burdens are immense. She is systematically persecuted by white supremacy, both literally and figuratively. These binaries are powerful points for examination and invite deep, meaningful discussion. Additionally, while she is ostensibly tasked with excelling at school, she must expend the precious currency of her time and cognitive energy writing endless letters to Innocence X and witnessing the framing of her brother by a biased justice system. These themes of compounded trauma come from experience and testimony, not just from witnessing, and for readers with privilege, this underscores the importance of positionality.

Published in 2020, Johnson wrote in the Author’s Note, “Some declared the United States a post-racial society upon the election of Barack Obama, the forty-fourth president. This declaration is refuted by the rise of white supremacists since the election of the forty-fifth president. The stain of racism also rears its ugly head each time a viral video reveals police brutality or racial disparities in arrests and convictions” (p. 395). Reading this in 2026, with the rise of white Christian Nationalism, eradication of DEI by the government, and the assault on higher education academic freedoms, makes this novel and Author’s Note all the more poignant.

Weekend Picks for February 20th

2/20/2026

Roy Jackson

Welcome to the third weekend of February with our contributor Roy Jackson. He once again brings us a fantastic historical fiction recommendation: The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon.

To remind our readers, Roy Jackson is a writer and educator whose scholarship and prose have appeared in various outlets. He holds degrees in English and Education, including an MFA from Youngstown State University. He is currently an assistant professor of education at Goshen College.

Our many thanks to professor Jackson for his contributions to the blog this month!

The Rock and the River by Kekla Magoon

Kekla Magoon’s 2009 historical fiction novel for young readers is strikingly timely, resonating with both recent events and ongoing societal issues. The Rock and the River is a carefully crafted novel that depicts a specific period and place in American history while remaining fully relatable, allowing readers across generations to engage, connect, and reflect. For this reader, that reflection is bittersweet, highlighting how little has changed over time.

The Rock and the River is a historical novel set in 1968 Chicago during the Civil Rights Movement. It follows 13-year-old Sam Childs, whose father is a respected, nonviolent civil rights activist modeled after Martin Luther King Jr. Sam admires his father but is also drawn to the ideas of his older brother, Stick, who secretly joins the Black Panther Party and believes more direct, forceful action is necessary. Early in the story, Sam’s friend Bucky is arrested and beaten by police, revealing the dangers young activists face, and these tensions escalate when Stick is shot and killed by police during a protest, an event that follows Bucky’s beating. Sam’s father is also stabbed during activism, a violent event that shakes the family and underscores the risks of standing up for justice. As protests, police violence, and racial tensions intensify, Sam struggles to understand both nonviolent and militant approaches and begins to question what justice and courage truly mean. The novel explores family loyalty, political awakening, and the difficulty of finding a path in a divided movement, showing how young people navigate danger, morality, and their own voices during times of social upheaval.

For the privileged in America who often fail to see how events like the L.A. residents’ response to the Rodney King verdict, or the coast-to-coast protests during the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, unfolded, this novel is a wonderful launching and landing point to show that the juxtaposition between the pacifist and proactivist approach to protest can exist in the gray area in between instead of as a binary either/or. Magoon humanizes not just the Dr. King and Black Panther Party approaches in the home in which the protagonist Sam resides, but also the intergenerational trauma and evolution that may ebb and flow within many homes. Sam is faced with trauma daily at the hands of the police and mobs who brutalize his community, physically harm his friends and family, and continually raise their nightsticks at the marginalized residents of the city of Chicago. Unfortunately, as we all know too well, nightsticks have been replaced with guns, and bodily harm has been replaced by police killing citizens.

The novel is set against the backdrop of the 1968 protests and the assassination of Dr. King, an event that plays a pivotal role both historically and within the story, particularly when Sam’s father, a follower of Dr. King and a leader in the Chicago pacifist movement, is stabbed and aired on television while Sam and his family watch. Magoon draws readers closer to this moment by showing it through Sam’s perspective, allowing us to experience both the trauma of witnessing the loss of a pivotal figure in the movement and the personal fear and anguish of seeing his own father, who knows Dr. King and strives to follow his teachings, confronted with violence while upholding the principles of peaceful, nonviolent protest.

In the same vein, Magoon offers a rounded and meaningful portrayal of the Black Panther Party movement, which is often mischaracterized in historical contexts presented to students. Through Charlie’s sibling Stick, the novel humanizes the party’s emphasis on education and community care. He is seen helping provide food for children and participating in local outreach efforts, gestures that complicate the narrow narratives many readers inherit. Rather than presenting the Panthers only through images of confrontation, Magoon frames them through relationships and everyday acts of responsibility, allowing young readers to understand the movement as rooted not just in protest, but also in service, dignity, and community presence.

Kekla Magoon

What is key in this depiction is that the novel resists framing the era as a simple binary of King’s movement as peaceful and the Black Panthers as violent. Instead, it reveals areas of shared purpose and overlapping concerns between the movements. The Panthers’ central tenet is not portrayed as aggression for its own sake, but as self-defense in response to persistent police brutality and systemic injustice. Through this lens, readers see that both movements sought dignity, safety, and civil rights for Black communities, even if their strategies and public images differed. Viewed from a contemporary perspective, the novel invites a more nuanced understanding that moves beyond “peace versus violence” and toward a recognition of parallel goals, internal debates, and the complexity of social change.

As students enter our classrooms with questions about the world today, Kekla Magoon’s The Rock and the Riverprovide a strong starting and ending point for meaningful conversations. Through the characters, readers experience the weight of inherited activism and the personal costs of standing up for justice. What makes the protagonist’s story especially compelling is that Magoon presents the 1968 movements without suggesting one was better than the other. The novel encourages discussion about who is harmed by police, who is allowed to respond, and how society determines whose rights, whether the First or the Second Amendment Rights, are protected or restricted. It also raises important questions about inequality, media bias, and the ways public narratives shape our understanding of protest, resistance, and justice. The novel helps readers understand why, historically, activism in response to systemic injustices shifted from King’s philosophy to the principles of the Black Panther Party without tipping the scale in favor of either approach. The careful balance Magoon achieves is a rare feat and one that invites thoughtful discussion in classrooms and beyond.

Weekend Picks for February 13th

2/13/2026

Welcome to the second weekend of February, a unique collision of Friday-the-13th and Valentine's Day!

Roy Jackson

Our February contributor, Roy Jackson, once again brings us a timely recommendation on protest, civil disobedience, and the eternal question of humanity: shouldn't being human be enough?

To remind our readers, Roy Jackson is a writer and educator whose scholarship and prose have appeared in various outlets. He holds degrees in English and Education, including an MFA from Youngstown State University. He is currently an assistant professor of education at Goshen College.

Our many thanks to professor Jackson for his ongoing commitment to our YA Literature community!

One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

Seeking contemporary YA stories relevant to our current times I came across this fantastic read in the shelves of my public library. I must admit that I was using AI with a search prompt of “YA books on protest, civil disobedience, and protest” and chat led me to the stacks where One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite resided. It deserves to be pulled from the line of spines with titles and displaced cover first. With a thematic tagline in the lower right corner of the cover, Shouldn’t being human be enough? the novel centers its narrative on the individual at the center of a movement, but in dire need of separation from a larger movement. To be remembered as an individual; as a human. This book holds power in manners not often utilized in today’s fiction where sainthood or martyr status is almost immediate in a divisive society without much reflection. The authors force us to pause and reflect inward, at least for me, on how I often play into this trope to suit my narrative needs.

One of the Good Ones centers on teen social activist Kezi Smith, who is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally. Her death quickly becomes national news, and she is held up as “one of the good ones,” a phrase that troubles her family because it implies only certain Black lives are worthy of sympathy. Her younger sister Happi, devastated and angry, struggles with the way Kezi is idealized by the public. Along with their sister Genny, she decides to honor Kezi in a more personal way. Guided by an heirloom copy of The Negro Motorist Green Book, the sisters embark on a road trip that Kezi had planned to take, hoping to understand her more fully and reclaim her humanity beyond the headlines. As they travel, the story weaves between past and present, revealing Kezi’s activism, her relationships, and the pressures she faced. The novel also includes a major twist that reframes the family’s understanding of what happened to her.

Why someone gets remembered, mortalized in our ethos, isn’t new or surprising to me. Rather in our current times, I’m curious about how they are remembered and immortalized. It seems there are two memories in the last ten years of how someone is remembered. Trapped in the American binary where media drives the consumers' thoughts. A person is a martyr or domestic terrorist, a victim or criminal, a child or dangerous criminal. All sides play this game so easily, and concerningly. But Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite do something so incredibly powerful. They challenge readers to see beyond this binary of saint or sinner and instead recognize the humanity of the individual, the human, so real and flawed in our existence. The authors force us to move beyond the media political mechanism and reach for something deeper. A life lived, with flaws and all, and seek for more meaning than the cultural and political divides to drive wedges. More than that, the story seeks this position through a non-linear timeline and historical literal and metaphorical road trip.

The novel is told not through the voice of the murdered activist Kezi, but through those who knew and loved her most. Family and close friends try to make sense of her death and the way she is portrayed in the media. What emerges is an afterlife of activism, but even more so, a portrait of a family struggling to understand a loss that feels both intimate and senseless. Through its connection to Black mobility and resistance across American history, the sisters’ road trip creates a natural historical throughline that blends with the fabric of their grief. Their travel becomes an act of preservation, an attempt to hold onto the human being they cherished rather than the martyr the media insists on creating.

Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

As an adult reading YA, I often find myself considering the pedagogical possibilities each novel offers. This one offers many. Its structural choices, including family trees and non‑linear timelines, create natural opportunities for front‑loading and guided discussion. The historical context, especially the Green Book the sisters rely on during their road trip, provides another entry point for grounding students in the broader history of Black mobility and resistance.

Yet the true power of this novel lies in its intersection of trauma and political division. It raises a difficult question: what responsibility do the keepers of memory have to the actual lived human when the broader public demands a narrative that fits a divided society’s desire to right wrongs. The novel does not offer easy answers, but its climax opens space for rich, nuanced conversations. I would be deeply interested to hear how young and emerging adults respond to these questions, and how they navigate the tension between personal grief and public storytelling. Who is best served in these choices? Where is the voice of the dead in the public domain as it’s altered and manipulated?

While class discussions of this novel, especially when read during turbulent times in America, can be valuable, students may express more pointed or honest responses in private writing. I am interested in hearing a wide range of voices, not a monolithic set of affirmations. I am especially curious about the dissenting perspectives, the students who quietly and reasonably disagree. Journaling and written responses between instructor and student are useful and accessible, but I am drawn to the idea of a moderated, anonymous discussion board. Such a space could allow students to disagree, agree, and consider one another’s positions with a sense of safety and openness that traditional classroom dialogue does not always provide.

Published in 2021, Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite’s novel is perhaps more important as a launching pad today than it was then. In the post‑2020 election and near end of the pandemic, the novel felt almost historical. Today in 2026, it is present, alive, and urgently resonant. The questions it raises about memory, narrative, and the human cost of public storytelling feel less like reflections on a past moment and more like guideposts for navigating the world we inhabit now.

Weekend Picks for February 6th

2/6/2026

Welcome to the first Weekend Picks for February!

Roy Jackson

This month, we welcome back contributor Roy Jackson from Goshen College. He once again provides wonderful, timely YA recommendations to keep our TBR lists filled during these winter months. Our many thanks to professor Jackson for his commitment to our YA community!

Roy Jackson is a writer and educator whose scholarship and prose have appeared in various outlets. He holds degrees in English and Education, including an MFA from Youngstown State University. He is currently an assistant professor of education at Goshen College.

Internment by Samira Ahmed

I often use Rudine Sims Bishop’s theory of mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors in my teaching and writing about literature for adolescents, young and new adults. Bishop proposed the idea that literature offers readers tools for interpreting experience, recognizing patterns in human behavior, and imagining alternatives to the world as it is (Bishop, 1990). I almost always pivot myself to the imagining of a better world, a better way of living, a peaceful existence. In uncertain times, I crave comfort and resolution. I now realize this is often a naïve thought and one our students may not need. While I can hope for positive outcomes after living through uncertain times, I know all too well, as a queer American, that this is not always the case. No law is ever settled, no progress follows a steady or inevitable upward trajectory, and progress itself is messy and unstable, often marked by backward steps.

Samira Ahmed

As I searched for books this month, I thought it wise to seek out literature to help our young readers make sense of our current time, particularly a month when we often highlight civil disobedience and the power of protest.

I found a powerful novel that profoundly impacted me. Samira Ahmed’s (2019) Internment is exactly what Sims Bishop was referring to when offering the thought that literature can offer alternatives to the world as it is. However, Internment’s power comes from not imagining an America where the uncertainty we live in resolves and makes the country a better place. Instead, the novel not only allows students a window and sliding door into the aspects of marginalization based on race and religion in an ever-changing country, but it also presents a cautionary tale of just how much worse it can get when each week seems worse than the one before. Books like Internment complicates the theory of mirrors, windows, and sliding doors by asking what happens when texts function as warnings rather than an aspirational alternative, when literature acts as alarm, not refuge.

Internment is a young adult dystopian novel by Samira Ahmed set in a near future United States where Islamophobia and authoritarian politics have led to the forced internment of Muslim Americans in detention camps. The story follows seventeen-year-old Layla Amin, who is imprisoned with her parents and must navigate a world defined by surveillance, armed guards, and the systematic erosion of civil rights and selected, forced media. While her parents focus on survival through compliance, Layla becomes increasingly aware of the moral and political implications of silence as she witnesses abuse, medical neglect, and collective punishment inside the camp. Through relationships with other detainees, including the outspoken activist Ayesha, and with David, the son of a camp guard who begins to question the system he serves, Layla develops a deeper understanding of power, complicity, and resistance. As conditions worsen, she helps organize acts of protest that grow from symbolic gestures into collective action, drawing public attention to the camps and exposing the fragility of democratic ideals. The novel examines how young people make sense of the world around them under conditions of state-sanctioned injustice and how solidarity and courage can challenge systems built on fear. Most students have multiple experiences with dystopian YA. What is so powerful about this genre is that it resists the myth of democratic inevitability, instead helps us see the civic fragility, rather than hope-driven futurism. Our students understand that the world is not universally democratic and to imagine a US where it is lost brings power to the classroom conversation.

As young readers seek understanding of the uncertain times we live in, literature can offer educators a mode of discussion and exploration. Internment’s initial power lies in the connections to WWII both abroad and domestically. Classroom discussions and studies could easily veer to WWII. Not just on the Holocaust, but also the US Japanese internment camps are clear connections that come to light. But the list of US internment does not begin and end with the Japanese internment camps. Parallels to the mass confinement of Indigenous peoples of this land, the enslavement of Africans as slaves, mass detention of Chinese immigrants at the turn of the 20thcentury, the so-called war on drugs that targeted and led to the mass incarceration of people of color, and the current rise in ICE detainments illustrate that internment and systemic oppression exist in our past and present.

Internment doesn’t seek to offer a nice solution tied in a bow; instead, Ahmed offers students a cautionary tale that must be addressed in our current times. The students are already thinking about it, fearing it, and wondering about it. Others may be misled into thinking the oppressing forces are right in what they are doing, and Internment gives a window into the world we cannot see in detention facilities. We witness the rounding up of our neighbors, yet we do not see what happens after they are taken, what the loss of freedom and due process does to those who are mass-incarcerated. The book challenges those of us privileged enough not to fear internment to consider how we will respond: will we witness and challenge this injustice, or sit idly on the sidelines? I wonder what this looks like in the classroom. As the educator, the responsibility here may be the facilitator of discomfort, historical connector, or the ethical guide. In the end, most likely all three.

I couldn’t put this book down. It is a page turner for a variety of reasons. The pacing of the writing is exciting, the characters are relatable, and the visceral reaction is gut punching. But more than that, it is the perfect time to read in our current national circumstances. For those living in fear, it offers a mirror of representation; for those seeking a deeper understanding of their own fears and how to act as allies, it provides a window; and for those unfamiliar with the experiences of the marginalized, the sliding door is wide open.

Weekend Picks for January 30th

1/30/2026

Welcome to the final weekend of January 2026! We are again delighted to welcome one of Leilya Pitra's teacher candidates, Juliana Portillo, from Southeastern Louisiana University as our Weekend Picks contributor this week. Juliana has chosen a romance, Debating Darcy, for her YA Weekend Pick.

Juliana Portillo

Meet Juliana Portillo.

She is a secondary English Education major getting ready for my residency semester. Juliana lives in a small town called Laplace, Louisiana, which is about 20 minutes from New Orleans. Outside of college courses, she works as a server at a Mexican restaurant in my hometown. In my free time, she enjoys reading romance novels, listening to music, and spending time with friends and family. I can’t wait to complete my residency and begin teaching students in high school.

We are so thankful to professor Leilya Pitra and her Southeastern Louisiana University students for their thoughtful recommendations all month long!

Debating Darcy by Sayantani DasGupta

I chose Debating Darcy (2022) because I love romance novels, and I was curious to see how Pride and Prejudice could be reimagined in a modern setting. Before reading, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I quickly found the story engaging and relatable. The novel is told from a teenage girl’s point of view, which makes the language feel natural and easy to follow, especially for high school readers.

One thing I really appreciated about this book was its strong female voice. As someone who is competitive, I connected with the main character’s drive and determination, especially in the world of high school debate. I loved how Leela, just like Lizzie Bennet in the original, is such an advocate for young South Asian girls. The subplot about her and her friends uncovering the sexism and harassment among the high school debate circle was developed skillfully and appealed to me. I also enjoyed how the romance developed; it felt meaningful, not rushed. The debate setting made the story feel unique and highlighted how much pressure and inequality can exist in academic spaces.

What stood out to me most were the themes of feminism, sexism, privilege, and identity. DasGupta clearly shows how these issues still affect students today, especially girls and students from marginalized backgrounds.

By modernizing a classic story and placing it in a debate culture, Debating Darcy feels relevant and important, and I think it has real staying power for today’s YA readers.

Sayantani DasGupta

Weekend Picks for January 23rd

1/23/2026

If you find yourself deep in the winter months and in search of a great YA read to get through these dark days, look no further. We have you covered!

Joelle Benoit

We again welcome a teacher candidate student, Joelle Benoit, from professor Leilya Pitra's Southeastern Louisiana University as our Weekend Picks contributor this week.

Meet Joelle Benoit. She is an English Education Major at Southeastern Louisiana University, and one of her interests is reading. Her typical reading preferences include books that are realistic fiction or fantasy novels. Joelle was one of the students who helped organize a high school-university book club we titled The Page Turner Society during the fall semester. She actively participated preparing activities and questions for students to be engaged in every meeting. Joelle has a cat named Dew, and one of her favorite places is in Grand Isle, Louisiana.

Our ongoing gratitude to professor Leilya Pitra and her Southeastern Louisiana University students for their recommendations this month!

Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

Who doesn’t know Laurie Halse Anderson, a New York Times-bestselling author known for tackling tough subjects with humor and sensitivity? Two of her books were National Book Award finalists. Two more books including Shout (2019) were long-listed for the National Book Awards. In 2010, Laurie Halse Anderson received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for her significant contribution to young adult literature. She has been nominated for Sweden’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award seven times (!), and in 2023 she received this prestigious award.

Laurie Halse Anderson

Laurie Halse Anderson’s Shout is a memoir written in poetry that tells the story of how she lost her voice and how she slowly found it again through writing. Many readers know Anderson from Speak published in 1999, and Shout feels like a powerful companion text, showing the real-life experiences that shaped her fiction. The book is emotional, honest, and deeply personal, but it is also hopeful in how it shows healing through expression.

One of the most interesting parts of Shout is the way Anderson uses poetry instead of traditional chapters. The poems are sometimes short and sharp, and other times longer and reflective, which mirror how memory and trauma work. She moves back and forth in time, showing how experiences from childhood can stay with someone into adulthood.

The book explores important themes such as trauma, mental health, identity, and growth. Writing itself becomes a symbol of survival—each poem feels like a step toward reclaiming power. Shout reminds readers that finding your voice can take years, but stories can help make sense of what once felt impossible to say.

Weekend Picks for January 16th

1/16/2026

Welcome to the third weekend of January 2026! We are again delighted to welcome one of Leilya Pitra's teacher candidates, Collin McClure, from Southeastern Louisiana University as our Weekend Picks contributor this week. Collin has chosen a classic, Maus, for his YA Weekend Pick.

Collin McClure

First, a word about our contributor: meet Collin McClure.

Collin is a senior English education major at Southeastern Louisiana University and will be graduating with his BA in May, 2026. He lives outside of Baton Rouge with his wife. Collin appreciates learning and thinking about religion, morality, and archetypes in literature. He enjoys reading a good short story or writing while sitting under the shade of a tree.

Our many thanks to professor Leilya Pitra and her Southeastern Louisiana University students for their thoughtful recommendations this month!

Maus by Art Spiegelman

I was outside and reading Art Spiegelman’s renowned 1986 graphic novel Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale, My Father Bleeds History when my grandfather walked past me. Seeing what I was reading, he said, “When I was in college in the sixties, it would have amazed me to be assigned comics as coursework.” Indeed, it would have been amazing for such a genre to be assigned in the literature classroom in his day, but academic legitimacy is exactly what Maus helped establish for comics and for the graphic novel. This first volume of Spiegelman’s two-volume work centers on the experiences of the author’s father surviving the chief horror of the Second World War, namely, the Holocaust. Told from Spiegelman’s perspective starting in 1978, the author interviews his father, Vladek Spiegelman, to tell his story in a comic, but must unwillingly listen to his father’s present-day troubles of his life in Queens, New York. Their strained relationship and Vladek’s declining health lead to many breaks in the Holocaust narrative, which stretches from pre-war tremors to mid-1944, still a year before the fall of Nazi Germany. The novel sees Vladek evade capture by the Nazis around western Poland, yet the central conflict of the work is the strained relationship between he and his son since the suicide of Spiegelman’s mother.

Maus is heavy. This is partially due to the subject, but the 1978 timeline of grief, strife, and illness add to the realistic yet absurd take on life as a Jewish person. Spiegelman’s choice to portray the different ethnic populations in Europe as different animals places a veil between the reader and the real history being recounted. Depicting Germans as cats and Jews as mice, Spiegelman complicates the narrative by ironically embracing the racist beliefs behind the hatred that fueled the Holocaust. This decision underscores the secondary message that Jewish people have not entirely recovered from this great horror. Additionally, the plot’s occasional anachronisms add an additional layer of reality to the narrative as the reader experiences the thoughts and narrative choices of Vladek as he recounts the events to his son. The narrative is framed only in Spiegelman’s contemporary perspective while interviewing and interacting with his father, which places Maus awkwardly between an autobiography of Spiegelman and a biography of his father.

Further, volume one ends without a specific resolution to his and Vladek’s relationship, searing the reader’s hope of a happy ending in either 1944 or ‘78. I found Spiegelman’s attempt at an objective portrayal of his father to be quite noteworthy.

Readers may be surprised to find that Vladek is cast not as a traditional hero, but as a rather unlikeable, greedy man who fails to connect emotionally with those around him. While Spiegelman’s refusal to omit these sections testifies to the objective nature with which he wanted to interview his father. Vladek’s portrayal teeters on subjectivity in the sense that Spiegelman is honest in his disdain for his father due to grief over his mother’s suicide. Again, this conflict causes Maus to exist somewhere in between biography and memoir.
Maus brings a level of emotional depth that is all but absent in many history textbooks, and those who found themselves trudging through classes on the Holocaust can find a renewed interest in Vladek’s personal experience. Many may even find Spiegelman’s use of anthropomorphic animals to explore racial and ethnic identity familiar, as later graphic novels such as Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese perhaps took some inspiration from the absurd cat and mouse metaphor.

Art Spiegelman

Spiegelman’s Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale, My Father Bleeds History helped bring validity to comics within academia. Though knowledgeable on the subject prior to reading, I gained much understanding of the experience of life after the Holocaust through the real, rugged picture of Spiegelman’s relationship with his father. I thoroughly recommend this graphic novel to those who like or even dislike graphic novels, as its quality comes not only from the text and images but from each reader’s interaction with the work’s difficult themes.

Weekend Picks for January 9th

1/9/2026

Welcome to the second week of January 2026! We are delighted to welcome Leilya Pitra's teacher candidate student, Allie McCauley, from Southeastern Louisiana University as our Weekend Picks contributor this week.

Meet Allie McCauley.

She is a secondary English Education major beginning her residency semester in January 2026 (yes, right about now!). She is from Central, Louisiana, just outside of Baton Rouge. Allie enjoys reading realistic fiction, romance, and historical fiction. Outside of school, she works as a part-time RTI teacher, tutoring students in math, reading, and writing, and also serves at a restaurant. In her free time, she loves baking, playing with her dog, and spending time with her family and friends. After finishing her undergraduate degree, she plans to teach middle or high school English.

Stay tuned for more contributions this month from Southeastern Louisiana University students!

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds

The book, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, is a young adult literature novel published in 2017. I was given a choice of two novels for one of my methods courses, and I decided to read this novel. To me, it was a great choice.

The book follows the story of William Holloman and him dealing with the death of his brother Shawn and what actions he must take next. The book takes place in the outside of William's building in the neighborhood, his room he shared with his brother, and the elevator in his building. The main characters include William, Shawn, and his mother with other characters he meets in the elevator. The central conflict of the book is William’s next steps in what he has to do after Shawn’s death and whether or not he chooses to take the life of who he thought killed his brother.

The plot is overall engaging and well-paced. On each level of the elevator, William meets a new person on those who have played some sort of role in his life. It is not predictable because the reader can never guess who is going to appear next on the elevator to help William on his journey. The characters are well-developed.

When each character gets on the elevator, they reveal their backstory and how they died. It gives William moments to reflect on what he has to do. Every character’s backstory is different for each character, but they all connect into the same idea of the cycle of violence and how it impacts generations of families and communities.

Through these encounters, William begins to question the “rules” he has been taught about revenge and what it truly means to honor his brother’s memory. Personally, I do not find any of these characters relatable. However, they are realistic and meaningful to the story. Each one represents a different perspective on grief and retaliation, showing how pain and loss can shape a person’s choices.

The language of the book is poetic. Reynolds writes in shorter, concise lines. He gets the thoughts across all of his characters very thoroughly. His book reads like a big piece of poetry with the reader knowing exactly what the characters are doing, except for ending, where readers are left thinking what may happen next.

The author explores the themes of grief, loss, and revenge. They are very impactful for William’s story. He has to deal with the loss of his brother, but many other people in his life who he didn’t fully realize made such an impact on him. It reflects the cycle of violence that they are constantly living in and William has to decide whether or not to take part in it. He experiences so much grief in conflict about what to do in his situation about whether or not to seek revenge for his Shawn. All of the themes impact the story in a meaningful way that shapes William’s choice.

I loved this book! It was interesting from the very first page because of the way Reynolds wrote it.

Jason Reynolds

It wasn’t your typical lengthy paragraph to convey a story, but short lines that got the point across and helped you imagine what you would do if you were in William’s shoes. While I did not really have any expectations for this book, it by far exceeded what I thought it would be. It was so heartfelt and it seemed I felt exactly what William had been thinking and going through.

The only unexpected moment was the ending. I wanted more. I wanted to know exactly what William’s choice was with having to take an educated guess. I think any reader would enjoy this book, especially students in our public high schools in Louisiana, who may connect with the characters on personal levels.

The other book that I can compare it to is All-American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. This book focused on the story of Rashad and Quinn following a police brutality incident. Both of the stories put a male black character as their main character and tell their story about life and the challenges they are facing. Both are great books that give an insight into what it is like to be a young black male living today’s society. As for comparing it to the same genre of young adult literature, this book does tell the story of a young adult. Like many young adult literature novels, it conveys a story of a person trying to navigate their way in the world or trying to deal with whatever problems they are facing.

Overall, I would recommend this book. It was really interesting for me to read and I was never sure what or who was coming next. While I do wish the ending would have been more, it was such a great graphic novel. The pictures paired well and really helped me visualize what William was going through. I would give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Weekend Picks for January 2nd

1/2/2026

Happy New Year, everyone! We are delighted to have our former editor/curator back with us to start 2026 off right. Leilya Pitre is our January contributor, and she has this to say about the upcoming Weekend Picks:

"Let this year be the best for every one of you—let it allow you to carry out your dreams and take you to the place where you want to be. This month, I am featuring my students--the teacher candidates who are already in or getting ready for residency in local public 6-12 schools. These are my future colleagues, and I know each one of them will be a wonderful teacher because I see that caring and nurturing is in their nature. Let me share my choice first."

Leilya Pitre

First, a bit more about Leilya.

Leilya Pitre is an associate professor, English Education coordinator, and director of the Southeast Louisiana Writing Project. She teaches undergraduate and graduate students at Southeastern Louisiana University. Leilya is an active reader, writer, and poet. When she is not working, she is playing with her new White German Shepard Buddy, listening to the music, walking, traveling with her husband, or meditating in the kitchen.

A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi

The novel that haunted me long after I turned the final page is A Land of Permanent Goodbyes (2018). The author, Atia Abawi, worked as CNN and NBC war correspondent stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan, for five years. Her journalist talent allowed her to create vivid imagery and emotionally charged, unsettling narrative that made me immerse in the realities of war, loss, and displacement during the Syrian refugee crisis.

From the opening chapter, readers are introduced to Tareq and his family at their happiest time. Their love for one another is strong and protective. It is customary for the older siblings care deeply for the younger ones, and Tareq shares a special, tender bond with his mother. This sense of warmth makes the events that follow even more heartbreaking, as the life Tareq knows is suddenly torn away.

One of the most devastating moments in the novel occurs when Tareq witnesses the tragedy that takes away most of his family. The contrast between memory of his happy childhood surrounded by parents and siblings and harsh reality of the present destruction and loss is what made this scene especially painful to read. As Tareq speaks his final goodbyes to the loved ones and his country, I kept thinking about an earlier moment when his life was full of joy.

What makes this novel even more impactful is Abawi’s choice to have Destiny narrate it. Destiny knows not only Tareq’s suffering, but also the pain of everyone affected by the war, including the men who help find people in the rubble after the airstrikes.

By shifting the perspective this way, Abawi reminds readers that grief is shared and layered. Even in his broken state, Tareq promises that he will take care of the family he has left, holding onto hope without knowing who has survived. Through this moment, the novel shows how loss and hope can exist at the same time, making A Land of Permanent Goodbyes a deeply moving and unforgettable read.

Atia Abawi

Editor/Curator:

Our current Weekend Picks editor/curator is Dr. Amanda Stearns-Pfeiffer. She is an Associate Professor of English Education at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan where she has taught courses in ELA methods, YA Literature, grammar, and Contemporary Literature since 2013. When she's not teaching, writing, or reading, she loves to spend time with her husband and three kids - especially on the tennis court. Her current research interests include YAL featuring girls in sports and investigating the representation of those female athletes.

Questions? Comments? Contact Amanda:
[email protected]

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