It's the final weekend of April and LSU instructor Paige Watts brings us the Weekend Pick to round out the month.  ​

To remind our readers, Paige Watts is an Instructor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she teaches composition and Young Adult Literature. She is also one of the Faculty Advisors for NCTE at LSU. Her research interests include Young Adult Literature, multimodal literacy, and pedagogical approaches to teaching genre fiction. She is often seen carrying a tote full of craft supplies to her classes and loves a classroom full of student discussion. 

Our many thanks to Paige for her contributions to our Weekend Picks this month! 

​I Am Alfonso Jones is a graphic novel written by Tony Medina and illustrated by Stacey Robinson and John Jennings. Alfonso Jones is just a student with a crush on his best friend, a school play around the corner, and an upcoming reunion with his dad who is coming home from prison after being exonerated for a crime he didn’t commit. When Alfonso is out shopping with his best friend, an off-duty police officer mistakes the hanger in his hand for a weapon and shoots him. 

​Alfonso wakes up in the afterlife where he watches his family and friends as their grief becomes a larger public outcry against police brutality that spread across the country. In the afterlife, he meets ghosts who were also victims of racial violence, like Elanor Bumpurs and Henry Dumas. Together, they take the “ghost train” to help Alfonso understand his death and the larger social implications of what has happened to him and how the world around him is responding. ​

​Alfonso’s journey shows him as situated within a devastating tradition of racism and violence in America, and his ancestral guides only have so much they can tell him. While balancing the hope of a better future, the many stories of violence in the novel show how truly bleak the reality is for boys like Alfonso. The story shows that communities are starting to push for change, but the emphasis of the novel really remains on what needs to change. The stories presented are heartbreaking and grounded in reality. Readers of today know just how accurate these stories are to the world around us. Alfonso’s story highlights the repetitive cycles of this violence and how important it is that we face the ugly reality of these issues, take action, and demand change. 

Told in illustrations, Alfonso’s story becomes that much more real and impactful to young readers. ​​

​Early in the novel, Alfonso is seen in his class, navigating literary analysis of Hamlet, and the scene is such a real representation of the teens today. While Alfonso and his classmates consider how the language in Hamlet relates to the language of hip-hop, their constant discourse has the potential to relate to young readers and remind them that Alfonso is just like them. He is a young boy, having the same school day that they do, before he is involved in this horrific accident that ends his life. 

www.leeandlow.com/books/i-am-alfonso-jones/​
​I Am Alfonso Jones is a beautiful and haunting addition to classroom libraries that prompts students to think more deeply about the tragic stories we often see in headlines today. Whether these are fears students are deeply familiar with or an opportunity for better understanding, this graphic novel presents Alfonso’s story as a way to understand the history of injustice and recognize the urgent need for change. 

You can order your copy of I Am Alfonso Jones here!

We welcome back contributor​ Dr. Ashlynn Wittchow this week in her second YA Pick for the month of April. 

Dr. Ashlynn Wittchow is an assistant professor of English education at Louisiana State University, where she teaches pre-service teachers enrolled in the Geaux Teach program. Prior to moving into higher education, she worked with middle and high students across South Carolina, New Jersey, and New York. Her writing has appeared in Changing English, English Journal, English Education, and other NCTE publications. Though she enjoys postapocalyptic literature, she freely admits that she would not, in all likelihood, survive a zombie apocalypse. She can be reached at [email protected]. 

​​The Dead of Summer is an absolute page-turner with twists and turns—I gasped audibly on at least three separate occasions—that will keep readers on their toes. The narrative is nonlinear, unfolding in passages that alternate between first person narration that takes place during the outbreak and assorted multimodal artifacts that take place following the outbreak. The investigative artifacts—which include anonymized transcripts, handwritten field notes, and annotations in the margins—build suspense long before the actual outbreak, hinting at the horror looming on the horizon. Furthermore, these field notes include clues that will reward the attentive reader long before the big reveal in the final pages. Of course, there are subtle clues to be found within the prose passages as well. The opening chapter, in particular, evokes clever foreshadowing through its figurative language.

Though there are passages that are genuinely unsettling, The Dead of Summer includes heartfelt moments that make it a profoundly moving read. ​​

​The Dead of Summer centers queer experiences as well, celebrating the chosen families formed within queer communities. La Sala has explained that Anchor’s Mercy was inspired by a real location: Provincetown, Massachusetts. P-Town is an unabashedly queer tourist destination on Cape Cod, and this real-world inspiration is immediately evident. The town map in the opening pages advertises LGBTQ+ friendly whale watching and bustling drag brunches. (Side note: La Sala clearly had a lot of fun coming up with punny business names. Scuttlebutt’s? Monster Pizza? Sunkin’ Donuts? The commitment to the bit is commendable.) Ollie mentions early in the novel that drag queens run the island. It is against this backdrop that readers are introduced to Willy, a.k.a. Wendy Pretendy, an indomitable drag queen who shelters the teenagers during the outbreak. Over the course of the novel, Ollie comes to see him as a parental figure. 

​Dr. Ashlynn Wittchow is an assistant professor of English education at Louisiana State University, where she teaches pre-service teachers enrolled in the Geaux Teach program. Prior to moving into higher education, she worked with middle and high students across South Carolina, New Jersey, and New York. Her writing has appeared in Changing English, English Journal, English Education, and other NCTE publications. Much like the characters in her weekend pick, she enjoys playing escape games in her spare time and has successfully escaped almost fifty rooms to date. She can be reached at [email protected]. 

​The Escape Game, by Marissa Meyer and Tamara Moss, follows an ensemble cast of puzzle-solving teenagers who have been thrown into a murder investigation during an escape-room themed reality television competition. The previous season ended in tragedy when its star contestant, Alicia Angelos, was discovered murdered on set. The world suspects her goth-glam sister, Sierra Angelos, who was spotted arguing with her sister on the night of the murder. However, the police are unable to make an arrest without evidence. When the new season starts filming, Sierra returns to the competition, determined to clear her name. She begins investigating alongside her teammates—Carter, Beck, and Adi—only to discover strange clues within each escape room that seem to point to the real killer. 

​In particular, puzzle solvers will enjoy the multigenre elements interspersed throughout the novel, which include detailed escape room maps, newspaper clippings, and online forums. I found these elements particularly immersive, and it is worthwhile to pause to search them for clues. The escape room design was clever as well. The narration takes care to give the readers the information needed to solve puzzles alongside the characters. As an escape room enthusiast, I was impressed with the game mechanics, which included pigpen ciphers, scytale ciphers, and key word ciphers. It is clear that the authors have done their research! 

​In short, The Escape Game is the perfect puzzle box for readers on the lookout for a whodunnit that works on multiple levels. In the classroom, the escape room premise would make it a natural fit to introduce students to locked-room mysteries, a popular subgenre in mystery fiction that feature an “impossible” crime. Teachers can invite students to recognize how modern locked-room mysteries build on earlier works in the genre, including Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which is usually considered the first locked-room mystery. The Escape Game could be incorporated into thematic literature circles alongside other young adult murder mysteries as well. Similar texts include One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus, I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga, and Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson. 

Welcome to the first weekend of April!


Spring means love is in the air, and we are celebrating with a romantic comedy that investigates identity, fitting in, and falling in love. Our many thanks to Paige Watts for bringing us this first Weekend Pick for the month: And They Were Roommates by Page Powars. 

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​Paige Watts is an Instructor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she teaches composition and Young Adult Literature. She is also one of the Faculty Advisors for NCTE at LSU. Her research interests include Young Adult Literature, multimodal literacy, and pedagogical approaches to teaching genre fiction. She is often seen carrying a tote full of craft supplies to her classes and loves a classroom full of student discussion. 

​And They Were Roommates by Page Powars is a romantic comedy novel that follows Charlie Von Hevringprinz as he starts classes at his dream school—a religious, boarding school for boys. Charlie is anxious about keeping his identity as a trans student a secret but becomes even more worried when he’s assigned a roommate he knows. A guy he hates. A guy who broke his heart before he transitioned. Jasper is well-known on campus for being theatrical in his poetry, admired by many of the boys, and a charmer to many of the girls on the sister campus. Charlie knows he has to make friends with Jasper in order to fit in on campus, but he has a hard time leaving the past in the past. However, he soon learns there may be more to Jasper than just being a famous poet and leaving behind broken hearts. 

This story is written to be funny, quirky, and so silly-sweet, I was grinning while I read it. It is everything a YA romcom should be, from inventive tropes to dramatic declarations, while also considering the complex issues these teens are facing. ​​​

And They Were Roommates has so many beautifully human moments between Charlie and his new friends at school while they all try to figure out how they can be part of the school’s traditions but also challenge how the school can create space for everyone. The characters begin the novel with large personalities, but the book does a great job of exploring who they are and the depths they all have. The characters are deep and human, while also being lovable. ​​

And most importantly, this novel really shows queer joy and belonging. We see so many of Charlie’s insecurities as they are, while also getting to see him find a place to belong, to be seen, and to love. ​