Blog Archives

Ethics and Conflict in Young Adult Literature

5/27/2026

Meet our Contributor:

Dr. Amy Piotrowski is an associate professor of English education at Utah State University. She teaches undergraduate courses in English education and secondary education as well as graduate courses in literacy. Her scholarly interests focus on digital literacies, young adult literature, and English teacher education. Her most recent chapter, “Issues of Identity in YA Science Fiction Depicting Artificial Intelligence and Cybernetics,” was published in the book Identity, Criticality, and Advocacy in Young Adult Literature: Training Teachers to Empower Students in the ELA Classroom. Before going into teacher education, she taught middle school Language Arts, high school English, and college composition in Texas.

Ethics and Conflict in Young Adult Literature by Dr. Amy Piotrowski

Young adult literature, especially science fiction and fantasy, tells stories about adolescent characters who are involved in ethically difficult conflicts. As Dr. Melanie Hundley pointed out in her post a few weeks ago, reading young adult literature can be a way for adolescent students and their teachers to examine issues of ethics that we face in our current world of digital technologies and artificial intelligence. Two of my graduate students and I concur with this assertion in a recently published book chapter, in which we argue that young adult science fiction shows that “as humans use technological tools, we must remember our humanity and not become too machine-like ourselves” (Piotrowski, Billings, and Chamberlain, 2026).

Ethically thorny situations in young adult literature encourage students to consider different ways of handling conflict. Noddings (2002, 2013) in her work on ethics education defines ethical caring as being curious about others, engaging in dialogue with people from different backgrounds, and being able to live and work with others with whom we might disagree. She argues that to develop an ethic of care, kids and adolescents need models of and to practice ethical caring.

Conflicts in young adult literature are often tied to struggles for freedom and more just societies. Historian Timothy Snyder argues in the book On Freedom that freedom often gets defined as the absence of anyone telling us what to do, and that this view of freedom is incomplete. Snyder defines freedom as making decisions about who we want to be and figuring out how we might put that into lived practice. In this definition, freedom is when we discern what we believe matters and then act on what is important to us.

With Nodding’s and Snyder’s ideas in mind, here are three young adult series that depict characters who must make ethically fraught choices in the face of difficult conflicts. These series also examine how one’s choices can be shaped and constrained by society. Through these stories, students can think about ethics, as well as the challenges of putting our ethical values into action.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

This most recent entry in the series focuses on the Hunger Games as propaganda, a show where the Capitol uses its technology to control the narrative. The choices that Panem’s adolescents have are constrained by brute force - because that brute force is Capitol’s only play in a game so rigged it isn’t much of a game at all. Glamorous exteriors hide the corruption and deeply-rooted incompetence of the Capitol. Pressure is put on adolescents, first Haymitch and then Katniss, to take actions towards overthrowing the Capitol and by doing so end long-standing oppression. It’s also notable that one of the most powerful acts of resistance in the novel might be the brave efforts of the Newcomers alliance to humanize the tributes from the Districts, even though those efforts end up overshadowed by the Capitol’s propaganda.

Annals of the Western Shore trilogy

I’ve written about this series for this blog before, and I bring it up again here as a counter-example to The Hunger Games series. This series features protagonists who are the opposite of the “girl on fire” archetype inspired by Katniss Everdeen. In each of their respective stories, Orrec, Gry, Memer, and Gavir must figure out how they want to live, even when the brutal social systems that they live in will not be overthrown. The ethical thing to do can be building one’s own life despite the society one lives in. Violence might be unwise even when it is justified. The protagonists of this series must decide for themselves how to use their abilities in order to be free, and that might mean leaving behind the life they have known.

Arc of a Scythe series

Citra and Rowan are shown two ways of being a scythe during their apprenticeships: a solemn responsibility versus wielding unchecked power over others. These different ways of being a scythe impact their sense of ethics. Citra develops a mix of compassion and ruthlessness that in part grows from Curie’s encouragement to take on corruption from within the Scythedom. Rowan, on the other hand, is brutalized into the self-serving ways of Goddard, but he then takes action against corrupt scythes. Meanwhile, the benevolent AI, the Thunderhead, finds loopholes to get around the guardrails in its programming in order to do things that it calculates as being likely to lead to a good outcome for humanity. Bending the rules and finding ways to argue that something technically isn’t prohibited by law or rule are common actions in this series, leading the reader to think about the importance of ethics in a technologically advanced society.

Ethical Issues Across Texts

These novels, taken together, highlight several key issues:

Fighting for a different future vs. walking away to build one’s own future
Tension between responsibility to one’s self and responsibility to family/community
Reconciliation: Is it possible, and if so, how to go about it?
Adolescents are pushed to address conflicts inflamed by older generations

These young adult series feature ethically nuanced protagonists that adolescent readers can learn from. What stories help you and your students think about ethics and conflict?

References

Noddings, N. (2002). Educating moral people. Teachers College Press.
Noddings, N. (2013). Caring: A relational approach to ethics and moral education. University of California Press.
Piotrowski, A., Billings, R., & Chamberlain, K. (2026). Issues of identity in YA science fiction depicting artificial intelligence and cybernetics. In S. C. Mayer & A. Hayes. (Eds.). Identity, criticality, and advocacy in young adult literature: Training teachers to empower students in the ELA classroom (pp. 13-21). Routledge.
Snyder, T. (2024). On freedom. Crown.

From Minor Roles to Main Characters: Fat Representation in YA Literature

5/20/2026

Meet Our Contributors:

Katy Bigham is a former middle language arts teacher and recently earned her master’s degree in English from Brigham Young University. Dawan Coombs is former high school English and reading teacher and current professor of English at Brigham Young University where she teaches courses in young adult literature. Over the last ten years Katy and Dawan have collaborated on research examining the power of young adult literature to improve pedagogy and change the lives of adolescents. This post features research from Katy’s thesis.

From Minor Roles to Main Characters: Fat Representation in YA Literature
by Katy Bigham and Dawan Coombs

The first year of my grad program I, Katy, took a class from Chris Crowe that explored the history of young adult literature. He assigned each student to read a touchstone text that exemplified different eras in YAL history, and I was assigned Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack. As I read, one of the core messages of the book immediately became clear: Dinky Hocker would be happier if she was skinnier.

“Yikes,” I thought. “Not great.”

My love of YAL, combined with my interest in body size representation (shaped largely by my own lived adolescent and adult experience as someone fat) motivates my curiosity about how readers and teachers approach body size. I wondered if the attitude characterized the time period, which lead me to revisit books I read as a teenager, published from the 1990s-2000s. I realized that in those YAL texts, fat characters were either not present or their body size was treated as the joke, or problem to be fixed. They were rarely the hero, love interest, or center of the story.

This realization reminded me of something Jason Reynolds said in a Washington Post interview about Black children. He explained he wrote to depict Black children in nuance and complexity,

As beautiful and broken and happy and terrified and angry and joyous and funny and fearful...I do that intentionally because I think that it's important that we continue to push against certain narratives, certain stereotypes, and the easy route in terms of the way that we depict Black kids...They deserve to be nerds and weirdos and artists and everybody else, right? They deserve to be disabled. They deserve to have learning differences. They deserve to have gender differences. They deserve all of the things that I want to make sure they be given an opportunity.” (Givhan, 2022)

I agreed with his statement, but I also wondered if I could substitute “Black children” with “fat kids.” Shouldn’t fat kids be more than the side character? The joke? The problem? Shouldn’t they be seen in all their humanity?

As I examined the organizations and individuals at the center of efforts to promote diverse representations in YAL, I discovered that–even though life in a fat body is vastly different than life in a straight-sized body–none of these organizations included body size as a form of diversity. Areas of diversity represented included race (Barry, 1998; Stallworth, et al., 2006; Thomas, 2016); socioeconomic class (Hinton & Berry, 2004; Silva & Savtiz, 2019); gender and sexual orientation (Batchelor, et al., 2018; Knox, 2019); physical and mental abilities (Curwood, 2013; Louie, 2005); religion (Auguste, 2013; Campbell & Crowe, 2015); and cultural and linguistic differences (Dong, 2005; Sharma & Christ, 2017). However, body size diversity remains noticeably absent from most conversations about diverse books. Fat characters lack representation in YAL and consequently, classrooms.

Despite this omission, adolescents of diverse body sizes fill our classrooms. A 2021 national study classified 16.1% of children and adolescents between 2 and 19 years of age as overweight, 19.3% as obese, and 6.1% as severely obese ((National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, 2021). Roughly as many overweight adolescents reside in the US as Black adolescents (Office of Population Affairs, n.d.) and four times as many overweight adolescents as those who identify as non-Christian (Pew Research Center, 2020).

One of the most important reasons to celebrate body diverse literature is because one of the places where the fat and straight-size experiences differ most is within the classroom. Weight discrimination is perhaps one of the most accepted forms of discrimination in our society today (Puhl & Latner, 2007), including in school. Fat students experience higher rates of bullying and social ostracization with their peers (Harrist et al., 2016), but the negativity they face is not limited to classmate interactions. Fat students also face higher rates of negative interactions with teachers, as early as kindergarten (Yu, 2021). Teachers often perceive fat students as in need of more remedial help, with higher rates of behavioral problems, and more likely to skip school (Kenney et al., 2017). These perceptions have consequences; a 2019 study determined that teachers assigned lower grades to overweight students compared to students of a healthy weight (Finn et al., 2020). Clearly, teachers themselves are not exempt from the fatphobia woven throughout society.

However, despite this very visible identifier in many young peoples’ lives, few YA novels feature fat protagonists. In the early days of YA literature, fat characters like Marcy in Paula Danziger’s, The Cat Ate my Gymsuit (1974), Dinky in M.E. Kerr’s Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, (1972) and Gabby in Patti Stren’s, I Was a 15 Year Old Blimp (1985) presented the fat experience as problematic, and were only celebrated when they begin to lose weight and conform to societal beauty standards. This message was highly troublesome, and not one that needs to be celebrated for YA readers (Beineke, 1998). In more recent years, characters such Willowdean in Julie Murphy’s Dumplin’ (2015), Charlie in Crystal Maldonado’s Fat Chance, Charlie Vega (2021), and Nala in Renée Watson’s Love is a Revolution (2021), promote body positivity and depict fat young adults with enriching and coming-of-age experiences unrelated to their size (Rogers, 2018). While Willowdean, Charlie, and Nala prove happier than their predecessors, their journey often includes a measure of overcoming internalized fatphobia, which may unintentionally reinforce fatness as inherently negative (Parsons, 2016).

These findings suggest a need for us as teachers to expand our definitions of diversity within literacy education to include body size as a meaningful marker of identity. A clear fat bias exists in the United States, which has increased over the last ten years, even though biases such as gender, sexual identity, and racial biases have decreased (Charlesworth, 2019). It’s even more critical for educators to include body size in their consideration of diverse texts–both so fat students see themselves in YAL stories (Barry, 1998) and to help all students develop critical discernment and empathy (Ghiso et al., 2012). YA literature posesses significant power to shape how students understand and perceive bodies–their own and those of others. When body diverse stories are taught thoughtfully and without apology, they offer students opportunities to not only see themselves reflected, but to question the narratives which for so long have defined which bodies are worthy of attention, love, and joy.

Darius the Great is Not Okay (2018) by Adib Khorram: This novel focuses on Darius, a Persian-American, clinically depressed, fat teenager struggling to find his place in the world. The story focuses on family, friendship, and belonging Recommended for grades 8-12.

Fat Angie (2014) by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo: Winner of the 2014 Stonewall Book Award, this book takes readers on Angie’s journey to find closure on her sister’s death and to find her own solutions to bullying, family struggles, and her future. The first book in the Fat Angie series, recommended for grades 9-12.

Gabi, a Girl in Pieces (2014) by Isabel Quintero: Protagonist Gabi leaves readers laughing and crying as she navigates life as a Mexican American teen, wrestling with cultural and societal expectations, identity, body image, and sexuality. Winter of the William C. Morris Award and the Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award. Recommended for grades 8-12.

Pumpkinheads (2019) by Rainbow Rowell: Set in a whimsical pumpkin patch on Halloween night, this graphic novel focuses on Deja, a black, queer, fat protagonist and her friend (and romantic interest) Josiah. The story explores themes of friendship and the courage to pursue romance. Recommended for grades 8-12.

No Filter and Other Lies (2022) by Crystal Maldonado: The creation of Kat’s online persona “Max” starts out harmless enough, but as Max’s popularity increases things get more complicated and she has to figure out how to come clean without ruining her relationships in the process. Recommended for grades 9-12.

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (2003) by Carolyn Mackler: An oldie-but-goodie, Virginia’s raw commentary, shared through journal entries, emails, provides a real look at life for this plus-sized teen and her family of seemingly perfect people until her brother falls from grace. A Printz Honor Book. Recommended for grades 9-12.

The Other F Word: A Celebration of the Fat & Fierce (2019) edited by Angie Manfredi: A compilation of stories, art, fashion, and poetry from noted middle grade and YA authors sharing messages about beauty, confidence, and worth. Recommended for grades 7-12.

There’s Something about Sweetie (2019) by Sandhya Menon: When Ashish goes under contract with his parents to date an Indian American girl, it’s impossible for him to anticipate what he will find in Sweetie and where the Sassy Sweetie Project will take the two of them. An NPR Favorite Books of 2019, recommended for grades 9-12.

References

Auguste, M. (2013). Those kinds of books: Religion and spirituality in young adult literature. Young Adult Library Services, 11(4), 37–40.

Barry, A. L. (1998). Hispanic representation in literature for children and young adults. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 41(8), 630–637.

Batchelor, K. E., Ramos, M. M., & Neiswander, S. (2018). Opening doors: Teaching LGBTQ-themed young adult literature for an inclusive curriculum. The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas, 91(1), 1–8.

Campbell, P. J., & Crowe, C. (2015). Spirituality in young adult literature: The last taboo. Rowman & Littlefield.

Charlesworth, T. E. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2019). Patterns of implicit and explicit attitudes: I. Long-term change and stability from 2007 to 2016. Psychological Science, 30(2), 174–192.

Curwood, J. S. (2013). Redefining normal: A critical analysis of (dis)ability in young adult literature. Children’s Literature in Education, 44(1), 15–28.

Dong, Y. R. (2005). Taking a cultural-response approach to teaching multicultural literature. The English Journal, 94(3), 55–60.

Finn, K. E., Seymour, C. M., & Phillips, A. E. (2020). Weight bias and grading among middle and high school teachers. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(3), 635–647.

Ghiso, M. P., Campano, G., & Hall, T. (2012). Braided histories and experiences in literature for children and adolescents. Journal of Children’s Literature, 38(2), 14–22.

Givhan, R. (2022 February 24). Transcript: Race in America: Giving voice with Jason Reynolds [Interview]. The Washington Post.

Harrist, A. W., Swindle, T. M., Hubbs-Tait, L., Topham, G. L., Shriver, L. H., & Page, M. C. (2016). The social and emotional lives of overweight, obese, and severely obese children. Child Development, 87(5), 1564–1580.

Hinton, K., & Berry, T. (2004). Literacy, literature, and diversity. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 48(4), 284–288.

Kenney, E. L., Redman, M. T., Criss, S., Sonneville, K. R., & Austin, S. B. (2017). Are K–12 school environments harming students with obesity? A qualitative study of classroom teachers. Eating and Weight Disorders, 22(1), 141–152.

Knox, E. J. M. (2019). Silencing stories: Challenges to diverse books. The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, 3(2), 24–39.

Louie, B. (2005). Development of empathetic responses with multicultural literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 48(7), 566–578.

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. (2021). Overweight & obesity statistics. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Office of Population Affairs. (n.d.). America’s diverse adolescents. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Parsons, L. T. (2016). Fat female protagonists in YAL and in classrooms: Exploring the impact of anti-fat bias on identity. In J. A. Hayn, J. S. Kaplan, & K. R. Clemmons (Eds.), Teaching young adult literature today (2nd ed., pp. 191–207). Rowman & Littlefield.

Pew Research Center. (2020, September 10). Religious affiliation among American adolescents. Pew Research Center.

Puhl, R. M., & Latner, J. D. (2007). Stigma, obesity, and the health of the nation’s children. Psychological Bulletin, 133(4), 557–580.

Sharma, S. A., & Christ, T. (2017). Five steps toward successful culturally relevant text selection and integration. The Reading Teacher, 71(3), 295–307.

Stallworth, B. J., Gibbons, L., & Fauber, L. (2006). It’s not on the list: An exploration of teachers’ perspectives on using multicultural literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 49(6), 478–489. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40017605

Silva, A. F., & Savitz, R. S. (2019). Defying Expectations: Representations of Youths in Young Adult Literature. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 63(3), 323–331.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/48556216

Thomas, E. E. (2016). Stories “still” matter: Rethinking the role of diverse children’s literature today. Language Arts, 94(2), 112–119. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44809887

Yu, B. (2021). Kindergarten obesity and academic achievement: The mediating role of weight bias. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 640474.

YA + Poetry = Student Voice: Ten Minutes, One Poem, Big Impact

5/13/2026

Meet Our Contributor:

Leilya Pitre is an Associate Professor and English Education Coordinator at Southeastern Louisiana University, where she teaches courses in writing pedagogy, linguistics, and Young Adult literature. She also co-directs the Southeastern Louisiana Writing Project, working with teachers to support writing instruction and student voice. Her research focuses on teacher preparation and YA literature.

YA + Poetry = Student Voice:
Ten Minutes, One Poem, Big Impact

If you’ve spent any time in a secondary classroom lately, you know that students are carrying emotional, academic, and social burdens more than ever. They are navigating grief, identity, pressure, and the constant noise of the world around them. And while young adult literature gives young people mirrors and windows into those experiences, many students still struggle to put their own voices on the page. That’s where poetry becomes transformative.

In my YA courses and in the classrooms of the teachers I work with, I’ve seen how short, low‑stakes poetic forms can unlock confidence, deepen reflection, and help students process the emotional landscapes they encounter in YA texts. Poetry doesn’t demand a thesis statement or a polished paragraph. It invites students to show up as they are with one word at a time, one line at a time. It allows for blank spaces when there is no word that can mirror what they experience at the moment.

In this post, I share three poetry prompts that pair beautifully with contemporary YA novels and offer students accessible, meaningful ways to explore character, theme, and identity. Each takes only about 10 minutes, requires no elaborate setup, and works across middle school, high school, and university-level YA courses. Most importantly, each one invests in student voice.

Why Poetry and YA Literature Work So Well Together

Before getting into the prompts, I want to note why this pairing works so well. In my own teaching, I’ve seen how poetry lowers the stakes, allowing students to write without worrying about being “right.” It builds confidence over time, especially when students engage in short, regular writing that helps them trust their instincts. Poetry also supports emotional processing, offering a space for what is often difficult to say out loud. At the same time, it invites everyone in. Multilingual learners and undiscovered writers often find their way into writing more easily through these forms. YA literature provides the emotional anchor, while poetry gives students a way to respond. Together, they create space for both thinking and feeling.

YA Texts as Emotional Anchors and Mentor Texts

The novels below work beautifully as mentor texts. Each one already carries the emotional world of the story; each one offers an insight into writing craft and creativity.

The Leaving Room by A. McBride

The Leaving Room follows Gospel, The Keeper of the Leaving Room, a place where people who dies spent about four minutes. Gospel helps them transition from one world to another. The novel unfolds in the spaces between memory and silence, where Gospel tries to make sense of a world that feels both familiar and irrevocably changed. As the story progresses, Melodee enters Gospel’s life, offering a new turn that might have returned her to life.

McBride’s writing lingers in interiority, the inner life and mental world of the protagonist: what Gospel cannot say aloud, what remains unspoken in the spaces between characters, and how grief reshapes the rhythms of daily life. Instead of dramatic plot turns, the novel offers an intimate portrait of how a young person learns to carry memory, navigate silence, and take tentative steps toward healing. Students connect deeply with the emotional honesty of Gospel’s journey, making this text an ideal anchor for reflective poetic forms like the Sevenling.

All the Blues in the Sky by Renée Watson

Renée Watson’s All the Blues in the Sky centers on Sage, a young person grappling with the emotional weight of losing her best friend. Sage’s grief is intertwined with family dynamics, unspoken expectations, and the difficulty of naming pain aloud. Watson’s lyrical prose gives the novel a gentle touch even when the themes are heavy, allowing readers to feel Sage’s ache without being overwhelmed by it.

Similarly, to The Leaving Room, this story captures the internal struggle of speaking about loss. It explores how memory can feel both comforting and sharp, how silence becomes a coping mechanism, and how healing requires vulnerability. Students often gravitate toward lines that feel like truths they’ve carried themselves, which makes the Golden Shovel form particularly effective. Sage’s journey becomes a space where students can explore identity, emotional honesty, and the courage it takes to articulate what hurts.

King of Neuroverse by T. Goodwin

King of Neuroverse introduces readers to Pernell, a protagonist whose neurodivergent mind is vibrant, imaginative, and often misunderstood by the world around him. Goodwin blends realism with metaphor, inviting readers into Pernell’s sensory and emotional landscape, a place where thoughts move differently, where creativity thrives, and where belonging is both sought and redefined.

Rather than framing neurodiversity as a challenge to overcome, the novel celebrates it as a source of insight, resilience, and power. Pernell’s journey toward self‑understanding and self‑advocacy makes the book an ideal companion for metaphor‑driven poetic forms like kennings. Students can explore identity through imagery by capturing sensory overload, emotional intensity, or unique problem‑solving through two‑word metaphors that honor complexity. Pernell’s story encourages readers to see neurodiversity not as a limitation but as a universe of its own.

Poetry Prompt #1: A Sevenling to Capture Character Voice

A Sevenling is a compact, seven-line poem built from two three-item lists and a final line that resolves or complicates the contrast. The form originated with Anna Akhmatova’s 1910 poem and was later named and popularized by poet Roddy Lumsden.

The structure of the sevenling is simple, but the emotional possibilities are wide open. Students can slip into a character’s voice at a pivotal moment (grief, transition, revelation) and capture that moment in just a few lines.

Prompt:

Write a Sevenling from any character’s perspective at a pivotal moment in the novel.
This takes about 7 minutes and works especially well with The Leaving Room or All the Blues in the Sky, where characters like Gospel or Sage navigate silence, memory, and emotional turning points.

Learning How to Stay

I remember the room
the silence
the not-knowing

I hold the past
the voices
the almosts

I am still learning how to stay.

Poetry Prompt #2: A Golden Shovel to Capture Identity & Inner Conflict

The Golden Shovel, created by Terrance Hayes, asks writers to take a single line from a text and use each word as the ending word of a new line. The result is a poem that is both original and in conversation with the source.

Students must read closely, attend to syntax, and make intentional choices. At the same time, the borrowed language gives them scaffolding, and they feel supported rather than exposed.

Prompt:

Choose a powerful line from the novel. Use each word as the ending word of a new line in your poem. Explore a character’s inner conflict or identity.

This form is especially effective with All the Blues in the Sky, where Sage’s reflections on grief and memory offer rich, emotionally charged lines.

Here is an example of the Golden Shovel based on the original line from the novel: “nothing can be as hard as talking about someone you love in the past tense” (Watson, p. 20).

Words I Can’t Bring into the Past

I thought I had learned that nothing
stays, that time can
soften even the sharpest edges, but be
honest, some memories return as
if untouched, as hard
and sudden as
a name spoken out loud, talking
to the silence about
all the things I never said to someone
who still feels like you,
someone I
carry quietly, still in
every word I cannot bring into the past
because you are never only a tense.

Poetry Prompt #3: Kennings to Enhance Meaning

A kenning is a two‑word metaphor (noun + noun) that captures essence through imagery. Students can create a list or shape the kennings into a short poem.
Kennings are playful, accessible, and deeply metaphorical. They help students think abstractly about character traits, struggles, or strengths.

Prompt:

Choose a character from a novel (or someone in your life). Create kennings that define their struggle or strength.

This form pairs beautifully with King of Neuroverse, where students can explore Pernell’s sensory world, emotional intensity, and identity through metaphor.
Here is a short example of the kenning inspired by a character like Pernell:

mind-racer
sound-stormer
pattern-seeker
idea-builder
world-rewriter
dream-chaser
acceptance-craver

Poetry as a Healing Literacy

Across all three forms, poetry extends this creative exercise toward a healing practice, or healing literacy. Students write to learn, to process, to reflect. They discover voice before polish; they are more engaged in the process and are not pressured by product. They explore emotions that might otherwise remain unspoken. And because the writing is short and low‑stakes, they take risks they might avoid in longer assignments. Poetry gives them room for pauses, for breathing.

Adaptable Across Levels

One of my favorite things about these prompts is how flexible they are. In middle school, they invite play, discovery, and confidence-building. In high school, they support deeper reflection and stronger connections to complex YA themes. In university settings, they help future teachers see how poetry can become part of their own pedagogy. No matter the level, these short forms make it easy to meet students exactly where they are.

If you’re thinking about trying this, start small. Pick one prompt and set a timer for ten minutes. Encourage students to focus on voice rather than correctness, and keep sharing optional. That’s it.

When students feel safe, supported, and invited to express themselves, their writing becomes more honest and their reading becomes more meaningful. At its core, this work is about honoring students’ stories. Poetry builds voice, confidence, reflection, and resilience. YA literature gives students emotional entry points. Together, they create a classroom where students can write themselves into understanding one word at a time and one line at a time.

Literature as an Ethical Laboratory: AI and YA Literature

5/6/2026

Meet our Contributor: Melanie Hundley

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.

Literature as an Ethical Laboratory: AI and YA Literature
by Melanie Hundley

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about literature as an ethical laboratory, a place where we get to try out big ideas, test possibilities, and ask the kinds of “what if” questions that don’t have easy answers. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that we’ve been doing this for a very long time. We imagine things that confuse us, scare us, or make us wonder in story. We record ideas, represent moments, document our history, in narrative. And maybe none of this is surprising, because—as Will Storr reminds us—storytelling is how we make sense of everything:

“We experience our day-to-day lives in story mode. The brain creates a world for us to live in and populates it with allies and villains… Story is what brain does. It is a ‘story processor’…not a logic processor.”

—Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling

If our brains are wired for story, then it makes sense that when we encounter something as complex and uncertain as technology, we turn it into narrative. We imagine it. We test it. We ask: What if? And then we play out that what if to see where it can take us, our thinking, our imagination.

Long before algorithms and artificial intelligence, stories were already imagining artificial life, powerful creations, and the consequences of human ambition. In Greek mythology, Talos, the bronze giant who protected Crete, was essentially an ancient robot, programmed to defend, but capable of destruction. Hephaestus, the god of invention, crafted mechanical servants who could think and move on their own, blurring the line between tool and life. He also created Pandora at Zeus’s command—fashioning her as the first woman, whose existence and actions would unleash unforeseen consequences on the world. Her story becomes one of the earliest cautionary tales about creation, control, and what happens when something powerful is brought into being without fully understanding its impact.

We see similar questions echoed across cultures and time. In The Story of the City of Brass from The Thousand and One Nights, travelers encounter a striking piece of early “technology”: a mechanical horseman made entirely of brass. Those seeking the lost city are told:

“O thou who comest up to me, if thou know not the way that leadeth to the City of Brass, rub the hand of the horseman, and he will turn, and then will stop, and in whatsoever direction he stoppeth, thither proceed…for it will lead thee to the City of Brass.”

It’s hard not to hear an echo of modern navigation systems here; GPS, routing algorithms, the calm voice telling us where to go next. One of my students paused here and said, “So…it’s like ancient Apple Mapsi?” And honestly, sort of, yes. But that comparison opens up more questions than it answers. Like our GPS, the horseman offers direction, certainty, and ease. But, do we follow without question? What happens when we rely on something we don’t fully understand to guide our decisions? What happens when this technology sends us the wrong way?

E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman gives us Olimpia, an automaton so lifelike she deceives those around her, prompting unsettling questions about perception, illusion, and what it means to recognize (or misrecognize) humanity. Another student put it this way: “It’s not just that she’s fake—it’s that people don’t notice. Or maybe don’t want to.” Another said, “Yeah, they don’t notice to the point that the dude falls in love with her.” This is a story that raises questions about what makes something/someone real and human. It was published in 1816.

The questions deepen with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. What happens when we create life without considering responsibility? Just because science can do a thing, should it do it? Asimov gives us robots bound by rules that still manage to break them in complicated, human ways. Films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Terminator push those ideas even further, asking us to imagine what happens when the systems we build begin to think and decide for themselves.

And then we get to YA literature, which I think does some of the most interesting work in this space. M.T. Anderson’s Feed imagines a world where technology is literally inside our heads, where our thoughts, desires, and identities are shaped by corporate algorithms. One student paused and said, “It’s like ads, but you can’t look away…because it’s in your brain.” Neal Shusterman’s Scythe introduces a world run by an all-knowing AI that has eliminated death, except when humans are tasked with reintroducing it. A student said, “Death is fixed, but people aren’t so they do the dumbest things, and some people still have to die so Scythes have to make those choices.” Dawn Akemi Bowman’s The Infinity Courts explores what happens when even the afterlife becomes digitized and controlled.

But what I love is how many YA novels are taking these big, abstract questions and grounding them in stories about identity, relationships, and what it means to matter.

In Warcross and Wildcard, Marie Lu gives us immersive virtual worlds that feel thrilling and a little too familiar while quietly asking who controls the systems we rely on. One student noted, “It’s fun until you realize someone else is deciding what you see and what you win.” In The Illuminae Files, AIDAN is trying to save people and doing some truly unsettling things in the process, prompting another student to ask, “If it thinks it’s helping, does that make it less dangerous—or more?” Erin Bow’s The Scorpion Rules gives us Talis, an AI that keeps the world at peace by making impossible, calculated sacrifices. And Emily Skrutskie’s The Salvation Gambit drops us into a world where reality itself feels unstable, shaped by systems we don’t fully understand, what one reader described as “a game where you don’t even know the rules, but they still control you.”

And then there are these:

Catfishing on the CatNet by Naomi Krittzer reminds us that even without advanced AI, digital spaces already allow for constructed identities, deception, and questions about what’s “real.”
The Six by Mark Alpert asks: if your mind could be uploaded into a machine, would you still be you? What do we lose—and what do we keep? “So your body dies, but you’re still…you? That’s kind of creepy,” one student noted.
The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg imagines AI “princesses” in a theme park who begin to question the roles they’ve been programmed to play—raising questions about autonomy, storytelling, and who gets to define happily ever after.
Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray introduces Abel, an AI who starts to feel…human, complicating the line between programming and personhood in ways that feel both hopeful and unsettling. “He acts more human than the humans,” a student pointed out, “so what does that mean?”

What strikes me across all of these texts is how they invite readers to sit with questions rather than rush to answers:

What do we gain and lose when we let technology make decisions for us?
Can something be intelligent without being ethical?
Whose ethics should be used when we are using technology? Can we trust corporations who are making money from the technology to create ethical frameworks or do we have to use our own?
If a machine can think, feel, or choose, what do we owe it?
And maybe most importantly: what does it mean to be human in a world where that definition keeps shifting?

If, as Storr suggests, our brains naturally turn the chaos of reality into story, then these texts—ancient and modern—become more than narratives. They become spaces where we rehearse the future, where we test our values, where we imagine consequences before we have to live them.

That’s the work of an ethical laboratory. These stories don’t tell us what to think, they give us space to wrestle, to imagine the possibilities, to wonder about the repercussions of our decisions and choices. As one student argued, “ These books don’t tell you what’s right. They just make it impossible not to think about it.” From Talos to Talis. From Olimpia to AIDAN. From a brass horseman pointing the way to the quiet voice of GPS telling us where to turn next, technology is integrated into our lives, our stories, and our imaginations.

The questions haven’t really changed. But the urgency? That feels very now.

Ethics and Conflict in Young Adult Literature

Meet our Contributor:

Ethics and Conflict in Young Adult Literature by Dr. Amy Piotrowski

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

Annals of the Western Shore trilogy

Arc of a Scythe series

Ethical Issues Across Texts

References

From Minor Roles to Main Characters: Fat Representation in YA Literature

Meet Our Contributors:

From Minor Roles to Main Characters: Fat Representation in YA Literature
by Katy Bigham and Dawan Coombs

References

YA + Poetry = Student Voice: Ten Minutes, One Poem, Big Impact

Meet Our Contributor:

YA + Poetry = Student Voice:
Ten Minutes, One Poem, Big Impact

Why Poetry and YA Literature Work So Well Together

YA Texts as Emotional Anchors and Mentor Texts

Poetry Prompt #1: A Sevenling to Capture Character Voice

Poetry Prompt #2: A Golden Shovel to Capture Identity & Inner Conflict

Poetry Prompt #3: Kennings to Enhance Meaning

Poetry as a Healing Literacy

Adaptable Across Levels

Literature as an Ethical Laboratory: AI and YA Literature

Meet our Contributor: Melanie Hundley

Literature as an Ethical Laboratory: AI and YA Literature
by Melanie Hundley

Dr. Steve Bickmore
Creator and Curator

Bickmore's
Co-Edited Books

Archives

Categories

Blogs to Follow

Ethics and Conflict in Young Adult Literature

Meet our Contributor:

Ethics and Conflict in Young Adult Literature by Dr. Amy Piotrowski

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping

Annals of the Western Shore trilogy

Arc of a Scythe series

Ethical Issues Across Texts

References

From Minor Roles to Main Characters: Fat Representation in YA Literature

Meet Our Contributors:

From Minor Roles to Main Characters: Fat Representation in YA Literature ​by Katy Bigham and Dawan Coombs

References

YA + Poetry = Student Voice: Ten Minutes, One Poem, Big Impact

Meet Our Contributor:

YA + Poetry = Student Voice: ​Ten Minutes, One Poem, Big Impact

Why Poetry and YA Literature Work So Well Together

YA Texts as Emotional Anchors and Mentor Texts

Poetry Prompt #1: A Sevenling to Capture Character Voice

Poetry Prompt #2: A Golden Shovel to Capture Identity & Inner Conflict

Poetry Prompt #3: Kennings to Enhance Meaning

Poetry as a Healing Literacy

Adaptable Across Levels

Literature as an Ethical Laboratory: AI and YA Literature

Meet our Contributor: Melanie Hundley

Literature as an Ethical Laboratory: AI and YA Literatureby Melanie Hundley

Dr. Steve Bickmore​Creator and Curator

Bickmore's ​Co-Edited Books

Archives

Categories

Blogs to Follow

From Minor Roles to Main Characters: Fat Representation in YA Literature
by Katy Bigham and Dawan Coombs

YA + Poetry = Student Voice:
Ten Minutes, One Poem, Big Impact

Literature as an Ethical Laboratory: AI and YA Literature
by Melanie Hundley

Dr. Steve Bickmore
Creator and Curator

Bickmore's
Co-Edited Books