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Drawing on Young Adult Literature to Facilitate Mental Health Literacy: Reading The Words We Keep with Pre-Service Teachers

6/26/2024

 

Drawing on Young Adult Literature to Facilitate Mental Health Literacy: Reading The Words We Keep with Pre-Service Teacher by Rachel Wolney and Ashley Boyd


Rachael R. Wolney is a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at Washington State University. Her research interests include Disability Studies, Young Adult Literature, and Education. She teaches using disability studies pedagogy in a range of literature and writing courses, but specifically enjoys working with preservice teachers and practicing teachers in learning about disability.​
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Ashley S. Boyd ​is an associate professor of English education at Washington State University where she teaches courses on English Methods and Young Adult Literature and researches practicing teachers’ social justice pedagogies as well as avenues for cultivating students’ critical literacies. She is author of Social Justice Literacies in the English Classroom and co-author (with Janine J. Darragh) of Reading for Justice: Engaging Middle Level Readers in Social Action through Young Adult Literature.
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​In 2020, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, suicide was the second leading cause of death for children ages 10-14, and young adults, ages 18-25, were reported to have the highest rates of serious mental illness and mental health concerns compared to adults (Duszynski-Goodman & Henderson, 2024). In response to the growing numbers of teens facing mental health issues, many school districts have incorporated Mental Health Literacy (MHL) into the curriculum and now require teacher training on mental health awareness and early detection. According to Claire Goodfellow (2022), MHL was first developed in Australia in 1997 and incorporated into the curriculum to destigmatize mental health issues and to enhance youth’s belief in seeking out help as an effective action. Since the early establishment of MHL which was originally designed to inform “knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders,” the scholarship regarding MHL has expanded to incorporate four major components: 1) to maintain positive mental health; 2) to identify and understand disorders and treatment; 3) to reduce the stigma of mental health issues and seek out help; and 4) to supply essential resources for support and seeking help (Eisenback & Frydman, 2003, p. 2). While MHL is often supported with resources, such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Action Guide for School and District Leaders (2023), there is less literature available that directs teachers’ inclusion of MHL in conversation with curriculum, learning outcomes, and state standards.
​What is clear, however, is that one major element of the success of MHL in schools is the role of a teacher who is committed to incorporating its components (Eisenbach & Frydman, 2023). There is no disagreement that MHL is important and should be included in the curriculum, as education can “open dialogue and break the stigma associated with mental illness” (Eisenbach & Frydman, 2023, p. 2). However, when it comes to MHL, teachers may rightfully feel pressure when incorporating content outside of their area of expertise and/or may cross into unfamiliar territory being placed in the role of a counselor or psychologist. Despite these potential challenges, we follow Esenbach and Frydman (2023), feeling that “excluding such topics is a disservice to student learning” (p. 2) and noting the import of building collaborations with qualified school personnel to broach such topics in the classroom.
Mental health literacy works to help both teachers and students identify mental health issues and promotes the process of seeking out help from professionals in support of mental health wellness. It positions the teacher as facilitator, normalizes conversations about mental health, and provides resources for teachers and students alike. We feel that MHL exists alongside other crucial social justice literacies (Boyd, 2017, Hines & Johnson, 2007) that should be cultivated in classrooms, and thus we offer here our own inclusion of discussions of mental health with English Education pre-service candidates. We detail our experiences teaching the young adult novel, The Words We Keep by Erin Stewart and suggest that young adult literature (YAL) can accompany guided critical conversations that can promote MHL in the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Following others in the field (e.g. Monaghan, 2016; Olan & Richmond, 2023; Richmond, 2018), we believe that YAL can be a powerful mechanism for broaching oft-considered sensitive topics, especially mental health, which are often avoided or feared in classrooms. We offer here our successes in implementing this course content and possible ideas and cautions to aid teachers in their own endeavors to destigmatize mental health issues.
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Young Adult Literature as a Facilitator for Mental Health Literacy

As educators of literature, we believe that stories, especially those crafted in YAL, have the power to transform the lives of readers. Outside of our own opinions and love for YAL, research has shown that the inclusion of YAL can promote empathy (Sherr & Beise, 2015) and has the potential to create change or inform social perceptions (Ginsberg & Glenn, 2019). According to Eisenbach and Frydman (2023), narratives have the power to change personal beliefs and attitudes regarding the world, and conversations cultivating MHL can “educate readers on the truths of mental illness while challenging stigma and providing a safe space for exploration and discussion” (p. 2). Literature can facilitate these discussions in a multitude of ways. As a mirror (Bishop, 1990), readers can see themselves reflected in the readings in meaningful ways and even help inform their own feelings or situations when they may not have the understanding or the words to name and discuss their situation on their own. It gives readers agency in discussions of their own well-being. According to Goodfellow (2022), over half of the teens involved in a UK survey expressed “that they did not seek help for poor mental health, because they didn’t understand what it was that they were going through” (para. 6).  Literature as a mirror may also help a reader identify that there is a need to seek out help in relation to character portrayal, diagnosis, or depictions of mental distress presented in the text.
​As a window (Bishop, 1990), depictions can inform readers who do not experience mental health issues about the realities of mental illness. And, as a sliding glass door (Bishop, 1990), students may be able to experience empathy for characters whose lives are different from their own, asking students to walk through a narrative understanding what someone who is different from them may feel. Webber and Agiro (2019) remind us that “inducing empathy toward a person belonging to a stigmatized group not only improves attitudes toward the whole group, but also increases the chance that those positive attitudes will prompt actions to benefit that group” (p. 2). Falter (2022) cautions us to take the idea of empathy with YAL a step further and offers a “critical empathy framework” for reading that “moves beyond mere identification with others and perspective taking, and understands that social, cultural, and historical elements are always at play and complicate our ability to feel and think with another fully” (p. 24).  In what follows, we describe our approaches to inviting students’ mental health literacies into our classrooms through a focal text.  

Our Course and Mental Health

Using YAL to facilitate our discussions of mental health, we incorporate several texts that involve varied storylines. For instance, we read The Serpent King (Zenter, 2017) as well as Darius the Great is Not Okay (Khorram, 2018) and discuss the characters’ struggles with depression, amongst other themes. For this YA Wednesday blog, we focus on one of our weeklong units in our YAL course that occurs approximately in the middle of the semester (of a 15-week course). By week six, students have already been introduced to the field of YAL and to our overarching social justice centered curriculum, which includes discussions of race, class, gender, disability/ability as well as societal oppression, intersectionality, and privilege. At this halfway point, students are familiar with classroom expectations and have engaged in respectful and critical conversations with peers about these social topics. In reference to the assigned readings and critical in-class discussions, students are also required to purposefully complete multiple individual and group related assignments, including a research paper, a multimedia project, and a social action project. These projects are scaffolded by daily activities and teaching opportunities where students lead the day’s class discussion. Our courses aim to promote action, a fundamental part of Megan Boler’s (1999) discussion of the “Pedagogy of Discomfort,” as both a place of inquiry and the call to action at critical moments in learning processes (p. 179). We discuss complicity and ask our students to engage in action-based learning where they think critically about how texts can inform lived experiences and challenge spaces outside of the classroom.
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​The assigned reading for this unit was introduced to students a week in advance with content warnings (Appleman, 2022) and students were given the option of choosing between two texts depicting mental illness so as to offer a space for choice and self-determination. In preparation for the unit, students also received information for seeking help for themselves, both at the institution and state levels. They were offered statistics regarding teens’ mental health, reported by the CDC (2024) which informed them that 1 in 5 young adults have a mental health issue and that many go unreported. They were asked to discuss the content with their peers and determine how they wished to proceed with the unit in terms of text choice. Below we focus on one of the choice texts, The Words We Keep (2022) by Erin Stewart.  
​Focal Text:  The Words We Keep
The Words We Keep (Stewart, 2022) follows two sisters through their intense struggles with mental illness. Lily, the younger sister, has anxiety and desires to live a “normal” life.  Lily’s story begins as her sister Alice returns home from a treatment program where she was diagnosed and medicated for bipolar disorder. Lily remembers Alice’s traumatic suicide attempt and sees the burden of her diagnosis on the family, especially her father, but she sees even more how different Alice is after she returns. Alice doesn’t have her previous flair, and her personality is muted. She no longer dons her brightly colored clothing or has eccentric plans or enthusiasm. Instead, Alice is withdrawn and distant. Under close supervision of their father, Alice is not allowed to be alone; all sharp objects have been hidden; and there is a tension in their home as the family supports and navigates Alice’s diagnosis. In the midst of Alice’s mental health crisis, Lily feels like she has to be perfect. She spends most of her time worried about getting into college and being the model daughter to support her sister and family. This exacerbates her anxiety throughout the text and even though she meets Micah, a new student at her school (who also attended the same treatment center as her sister), she feels alone. Throughout the novel, Lily uses art as a way of expressing the ‘words we keep’ inside, hidden, and private. As her school poetry project unfolds, Lily finds that she is not alone in her experiences. Lily, Alice, and Micah journey through the unknowns of mental health issues and face the stigmas surrounding mental health to find that their journey together is what matters most. This exceptional novel is raw and descriptive of what mental illness can look like in multiple forms–through Lily’s anxiety, Micah’s depression, and Alice’s bipolar disorder.  
​​Reading with Students 
Students’ reading of this novel was divided into two sections, with half the novel assigned per class meeting. During the halfway mark, students reported that: they loved the text and couldn’t put it down, had completed the novel already, or felt that the content was so vividly descriptive that they had to take multiple breaks and were behind schedule. Some students shared that the novel was graphic and brought up their own experiences with trauma, but they felt that the content was accurate in its portrayal. Even though they knew that everyone experiences mental health related issues differently, the students shared that they enjoyed the accuracy of the text based on their own understanding of the elements within the novel. While some expressed that the novel was difficult to read, each student did successfully complete the reading and stated that while it brought up hard issues, they were important topics to discuss in the classroom. They understood that mental health issues impact a large portion of the population and expect that they will encounter people in their lives and in their future classrooms who are in crisis. The students appreciated the additional resources delivered with the unit. Some students, interested in writing a novel themselves, went on to have further discussions of mental health representations and the need for more accuracy to fight against stigmas of mental health. Some students identified with having anxiety and resonated with the depictions of Lily feeling like she needed to be perfect. Others understood the realities of bipolar disorder. Ultimately, students repeatedly expressed that while the text might be difficult to read, it facilitated healthy conversations about mental health, representation, stigma, and access to resources.
​The students’ responses all point to the myriad ways that YAL dealing with mental health can promote honest conversation and connection. Our students experienced the text as a reflection of their own struggles, while others learned more about aspects they had not experienced, such as the effects of medication. Still others noted being transformed by the narrative, especially as it reflected the impact of mental health on family members and how sometimes surrounding a person with love is not enough when they need professional help.  
In the novel, Stewart (2022) expertly depicts the dynamics of friendship, family, and romance.  We drew on several discussion questions to solicit their connections of these themes alongside mental health, reminding students throughout that they were not expected to disclose any personal information unless they chose to, which many did. We prodded them to deeply consider the parents’ roles, asking: How did Lily’s father miss the signs that his daughter was struggling?  And, how was Lily’s stepmom helpful (and not) to her stepdaughters?  To help students see the damaging effects of Lily keeping secrets, we asked:  How did Lily think she was helping Alice?  And, to unpack the stigmas in the text, we asked students to locate microaggressions and aggressions expressed at school as well as how the students at the party reacted to Alice’s episode toward the end of the novel, which resulted in social media postings. Our readers delved into how social media can contribute to declined mental health, especially through cyberbullying.  With our final assigned social action projects (Boyd, 2017; Boyd & Darragh, 2019), we extended the opportunity to students to act on their knowledge gleaned from the text. In almost every semester that students have completed the projects in this course, multiple groups choose to focus on mental health, raising awareness of campus resources, building websites, or hosting movie viewings and critical conversations. Using The Words We Keep as a springboard, a recent group constructed a website to give students quick and easy access to mental health resources on campus. Using flyers to advertise this website, the group focused on preventative mental health and wellness, advocating for the importance of caring for your mental health even when you feel “fine.” The flyers created were bright and colorful, depicting mental health awareness as positive. They heralded the power in knowing oneself and provided resources for improving mental health wellness as well as resources for mental health crises. Using a QR code, the group reported that they advertised in private spaces, such as bathrooms on campus as well as on public information boards and received multiple visitors to their website.
​​Integrating Mental Health Literacy 
As noted above, MHL has expanded to incorporate four major components: 1) to maintain positive mental health; 2) to identify and understand disorders and treatment; 3) to reduce the stigma of mental health issues and seek out help; and 4) to supply essential resources for support and seeking help (Eisenback & Frydman, 2003, p. 2). Our unit attempted to address these elements through reading, research, and discussion. We provided resources at the outset of the unit and offered data on the prevalence of mental health issues, definitions of various types of diagnoses, and practices for establishing mental well-being. As also mentioned above, we focused extensively on the authenticity of the narrative and how Stewart’s (2022) representation revealed and debunked common stigmas. Olan and Richmond (2023) write, “many texts featuring characters with mental illness include authors’ language and descriptions which perpetuate stigma via the readers’ positioning of the characters through a deficit narrative model … In YAL, for example, this could mean characters with mental illness are written as not having effective relationships, not fitting in, experiencing violence/harassment, being positioned as victims, experiencing social isolation, or having negative futures” (p. 22). We asked students how The Words We Keep worked against such tropes.  
​One caution, however, that we ourselves experienced (and our students worried about for their future classrooms) was being placed in the role of a counselor. Because we work with college students, we realize we are uniquely positioned with resources and support at the university. For secondary teachers, we encourage the use of Eisenbach and Frydman’s (2024) model in which middle grades teachers “consulted with the school’s social support staff on content and delivery” (p. 7), collaborating with professionals who can “clarify misconceptions, fill in knowledge gaps for the teacher, and provide resources to deepen teachers’ understandings” (p. 11). We don’t–and shouldn’t–do this work alone. Many resources exist to guide us in selecting texts with authentic depictions of mental health, educating ourselves, and working with those trained to provide mental health instruction (e.g. Anti-Defamation League, 2013; Eisenbach & Frydman, 2024; Olan & Richmond, 2023). A few other points to note are that we did offer student choice in the texts, allowing students to select a mental health related option of interest to them since “MHL interventions need to be developmentally appropriate and applied within the most suitable developmental context” (Kutcher, Wei, & Coniglio, 2016, p. 154). Finally, we embedded the text amongst others and within a focus on ELA curriculum and texts, rather than as an added entity for study solely on mental health. 
​Thus, despite the fears that we, as teachers, may experience surrounding working with mental health, we echo scholars before us who have argued that ignoring sensitive topics only perpetuates suffering in silence or in ignorance surrounding conditions, and we feel it is imperative to incorporate novels like The Words We Keep and MHL into our ELA classrooms. We seek to support our students and to engage them with meaningful literature, and we believe we can accomplish these through units such as that which we have described.  

References

Anti-Defamation League. (2013). Evaluating children’s books that address disability. Education Division. adl.org
Appleman, D. (2022). Literature and the new culture wars: Triggers, cancel culture, and the teacher’s dilemma. Norton
Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives – Gerontological Nursing Association, 6(3), ix–xi.
Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotions and education. Taylor & Francis Group.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2023, December). Promoting mental health and well-being in schools: An action guide for school and district leaders. DASH. file:///C:/Users/hrsw4/OneDrive/Documents/DASH_MH_Action_Guide_508.pdf
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (2024, May 1). Adolescent and School Health. https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/mental-health/index.htm 
Boyd, A.  (2017).  Social justice literacies in the English classroom:  Teaching practice in
action. Teachers College Press. 
Boyd, A. & Darragh, J.  (2019). Critical literacies on the university campus: Engaging pre-
service teachers with social action projects. English Teaching: Practice & Critique,
19(1), 49-63.    
Duszynski-Goodman, L., & Henderson, L. (2024, February 21). Mental health statistics and facts. Forbes Health. https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/mental-health-statistics/#footnote_5
Eisenback, B. B., & Frydman, J. S. (2023). What are we doing?: Teacher role confusion in mental health literacy education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 132, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2023.104236
Eisenback, B. B., & Frydman, J. S. (2024). Integrating mental health literacy in the English language arts middle school classroom. Middle School Journal, 55(3), 5-15.  
Falter, M. (2022). When the shoe doesn’t fit: A critical empathy framework for young adult literature instruction. The ALAN Review, 50 (1), 18-32.  
Ginsberg, R. & Glenn, W. J. (2019). Moments of pause: Understanding students’ shifting perceptions during a Muslim young adult literature learning experience. Reading Research Quaterly, 55(4), 601-623.
Goodfellow, C. (2022, March 4). Mental health literacy in schools: Let’s talk about how we talk about mental health. Education Today. https://www.educationtoday.com.au/news-detail/Mental-Health-Literacy-in-Schools-5540#:~:text=Mental%20health%20literacy%20was%20first%20defined
Hines, M. B.& Johnson, J.  (2007). Teachers and students as agents of change: Toward a taxonomy of the literacies of social justice.  In D. Row, R. Jimenez, D. Compton, D. Dickinson, Y. Kim, K. Leander, & V. Risko (Eds.), 2007 Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 281-292).  Oak Creek, WI:  National Reading Conference. 
Khorram, A. (2018). Darius the great is not okay. Penguin Books.
Kutcher, S. Wei, Y. W. & Coniglio, C. (2016). Mental health literacy: Past, present, and future. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 61(3), 154-158.  
Monaghan, A. (2016). Evaluating representations of mental health in young adult fiction: The case of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Enthymema, XVI, 32-42.  
Olan, E. L. & Richmond, K.J. (2023). Narrative of deficit and authentic portrayals of mental illness and cultural sensitivities in young adult literature. Study and Scrutiny: Research in Young Adult Literature, 61(1).  
Richmond, K. J. (2018). Mental illness in young adult literature: Exploring real struggles through fictional characters. Libraries Unlimited.  
Sherr, M., & Beise, B. (2015). Using young adult literature to enhance empathy skills: Preliminary findings in BSW education. Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work, 20(1), 101-110.
Webber, K. & Agiro, C. P. (2019). Not from around these parts: Using young adult literature to promote empathy for the immigrant experience. Talking Points, 30 (2), 2-9.
Zentner, J. (2017). The serpent king. Random House.
 

Reexamining Female Empowerment and Grief Through Lurlene McDaniel’s Titles by Lisa Hazlett

6/19/2024

 
This week we welcome Lisa Hazlett. Lisa is a long time English Educator who has been an active member of the YA Academic community longer than I have been. I have admired her persistence and knowledge for these past 20 years. She has experience and knowledge that is hard to duplicate and is increasingly hard to find among active academics. Thanks Lisa for sharing with us.
Lisa A. Hazlett is professor of secondary education at the University of South Dakota, where she teaches middle/secondary English language arts education courses and specializes in young adult literature regarding presentations and publications; special interests include gender issues and rural education. Her 2023 text, Teaching Diversity in Rural Schools: Attaining Understanding, Tolerance, and Respect Through Young Adult Literature, was published by Rowman & Littlefield, among numerous other publications centered on young adult literature.
She also serves and provides leadership for numerous NCTE assemblies, special interest groups, and committees, especially ELATE, and as an avid reviewer she regularly evaluates young adult literature novels and manuscripts for various journals and publishing houses.
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Reexamining Female Empowerment and Grief Through Lurlene McDaniel’s Titles

A website for Lurlene McDaniel’s is currently not available as of this writing, but Amazon lists all titles, and Most Recommended Books and Book Series in Order have compiled her titles and dates written.  These addresses are below, with multiple sites appearing by simply entering her name in a search engine.
 
Her nearly 80 titles, all mass market series books, appeal to ‘tween females (grades 5-7/8), with the majority depicting a female protagonist’s cancer diagnosis, subsequent treatment, remission, reoccurrence, death, and family/friends’ acceptance and moving forward.
 
These titles also all follow the same plotline; stories are so identical that events occur on approximately the same page in all novels. Frankly, if having read one Lurlene McDaniel novel, one’s read them all.
 
‘Tweens devour these quick, easy reads and share among friends, and although they know what will occur in each novel and when, this matters little, as each protagonist is a new character, and they are eager for her story.  They resemble the protagonists (or wish to), and enjoy experiencing their intense emotions and situations, losing themselves inside the novels. 
​Educators do care, however, and as these are mass market books, they aren’t taught and probably not recommended in schools.  Moreover, many were written in the 1990s (although as series ones, less dated than contemporary fiction) with beginning educators not as familiar with them.
 
Still, although their readers discuss novels together, such talk is largely focused on emotions and drama, and individuals’ feelings of characters and situations. ‘Tweens are too young and inexperienced to recognize and understand McDaniel’s deeper textual implications without teacher assistance or discussion.
 
Below is these novels’ format/plotline (full of foreshadowing), with their often-overlooked messages of female strength and choice in italics:
Stage 1:  The Beginning
 
The protagonist (PT) excitedly begins a new school year, and while playing a sport, falls with pain remaining.  A Dr.’s appointment is finally made, difficult with busy schedules. 
 
Stage 2:  The Diagnosis
 
The PT has an atypical cancer, but she assumes she’ll be cured although her disease warns otherwise.  The PT chooses to begin treatment immediately.
 
Stage 3:  The Illness and Treatment

 
Treatment becomes more arduous, but the PT is informed of and approves all treatments and has no desire to stop or halt procedures, although some rests are recommended.
 
She remains optimistic and befriends a patient with her form of cancer, now in remission and going home. The PTs excitement and hope is renewed. 
 
Stage 4:  Remission
 
The PT enters remission in Feb/March and is adamant to return home earlier than advised. 
 
Still week, she’s tutored at home but eager to return to school and works hard to prepare to attend classes again.  She chooses to return to school earlier than recommended and quickly discovers she no longer fits in, having been away for so long.  Still, she presumes things will improve and actively works for better acceptance

Lurlene McDaniel's The Dawn Rochelle Series

Pivotal Point:  The PT learns of the death of her hospital friend.  She is shocked but remains confident about her own diagnosis.
 
Soon stronger, the PT spends time with friends and boyfriend.  She feels there is much to anticipate and looks forward to better days.
 
Stage 5:  Reoccurrence
 
The PT begins feeling worse and at first presumes nothing serious, but eventually knows   her remission has ended.  She’d planned to attend a dance/party and decides to go although feeling ill, believing it will be her final, magnificent event and not recognizing the extent of her decline. She chooses to keep her health status private.
 
Stage 6:  Acceptance
 
The PT collapses at the party and returns to the hospital, denying additional treatments and ready to accept her terminal condition.
 
Pivotal Point:  The PT considers whether or not to sleep with her boyfriend, a difficult decision.  Ultimately she declines having sex, feeling it inappropriate and ultimately hurtful.  She has the power of choice over all aspects of her body, with this decision not from fear or shame.
 
The PT declines quickly, and the decision to end treatment is her own, although additional ones could be explored. 
 
Stage 7:  Finality
 
The PT asks her boyfriend to take her outside where she dies in sunlight. She chooses when, where, and how she will die, a sad, yet beautiful, moment.
 
Stage 8:  Grief
 
The PT is buried in a pre-chosen white dress, symbolizing purity and heaven’s wellness, with a significant symbol associated with her (dove, rainbow, tulip) appearing during the funeral. 
 
Stage 9:  Moving Forward
 
The PTs boyfriend remains paralyzed with grief, and at a crisis point, a miraculous sign (e.g., a vacant field fills with her favorite flower) appears.  This is presumably from the PT, indicating grief’s end and wanting others to resume their lives.

Lurlene McDaniel's One Last Wish Books

Key Observation.
​

McDaniel’s novels are more thoughtful and purposeful than the above summary and as their covers appear, as all demonstrate that while individuals cannot choose what happens in life, they can decide how to respond.  Content is direct and realistic, honestly portraying the details and emotions regarding teens’ terminal illnesses and dying, without resorting to miracle cures. They show that bad things happen, regardless of how good a person or how hard one prays and permit the PT control of choices for all treatments and procedures, including final ones.
 
Characters express love, friendship, and sadness; more emotions than only fear or dread, and don’t resort to prolonged self-pity, antagonism, or blame.  These PTs are living while dying; continuing to be their best selves until the end with death portrayed as joyful, a release from pain.
 
Additionally, all depict the human element, as ethics, morals, values, and hard decisions are often overlooked in other stories in favor of portraying technological explanations/treatments. As such, readers are left with inspiration, peace, and hope. 
Most importantly, however, is these novels portray female strength and empowerment throughout.
 
‘Tweens are discovering new limitations, more uncertainties, different expectations and dangers, and fewer choices in their rapidly changing lives.  Reading of older females retaining the power of choice during the saddest and severest situations imaginable provides invaluable role models and can assist their assertion in uncertain situations.
These novels further permit ‘tweens to understand there are many life stages, with none to be feared.  All lives can be lived authentically and with purpose, regardless of length. 
 
Granted, minorities are largely unseen, families are loving and nuclear, financially secure and educated, and PTs bright, talented and popular.  These novels are melodramatic in places (boyfriend issues), but not unrealistic and valuable for younger, impressionable ‘tweens.
 
Why not reconsider McDaniel’s titles and their positive effects upon ‘tween females?
 Although not recommended for classroom teaching, their informal discussion and other talk could easily occur with ‘tweens and would certainly be valuable.
Sources:
 
Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=lurlene+mcdaniel&adgrpid=1346902315835455&hvadid=84181466916757&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=64425&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-84181753795881%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=16815_10453543&tag=mh0b-20&ref=pd_sl_48pmd8rley_e
  
Book Series in Order
https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/lurlene-mcdaniel/
 
Most Recommended Books
https://www.mostrecommendedbooks.com/series/lurlene-mcdaniel-books-in-order

Girl, Get in the Game! YA Lit About Girls in Sports

6/12/2024

 

Girl, Get in the Game! YA Lit About Girls in Sports by Amanda Stearns-Pfeiffer

​YA Lit About Girls in Sports: Sportlerromance, Competition, and Gender Representation

Amanda Stearns-Pfeiffer is an Associate Professor of English in the Department of English at Oakland University (Rochester, Michigan) where she has taught English methods, Young Adult Literature, Grammar, and Contemporary Literature courses since 2013. Dr. Stearns-Pfeiffer’s research interests include practice-based English education, the ways preservice teachers learn to lead discussions, and the role young adult literature can play in the English Language Arts methods classroom - especially in conjunction with practice-based methodology. Her upcoming research focuses on the ways incorporating Young Adult Literature in a methods classroom can influence preservice teachers’ pedagogy once they become classroom teachers, and the representation of girls in sports in young adult literature.  ​
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The Allure of a Bouncing Basketball and Other Siren Songs
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​Growing up, I loved basketball. At the 2023 Sports-Themed YA Lit roundtable at NCTE, I listened to Mindy McGinnis (author of 2019 sports-themed YA novel Heroine) talk about the siren song of a basketball bouncing, and this resonated with me. As a kid, as soon as I heard the bounce bounce, I was out the door and playing in the neighbor’s driveway. I also loved to watch the Fab Four play for U of M in the 90s. In middle school, I devoured the one book I came across about the Fab Four, written by Mitch Albom. This was a story of athletes playing the game they loved, and all the drama that went with collegiate sports; it was a world that intrigued me, but it was a world where I also didn’t see myself, a female athlete, reflected or represented. There didn’t yet exist a Caitlin Clark – or, more accurately, the world had not yet decided to embrace the existence of the female athlete and her stories. I wish more stories would have been told of girls playing hard and competing, winning and gritting, failing and trying again; I know the athletes and their stories were out there. But they didn’t get the airtime and attention that we are finally starting to see with female athletes. 
Sportlerroman: Representation and Inclusion for Female Athletes
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A parallel story can be told in the YA publishing world. In 2003, YA Lit scholar Chris Crowe coined the term “sportlerroman,”or a coming-of-age story where “the protagonist is an athlete struggling to maturity...” (p. 21). The early 2000s proved an important era for sports-themed YAL; however, it was primarily the inclusion of boys in these sports stories - and the exclusion of girls. A 2017 TeenVogue essay captured this moment: “More than 3.3 million girls played high school sports last year, […] So if there are so many girls playing sports, and we know that representation is so important and valuable, why aren’t there more YA books about athletic girls?” (Felicien, 2017).
 
Perhaps in an effort to reclaim what wasn’t available to me when I was an adolescent, but was desperately missing, I have been lining my bookshelf and TBR list with all the girl sportlerroman I can find. Recent YAL publications featuring female athletes has produced a list of inspiring, award-winning tales (including Furia [2020] and Heroine [2019], which have been previously highlighted on this blog). Stories of girls in sport can provide important (and currently still underrepresented) mirrors and windows for all students (not only female athletes). Themes of empowerment, grit, determination, ambition, friendship, expectation, pressure, resilience, failure, and family are present in girl sportlerroman stories and are universally relatable.
 
The books I will highlight in this post include stories of basketball, ice skating, soccer, and romance. Wait, romance? Yes, that’s right. If you’re new to the girl sportlerroman genre, you will soon learn that sports and romance tend to go together like peas and carrots. In fact, the female athlete who is afflicted with heartache, boyfriend blues, and/or crushing lust is quite typical in these stories; “sportlerromance” seems an apt genre-blending title. 
Sportlerromance: Broken Beautiful Hearts

Broken Beautiful Hearts (2018) by New York Times best-selling author Kami Garcia tells the story of soccer player Peyton Rios whose sole focus in life has been on earning a soccer scholarship to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. When, in the opening pages of the novel, that dream is realized, it seems her senior year of high school is shaping up just as she’d planned. She describes her sport with a devoted reverence:

“After school, I’m the first person on the field for soccer practice. The letter makes me want to get out here and earn it. I stand in the center of the field, passing the ball from knee to knee. This is the place where I feel most at home – the most like me.” (p. 19)
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She goes on to explain that in the chaos of uncontrollable factors in life, “the way I play and the effort I put in – that part is my choice” (p. 19). And, true to this chaos theory, when a series of unpredictable events happen, Peyton finds herself moving to a new town with new characters to complicate her soccer-focused life. This is where the feel of the story takes shape, and somewhat one-dimensional soccer-focused Peyton questions everything she has believed to be true in the world, including who she can trust, the importance of truth, and what love looks like. While her future as a collegiate soccer player continues to primarily steer her decisions, Peyton must confront the conflict that surrounds her, and this includes letting go of people from her past in order to move into a future with genuine, supportive relationships. 
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​Garcia crafts a cautionary tale against performance-enhancing drugs and the damage – bodily, emotionally, and interpersonally – that can alter lives forever. The cautionary tale aspect of Broken Beautiful Hearts is expertly balanced with the steamy love story that unfolds in this sportlerromance (my favorite of a handful I’ve read this spring). The depiction of the relationship that unfolds is tender, careful, and intentional; Peyton and her love interest have both been, as the title suggests, broken by life events, and they have every intention of not breaking one another. One gets the sense that this maturity in both characters stems from the dedication, endurance, and grit they have developed from playing their respective sports (soccer and martial arts). Ultimately, when Peyton is pushed to the edge in the novel’s climax scene, she relies on her deceased father’s soccer advice in order to escape a life-threatening moment: 
​“I look up at the sky, and for the first time since my father died, I talk to him. To the sky and the darkness and the heavens and the constellations – all the places I imagine his spirit roaming free.
‘Help me, Dad,’ I whisper. ‘Please.’ I touch the dog tags around my neck. Mom’s right. He is still with us. I can hear his voice as clearly as if he were standing in front of me.
Aim, kick, release.
I can’t remember how old I was the first time he said it, but I remember the hundreds and hundreds of times he said it after that first day. Aim, kick, release. For every shot, those were the steps, and we practiced them over and over, passing the ball back and forth in the backyard.
‘You can’t focus on winning the game or scoring goals,’ he’d said. ‘You have to focus on that one kick in front of you. Whether it’s a pass or you’re taking a shot, that one kick has to be the most important one you make, and you do it every time. That’s how you win.’” (p. 375). 
​And this the attraction of sports, and by extension, sports stories: the lessons learned on the field and court never stay on the field and court. 
The Heart of Competition: Skating on Mars
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When I set out to read sportlerroman featuring female athletes, I expected to read primarily stories of competitive situations on the field or court. While this is sometimes the case, many of the sports stories I’ve read instead focus on relationships (familiar and romantic), overcoming mental health challenges (i.e. addiction and OCD), and even quitting the sport altogether in order to find a healthier balance in life. In her recent publication on YA sports literature, Wendy Glenn highlights the importance of counter-narratives in the sports stories told about female athletes due to the exclusionary climate female athletes often report experiencing in competitive sports (Glenn, 2023). Many factors including the inequities, pressures, and bias that girls face in sports result in lower rates of participation and higher rates of quitting as compared to boys (womenssportsfoundation.org). Stories that reflect this reality, and that provide another way of seeing oneself in the sports world (not only in the high-stakes competitive environment) are important in working toward gender inclusivity and equity. 
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Skating on Mars (2023) by Caroline Huntoon is, on the one hand, a counter-narrative because it pushes on the strict gender binary that separates all sports, including the binary my own research constructs as I consider YA sportlerroman literature about girls. On the other hand, Huntoon’s depiction of Mars, a non-binary (a.k.a. an “enby”) seventh grade ice skater, showcases the hard-core competitiveness that might be anticipated in a traditional sports narrative – in this case it’s in the world of ice-skating. The descriptions of Mars preparing for competitions and training on the ice are epic in their images of the physicality of this sport, and Mars’s competitive drive toward the skaters they come across is palpable. This scene captures the moment when Mars meets the skater (Xander) who will become their nemesis: 
“”Mars, huh?’ Xander asks as he reaches a hand out.
 I put my hand in his and give it a squeeze. He squeezes back. A little harder than he needs to. “Yeah.” I shrug and drop his hand.
​ “Xander was just saying that he’s working on a triple.”
Oh yeah?” I say. I’m going for aloof, but my blood is starting to sing in my veins. I love competing. And I love winning. And there’s a part of me that would really love to do a triple right here, right now.” (p. 26)
​From the opening pages, it is impossible not to cheer on Mars in all they want to accomplish – on and off the ice. Landing triples and perfecting “twizzles” may involve intricate footwork on the ice, but creating a space where Mars, as an enby athlete, can compete becomes the most important challenge they have faced:
​“Unfortunately, realizing I’m nonbinary also changed how I see the world. Made me see how split things are. Like public bathrooms. Those plastic signs always feel a little hostile now. Stamped with those little block people with legs or a triangle: boy or girl. And look, no one gives me side-eye or shoves me against the tiled wall and tells me to get out… I just… I kind of do that to myself. I look at the two doors leading into two different bathrooms and think, Huh, there isn’t really space for me. Not in the way there’s space for girls and boys.
And then there’s skating. Which is separated into men’s and women’s divisions. No room for someone who might be both and neither.” (p. 5)

​Mars is someone who knows what they want (a space to compete), isn’t afraid to work hard for it, and ultimately enlists the help of those around them to build the world they envision. And, similar to the certainty that we saw Peyton exhibit when life put her to the test, Mars demonstrates a similar confidence that seems to stem from the hours of training and trust they’ve built in themselves:
“Every win at a competition, I know I’ve earned. I’m not surprised that I do well. It’s like Dmitri said in practice – or like he made me say: I practice enough so I am absolutely sure that I can perform. No matter what. And yes, some of my placement relies on how others do, but I am never in doubt of my own ability.” (p. 84). 
Mars and Peyton both exhibit a conviction that, while not unique only to athletes, the self-assuredness they possess is something that has been enhanced by their participation in their respective sport (ice-skating and soccer). These stories of triumph, defeat, empowerment, and grit have universal themes of interest for all students, regardless of gender or athletic identity – and the accessibility of these titles on our bookshelves is fundamental to our understanding of what it truly means to have gender equality, representation, and inclusion. ​
More Titles to Consider
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If you, like me, are making up for a lifetime without having had access to stories of girls in sports, then this is the TBR list for you. These are 10 recent YA novels I’ve read in this genre, and all are amazing for different reasons: 
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​Nikki on the Line (2019) by Barbara Carroll Roberts
Gravity (2019) by Sarah Deming
A Season of Daring Greatly (2017) by Ellen Emerson White
All the Things We Never Knew (2020) by Liara Tamani
Breath Like Water (2020) by Anna Jarzab
Catalyst (2002) by Laurie Halse Anderson
Heroine (2019) by Mindy McGinnis
Fast Pitch (2021) by Nic Stone
Furia (2020) by Yamile Saied Méndez
How to Breathe Underwater (2018) by Vicky Skinner
And, finally, the book that I cannot wait to read next: A Map to the Sun (2020) by Sloane Leong. This book excites me 1) it’s about basketball, one of my favorite sports, and 2) it is a graphic novel that is breathtakingly beautiful at first glance (see photos below for proof). 
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Works Cited

​50 Years of Title IX. womenssportsfoundation.org
 
Crowe, Chris. More Than a Game, Sports Literature for Young Adults. Scarecrow Press, 2003.
 
Felicien, Bria. “Three Reasons We Need More YA Books About Girls Who Play Sports". Teen Vogue. 2017.
 
Glenn, Wendy. “Fictional Girls Who Play to Play: Pushing on Narratives of Competition in Young Adult Sports Literature.” Sport, Education and Society", 2023.

    Dr. Steve Bickmore
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    Dr. Bickmore is a Professor of English Education at UNLV. He is a scholar of Young Adult Literature and past editor of The ALAN Review and a past president of ALAN. He is a available for speaking engagements at schools, conferences, book festivals, and parent organizations. More information can be found on the Contact page and the About page.
    Dr. Gretchen Rumohr
    Co-Curator
    Gretchen Rumohr is a professor of English and writing program administrator at Aquinas College, where she teaches writing and language arts methods.   She is also a Co-Director of the UNLV Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature. She lives with her four girls and a five-pound Yorkshire Terrier in west Michigan.

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    Evangile is a native of Kigali, Rwanda. He is a college student that Steve meet while working in Rwanda as a missionary. In fact, Evangile was one of the first people who translated his English into Kinyarwanda. 

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