My first copy of Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret sits lovingly in my office. I have piles of Judy Blume books throughout my house and my office—old covers, new covers, revised versions. Blume’s works have been a staple in my reading and teaching lives as long as I can remember. 

Blume’s work is often challenged because of her representations of sex and sexual pleasure. Not only does Blume tackle menstruation and masturbation in her books but she also challenges the way that American culture thinks about sex as a moral choice. Blume boldly focuses characters’ sexual choices on pleasure and health, allowing young readers to see sexual experiences through a more balanced lens than texts that take a moral approach to sexual experimentation. Although there are several of her YA books I could talk about, I want to focus on three that I think deserve a second read if you haven’t done so lately. I chose to focus on Deenie, and Forever… due to their discussions of sexual experimentation and Tiger Eyes because of how it examines the grief and complication with a sudden, violent loss.  

Still one of the only young adult novels about scoliosis, Deenie (1973) is the story of Wilmadeene “Deenie” Farmer whose mother is determined she become a model—even if Deenie doesn’t want to be one. Yet, when Deenie is diagnosed with scoliosis which during the time of the novel meant that she had to wear a Milwaukee brace, her mother’s dreams of Deenie modeling career are upended. Although Deenie has themes of ableism and complicated family dynamics, the book is mostly known for the explicit scene of masturbation, where Deenie finds pleasure and release during a difficult time in her life.

Deenie’s relationship with other people with disabilities is somewhat fraught. As a 13-year-old she struggles to see beyond her own experiences and only when she deals with her scoliosis does Deenie feel empathy for her peers who have physical illnesses. Deenie’s beauty is in how it deals with parental and societal expectations and her struggle to live up to those expectations. The complicated feelings of a young girl who navigates multiple doctor visits and isolation in school and in her social circles is relieved through physical pleasure which is normalized in the book. 

Forever… (1975) tells the story of high school senior Katherine Danziger and her progressing relationship with Michael, a boy she met at a New Year’s party. Throughout the book, Katherine and Michael become sexually involved, starting with mutual masturbation and moving to penetrative intercourse. Katherine learns about her body and desires. She obtains birth control and has sexual relations for pleasure—often orgasming during her experiences with Michael. After graduation, when Katherine’s goes to work at a summer camp in another state, she starts to have feelings for the older tennis coach, Theo. After meeting Theo, Katherine realizes that as much as she learned with Michael, she is not ready for forever. Katherine and Michael go their separate ways, and she pursues the relationship with the older Theo.

​What captivated me about Forever… when I first read it as a teen in the 1980s (Judy Blume is the voice of Gen Xers everywhere) was that Katherine’s story was one of female pleasure and empowerment. Even today, the way that female pleasure is written about (or not written about) is a topic that is often fraught with controversy. Some critique Michael’s constant request for sex as wearing Katherine down and not giving her true consent for their physical relationship. Yet, by exploring how the book represents heterosexual social norms and beliefs in the 1970s, how consent was—or was not—addressed and the ways young women approached sexual awareness and identity, young readers can discuss how consent and choice around sexual partners and relationships has transformed since the #MeToo movement and other modern representations of teen sexuality. 

My favorite Judy Blume novel, Tiger Eyes (1981), tells the story of 15-year-old Davey Wexler as she deals with the sudden death of her father. After her father is brutally murdered in a convenience store robbery, Davey, her mother, and younger brother Jason move from Atlantic City, New Jersey to Los Alamos, New Mexico to live with Davey’s aunt and uncle. In New Mexico Davey meets Wolf and Jane, who both play a role in her coming to terms with the death of her father. As a candy striper, Davey meets Wolf’s father a terminal cancer patient. The loss of their fathers brings Davey and Wolf closer together. Davey also deals with Jane’s struggles with alcoholism, seeking to find a way to help her friend while at the same time deal with her own grief. Davey’s mother finally convinces Davey to go to therapy with her, where she is finally able to mourn her father and let go of the paper bag she carries which contains the blood soaked clothing she was wearing as she watched her father die.

​When Davey, her mother, and brother finally return to New Jersey, she realizes how much she has changed for herself and how that might not be seen by people around her. Judy Blume has often talked about how Tiger Eyes was a cathartic book for her to write as she dealt with the sudden death of her father. That loss is apparent in the rawness of the novel. Losing a parent at a young age is difficult to come back from. Davey and Wolf find out that sometimes you meet the right person and the right time to help you through a difficult experience. In addition, Tiger Eyes’ premise of gun violence and sudden loss seems an ominous reminder that our country is still struggling with gun control 40 years later. 

Until next time.

​As the school year begins, veteran and beginning teachers alike consider the novels they might select for whole class instruction. This blog post shares some of the questions that I have lately about choosing books for classroom curriculum. Hopefully, it will start conversations around this important topic. 

What makes a text the right fit for your curriculum? How do we choose books to teach to our students? With the number of new publications each year–1700+ according to Jensen (2023), it’s impossible to keep up with everything in the field of Young Adult literature. Therefore, there is no possibility of choosing the “perfect” text. It’s more than likely that another text will come out that’s even better–but you might not have access to it or even know about it.

Teachers and teacher educators make critical choices about which books to teach to our students, and by including particular texts, we send a clear message. From among all the books out there, we choose one book to highlight as a potential text they might learn from. Our knowledge of authors or awards might have influenced our decisions, or even more likely, access to class sets of books might influence your decision. 

When I taught eighth grade English in Arizona, I started planning my curriculum based on the books that were available to be taught (i.e., books in the department office). The selection was outdated, not relatable to my student population, and even contained culturally objectionable content! Robert Newton Peck’s A Day No Pigs Would Die (1972) was among the choices–and this was for my urban school in Arizona, where there were no farms and no pigs. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (2016/1845), Frederick Douglass’ autobiography was also on the shelves for teachers to use. This book, though full of many social issues that could be discussed, also used antiquated language and vocabulary. Perhaps the Narrative would be a perfect part of my curriculum, provided that I used excerpts, and it was accompanied by some current YA texts. 

Similar issues abounded with several other titles that were available: Johnny Tremaine (Forbes, 2011/1943), Across Five Aprils (Hunt, 2002/1964), and Around the World in 80 Days (Verne, 2024/1872). I’m sure many of us can relate to the dusty stacks of books many teachers find tucked in far-away cupboards. Perhaps when these titles were purchased by the prior department chair or district curriculum folks, these books were “highly recommended” titles, but by the time that I was teaching at the school, they were simply taking up shelf space. 

​In my role as eighth grade English teacher, I was lucky enough to go through a curriculum adoption process. We were able to choose sets of books to accompany the textbook that was being adopted. However, the teachers at our school weren’t familiar with some of the newest titles available on the list, so they relied on their knowledge of more traditional works as they were making decisions or on their experience in their teacher education program and children’s or YA literature professors. The process was not standardized across schools in the district, and so each school ended up with different sets of books by the end of the process. Some of these books were great finds and proved to motivate students while others were not as great.

What questions do you ask yourself as you are choosing a novel for whole class reading? There are several lists of questions for teachers on various blogs and websites (e.g., weareteachers.com, corwin-connect.com, therobbreviewblog.com). Each list contains questions that are a little different from the next. I encourage you to take a look at some of these lists and think about the kinds of questions that you ask yourself when making curricular decisions. 

Universal appeal is often mentioned in these lists. We must consider things such as: “Is this a book that will appeal to both genders?” or “Will this book foster a love of reading?” With a push toward diverse texts and representations in literature, we also must take a critical stance when considering who the main characters are, who the author(s) are, and the kinds of identities that are present in the text. Questions like: “Does this book perpetuate stereotypes?” or “Whose voice is missing in this text?” become important for teachers to consider. These questions are difficult because if you are like the majority of teachers: a white woman (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2021)  Since teachers are still 76% female and 79% white, we must ensure that our students are represented in the curriculum we teach. I bring this up because implicit bias based on identities and experiences is inherent in our lives; however, we can combat this by being aware of these biases and working toward overcoming them. 

When choosing texts during my first few years teaching, I often gravitated toward texts that had female main characters. My administrator at the time was extremely data-driven, so my colleague and I studied our students’ test scores. Our investigation discovered that our male students scored lower on the standardized assessment than our female students. I researched scholars that had focused on male reading motivation and achievement (e.g., Fletcher, Martino, Smith & Wilhelm). We discovered that male readers consistently lagged behind female readers; however, we wanted to combat this statistic.

​Considering how our choices of which texts we taught might have influenced our male students’ learning, we purposefully began choosing texts with male main characters in both short stories and novels–for example, Stotan by Chris Crutcher (2003/1986), The River by Gary Paulsen (2006/1991), and The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis (2020/1995). Indeed, our male students seemed to be more motivated and interested in the stories we read. However, these texts still didn’t represent the diverse population of my school, which was 45% Latiné. So, though we addressed one identity (gender), another was not addressed at all (ethnicity). 

​Today, I am critical of authorship and representation in books that I used in my children’s and Young Adult literature courses at my university. It often feels limiting, and I have had conversations with colleagues about how to approach this. “Who can tell this story?” has become one of my primary questions. But, often there may be limited stories written by folks that have the same ethnicity or characteristics as the characters in the story. Do we dismiss stories that are well researched but written by outsiders? What determines a quality book? Are we eliminating important stories because of these limiters? All of these questions are important to consider as well. Some of the books on the shelves of your department might not be written by an author of color, but still might tell a story that’s worth telling. How do you determine this? I wish I could tell you an answer, but the conversations I’ve had with colleagues have not come to strong conclusions about what to do in these cases. 

Of course, in today’s teaching context focused on standards and assessment, we must also consider what we are going to teach with the novel. After all, we have limited time with our students each year: 180-ish school days, 45-60 minutes per day = 10,800 minutes, or 180 hours to teach “everything” that is expected. When put into these simple terms, teachers must consider very carefully what to do with that limited time. We definitely don’t want to waste time teaching a book that our students (or we) don’t love, and we don’t want to spend time teaching a book that doesn’t dip into several of the standards and outcomes we are required to meet by the end of the 180th day. 

SEL. Several of my recent M.Ed. students focused their final cumulative research projects on teaching SEL (Social Emotional Learning) through literature, which actually addresses Washington State teaching expectations. The standards include self-awareness, self-management, self-efficacy, social awareness, social management, and social engagement, with several benchmarks listed for each standard (Social Emotional Learning Standards, Benchmarks and Indicators, n.d.).  Which books best address these standards? In my opinion, almost every book could potentially work, but the teacher would have to be intentional about the discussion topics and activities that would guide students to explore these topics. 

When my daughter began teaching sixth grade ELA, she had a limited number of books that were available to teach to her whole class. Among these were Hatchet (Paulsen, 1986) and The Lightning Thief (Riordan, 2005). A book like The Lightning Thief (Riordan, 2005) could be used to teach SEL standards as well. When Percy Jackson discovers that he’s a half-blood, he becomes more self-aware and his ability to see himself within a community of other half-bloods shows social engagement. He demonstrates problem solving skills, which improves his self-efficacy. You probably get the point by now.

ELA skills. When considering ELA skills, such as reading comprehension or plot development, the same holds true. Of course, certain books might contain specific elements such as foreshadowing, flashbacks, or internal thoughts, while other books might not have as clear examples as another text. The standards adopted by your state or by NCTE/ILA can help to guide your decision making in this regard. You can also decide to adopt a text selection process;  NCTE provides some helpful guidance here.

As I considered the standards for each whole class novel, I considered the following questions: What would students write? What reading skills would they work on? Can those reading skills be connected to their writing? What critical thinking skills can be developed as they read this novel? Does this novel connect with content in any of their other classes (e.g., social studies, science, math)? 

A novel like The Lightning Thief (Riordan, 2005) provided my daughter with many options for curriculum. Her students could write a research paper about Greek mythology; they could create their own creative stories about a mythological being; they could compare and contrast two of the characters in the book. Considering her yearlong curriculum and the number of writing assessments for each text type (e.g., informative, argument/persuasive, narrative), she needed to consider where this novel would fit in her sequence. This helped her to decide the style of writing students would practice. She also had to consider the reading skills students needed to work on during the unit (e.g., summarizing, characterization, foreshadowing) and link those skills with the writing assignment and reading strategies. Students in her sixth grade class could even engage with speaking and listening standards by discussing the book in small groups or literature circles. 

With the school year upon us, many teachers are considering young adult novels to teach this year. You might be thinking about the resources that can guide your decision-making process. I hope that this column sparks some of your thinking and pushes you to consider some of the various questions you might ask yourself as you make these tough decisions. 

​Crutcher, C. (2003). Stotan. Greenwillow. (Original work published 1986).

Curtis, C. P. (2020). The Watsons go to Birmingham, 1963. Yearling (25th anniversary edition). (Original work published in 1995).

Douglass, F. (2016). The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Dover Publications (1st ed.). (Original work published 1845).

Forbes, E. (2011). Johnny Tremaine. Clarion Books (reprint edition). (Original work published 1943).

Hunt, I. (2002). Across five Aprils. Berkeley (reprint edition). (Original work published 1964).

Jaigirdar, A. (2020). The henna wars. Page Street Publishing Co.

Paulsen, G. (2006). Hatchet. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (reissue edition). (Original work published 1986).

Paulsen, G. (2012). The river. Ember (reprint edition). (Original work published 1991).

Peck. R. N. (1972). A day no pigs would die. Alfred A. Knopf.

Riordan, Rick. (2005). The lightning thief. Disney Hyperion.
​
Verne, J. (2024). Around the world in 80 days (G. M. Towle, Trans.) (C. Miles, Illus.). Sky Publishing. (Original work published 1872). 

Gallagher, K. (2009). Readicide. Heinemann.

Jensen, K. (2023, January 24). By the numbers, a look at YA being published in 2023 (so far). School Library Journal: Teen Librarian Toolbox. https://teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2023/01/24/by-the-numbers-a-look-t-ya-being-published-so-far-in-2023/#:~:text=When%20looking%20at%20the%20total,and%20190%20are%20trade%20paperbacks.

National Center for Educational Statistics. (2021). Characteristics of public school teachers. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/2021/clr_508c.pdf

National Council for Teachers of Engliish. (2012). NCTE/IRA standards for English Language arts. https://ncte.org/resources/standards/ncte-ira-standards-for-the-english-language-arts/
​
Washington Professional Educators Standards Board. (n.d.). Social emotional learning standards, benchmarks and indicators. Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction. https://www.pesb.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/SELStandardsBenchmarksIndicatorsLongForm.pdf

Over the years, Lesley Roessing has been a great friend to Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. One of her many talents is creating book list on certain topic. She does this for teachers over and over again. Today, our Wednesday post falls of September 11, 2024. It is a perfect time to collect the three different posts that Lesley has written for us all in one place.
She really know has to curate a list!

We hope you will browse the links below. Let us know if there are other books we should add to the list.

Thanks for checking out these older posts. If you get a minute, share them around.