At the beginning of every school year, I interview my new 8th grade honors students about what they like to read. Each year, there are enduring favorites mentioned, but it’s also interesting to me to see the trends in what genres middle grade readers are most interested in.
 
When I first moved from teaching high school to junior high twelve years ago, the top two favorites were fantasy (dragon books and vampires in particular) and realistic fiction that had to do with mental health and/or death (think Thirteen Reasons Why, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and anything by John Green).

This year, the genres were more varied than usual, but the number one book remains Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Our students read this book in 7th grade ELA, and many go on to read everything else Riordan has written. If you have not read the book, I’ll let my 8th graders tell you what it’s about and why they love it.
 
“It is a fantasy book. It is about a kid whose dad is a Greek god and he goes to a camp and goes on missions. He is healed by waters. I like that it has fighting. I also like that he meets more Greek gods on his quests.” (Lukas)
 
“The book is about a 12 year old kid who is dyslexic [and] finds out he is half-god and half-human and gets attacked by monsters when he isn’t with his step dad. He gets his mom taken by a monster and goes on a quest to find her but goes through many challenges then gets blamed for stealing Zeus’s lightning bolt and goes on another quest to find it and gets to see his Dad Poseidon for the first time. I liked how there was a lot of action in the book and it felt like you were really in the book by how the author wrote it.” (Cristopher)
 
“My favorite thing in the book is the ending of the book. It was not just a boring ending, it was a very creative ending and it’s still my favorite book to this day.” (Jameson)
 
Students go on to say they like the action and plot twists and that many of the Greek gods and mythical creatures are introduced throughout the book. They also loved the plot twists and cliffhangers at the end of chapters. Quite a few went on to say this was the first “real” book they ever finished.

Other genres students gave book recommendations in were widely varied.
 
In contemporary realistic fiction, students recommended books such as…
 
The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden. “It’s about a teenage girl who has an abusive stepfather that struggles. I like this book because I like the connections she made with being like an octopus.”
 
Some Kind of Courage by Dan Gemeinhardt. “It is a western fiction. It’s about a boy who sets off to find his best friend, Sarah, a horse that was taken from him. I liked that book because it was very exciting and you never know what’s gonna happen next.”
 
The Star Outside My Windowamzn.to/3K85Izv by Onjali Q. Rauf. “It is realistic fiction adventure about this girl who goes on a journey to find a star that her mom said was for her. I liked how smoothly everything in the book flowed, and how advanced of a reading it was for me.”

Monster by Walter Dean Myers. “This book is about a 16 year old black male who is being accused of being an accomplice in a robbery. What I like about this book is that it is realistic and shows that there is a lot of messed up things happening in the real world.”
 
The One And Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. “It’s not really ‘realistic’ fiction, but it’s fiction. It is about a gorilla that got taken away from his family. After he was taken away he got put into a cage to be shown, but we find out later he used to live in the owner’s home. But then he got too big and the owner started showing him, and the gorilla met some friends and started drawing. I’ve compared all other books to this one.”

I have many readers clamoring for romance in their fiction. Some they say they’ve enjoyed include:
 
The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han. “It is a good series based on a girl being in kind of a love triangle with her mom’s best friend’s sons. These books are an emotional plot twist! When reading the book it makes you just wanna yell at the characters for what they do, I like that about it cause it keeps you entertained and interested. This romance book is a very good one!”
 
If He Had Been With Me by Laura Nowlin. “I loved this book because of its amazing way of capturing evolving as young people in mature, scared, and developed teens. I also like how the book considers all types of point[s] of view, and gives a suspenseful feeling. It’s sad, but it gives great messages of how we, as people, can overcome and heal from our pain.”

The mystery, suspense, and horror genres are booming in recent years. Some books in these genres my 8th graders recommend are:
 
The Thief of Always by Clive Barker. “It’s about a 10 year old boy who gets lured into a place called the Holiday House where his wishes are granted, but the house is a trap to steal kids’ souls!”
 
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson. “I really enjoyed reading the book and loved the twist. It’s about a couple who were killed and no one figured out who killed them, but Pip is going to find out.”
 
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes. “The story follows a girl named Avery Grambs who’s 17, homeless and trying to survive high school. Out of the blue she gets a letter requesting her presence at the reading of Tobias Hawthorne’s will, leaving her with 42 billion dollars. To figure out why a stranger left her money, she solves all sorts of riddles alongside his grandsons. The reason I liked this book so much is because of all the plot twists and shocks in this story. In general, it’s just a very fun read.”

​Historical fiction is usually a recurring favorite as well. Students tend to encounter Alan Gratz books in 5th and/or 6th grade in our intermediate school ELA curriculum, so by the time they get to me, they have topics they love, but are hungry for even more. Some they recommend right now include:
 
Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz. “It is about a boy and his family who hid during the Holocaust who was caught while scavenging for supplies. When he arrived he was treated poorly. When the war stopped the Nazis were planning on killing them.”
 
Hunt for the Bamboo Rat by Graham Salisbury. “It’s about a Japanese American who became a spy for the U.S. in  World War II. I like how it feels like it can be actually true.”

​And of course, students are very much still loving comics, graphic novels, and manga. Some favorites include anything by Raina Telegemeier, the Amulet books, and the Demon Slayer manga series.
 
I’m excited to circle back and conference with my students after a couple weeks of independent reading and journaling to find out what new titles and genres they have fallen in love with, and what they are looking to read next.

​All of the books in my classroom library are either purchased by me or donated. The classroom wish list on Amazon is generated by student requests or recommendations. If you would like to donate a book to the library, you can click here.

It’s a lovely cool evening in Atlanta, and I’m sitting on the living room couch with the windows open, thinking about my teaching today. I taught an ELA methods class in the afternoon, and we watched headlines from Democracy Now!. We do this periodically throughout the semester to help us consider how to bring what’s happening in the world into our classrooms. It’s especially important to me that educators, myself included, witness the oppression and injustice occurring in our world, along with the resistance to oppression. As I wrote in a recent article in Voices from the Middle, “Teaching Dystopias during Difficult Times to Build Criticality”:

I aim to foster a global sense of solidarity in our social justice teacher education spaces and model how we build this sense of solidarity and responsibility in middle school classrooms—where notions of “place” and “community” expand from the locations in which we live and work. Criticality “involves agitation—and a radical departure from anything that has caused harm to any community” (Muhammad, 2023, p. 13). Agitation on behalf of any community means building radical empathy with oppressed peoples across the world. I fervently believe that “we must see the world through the eyes of the dispossessed and act against the ideological and institutional processes and forms that reproduce oppressive conditions” (Apple & Au, 2009, p. 991). Yet developing radical empathy means being willing to look at—and not turn away from—atrocities happening in our world. (Behizadeh, 2025, pp. 26-27)

The article focuses on an ELA methods class I taught on October 30, 2023. In the article, I recap headlines from that day. The headlines included that 8,300 people were killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, including 3,500 children. Just about two years later, on this day of September 8, 2025, Democracy Now! has a headline that Save the Children reports Israel has killed more than 20,000 children. According to PBS News (2025), the total death toll in Gaza has surpassed 64,000. 

I am sitting with the enormity of this number today: 20,000 children dead. 64,000 total people killed in Gaza. I am trying to imagine what is unimaginable: the immense devastation and grief felt by family members at the loss of their loved ones. 

We cannot turn away from these atrocities. We must be willing to face what many organizations have termed a genocide happening in Gaza (Amnesty International, 2024; Center for Constitutional Rights, 2024: International Court of Justice, 2024; International Genocide Scholars Association, 2025) and then take actions to end this genocide. 

Yet in the crazy-making doublespeak era we live in where the term genocide applied to Gaza is being denied and censored despite the evidence (again, consider these reports: Amnesty International, 2024; Center for Constitutional Rights, 2024: International Court of Justice, 2024; International Genocide Scholars Association, 2025), where honoring diversity means being prejudiced (The White House, 2025), where masked ICE agents terrify and brutalize immigrants in the name of combating terror (Human Rights Watch, 2025)—in this dystopic world, what can teachers and teacher educators do to alleviate suffering? What can literacy teachers do “so that people stop hurting and killing each other”? (Bruce, 2013, p. 31)

Again and again, my research, my thinking, and my meditation on this all-too-short time I have on this Earth have brought me to story. It is through story that we can truly empathize with other people. It is through story that social discourse can shift to bring about more equity and justice. Through dystopias in particular, we can examine how characters navigate authoritarian worlds and climate crises to not only survive, but often to create new worlds in which humans can thrive. Story matters in this moment. Reading the news everyday can create depression and hopelessness, while stories can provide inspiration and a vision of what could be. Dystopian texts — with themes of evading surveillance, combating environmental destruction, and resisting authoritarianism— provide powerful entry points for thinking about the ills of our current world and also possibilities for solidarity and resistance. 

In my 2025 Voices article, I shared how to approach dystopian literature with middle grade and young adult students. My goal was to highlight how these stories help students think critically about power, justice, and agency in both fictional and real-world contexts. In the article, I described how after reviewing the headlines in late October 2023, my preservice teachers and I engaged in a model lesson focused on The Giver (Lowry, 1993) in which we use characteristics of a dystopia from a handout from readwritethink.org (NCTE/IRA, 2006) to analyze the society in the novel and our own society. Because we had just watched global headlines, my preservice teachers made connections between headlines and characteristics of a dystopia. In the article, I shared:

Because we just discussed current events, some PTs [preservice teachers] talk about what is happening in Gaza as dystopic—and how Palestinians have been under constant surveillance for many years and are now living in even more of a dehumanized state. Another group of PTs talks about the surveillance of teachers in Georgia due to recent “divisive concepts” legislation (Rhym & Butler, 2022; York et al., 2024) as dystopic. (Behizadeh, 2025, p. 28)

Importantly, my preservice teachers were invited to make connections between the headlines and characteristics of a dystopia; I was not asking them to deem a particular social issue dystopic. Although I hold very strong views about particular issues and topics, it is not my job to tell my preservice teachers what to think or do or believe. Rather, I strive to model problem-posing education (Freire, 1970/2000) and embrace critical literacy practices (Behizadeh, Low, & Kim, in press) by presenting texts and materials to learners and asking them: what do you make of this? What does it mean to you, based on your lived experiences, knowledge, and beliefs? As Freire wrote, “Authentic liberation – the process of humanization – is not another deposit to be made” (p. 79). 

I shared a table of dystopian texts and teaching resources in my 2025 Voices article. Below, I’ve adapted that table into a more blog-friendly format so that teachers can quickly find texts and lesson plans to use in their classrooms. Because so many dystopian texts are geared towards high school students, I tried to identify texts that would work with middle grades students.  I hope this collection of resources will be useful to teachers and teacher educators seeking to engage learners in meaningful conversations about justice and society. 

In my class today, on September 8, 2025, after we reviewed headlines and discussed how we might facilitate conversations about these topics in our classrooms, a number of my preservice teachers asked how they could possibly talk about global and national events in their classrooms, like the war on Gaza or mass arrests by ICE, when they were told they couldn’t discuss anything political.  

Well, first I had something to say about what’s considered political. I asked my preservice teachers what topics were considered too political and which weren’t. According to my preservice teachers, Palestine was too political. Reading a novel with a gay character was too political. ICE raids and immigrant detention centers were too political. 

“Do you see what’s happening?” I queried. “The stories and struggles of marginalized people are being cast as ‘too political.’ Why isn’t a YA novel focused on a heterosexual love story considered too political? Why isn’t the settler colonial theft of land documented in Little House on the Prairie too political?” These stories reinforce a status quo of heterosexuality and American exceptionalism, a status quo that is often portrayed as apolitical and “just the way things are.”

Melanie Shoffner recently published an editorial on the theme of teacher education being a political act. She wrote: 

Education is political, despite all the maddening arguments I’ve had to the contrary. You cannot “leave politics out of the classroom” or “focus on your job and leave that stuff to the parents” or “agree that we all have different viewpoints here but there’s no need to make it political.” The political creates the classrooms we inhabit—from what we can and can’t teach (e.g., Ahmed, 2022; Bagley et al., 2023) to what we can and can’t do (e.g., Fadel et al., 2025; Sczerzenie, 2024)--and soon, perhaps, whether education will still exist as a public right for all (e.g., Walker, 2025; The White House, 2025). (Shoffner, 2025, pp. 89-90)

What is deemed too political are stories and movements that seek to address unequal power relations. The stories and struggles of marginalized peoples are what is often deemed too political by those in power—or those seeking to not anger those in power. 

But let’s think about the very real possibility of retribution from those in power for daring to speak about supposedly “too political” topics. For educators in states with so-called “anti-woke” laws or “divisive concepts” laws, like mine, how might we navigate concerns about surveillance, job security, and doxxing? I have returned again and again to Mica Pollock and colleagues’ (2020) article on backup for equity-centered teaching. And after discussing the term “political” with my preservice teachers, I shared Pollock and colleagues’ five strategies for ensuring teachers have backup for critical teaching—teaching that may be cast as political. I have written about forms of backup in an article with my colleague Anthony Downer, and below is a table we included that describes the different forms of backup:

Form                                                 Example(s)
Stealth                                              Providing diverse books in a classroom library
Subspace                                          Facilitating after school clubs, affinity groups, and book clubs
Student-led                                       Letting students initiate conversations and actions
School leader                                   Having administrator support and/or district leader support
System                                               Joining unions, PTAs, and professional organizations
Creative Reappropriation               Using “anti-CRT” policies as justification for critical teaching

(Downer & Behizadeh, 2024, p. 229)

The first five forms of backup come from Pollock and colleagues (2020) article, while the last one Anthony and I developed to represent how teachers can use language of nondiscrimination embedded in divisive concepts laws and other legislation seeking to censor and restrict teachers, and leverage that very same language to support critical teaching. In another recent publication, I worked with a subcommittee and the NCTE Executive Committee (of which I was then a member) to produce the “NCTE Position Statement on Supporting Teachers and Students in Discussing Complex Topics” (NCTE, 2024). I wanted this NCTE statement to exist in part so educators could use it as system backup when seeking to engage in critical teaching that included discussing difficult, complex topics. One of my favorite lines in the statement is this one: “As a professional organization with over 100 years of experience generating scholarship and supporting ELA teachers, NCTE unequivocally states that discussing complex topics is essential for students’ personal sense-making, civic engagement, and academic achievement.” (para 4). This provides a warrant for teachers to engage in difficult discussions, a warrant that is backed by the research cited in this statement. 

Importantly, in my conversation with my preservice teachers, I was completely honest with them that even when they had backup for critical teaching, it would still come with risks, particularly in Georgia. Anthony Downer and I concluded our 2024 piece with this note on considering reasonable risks: 

The house is on fire and we must act immediately. The current situation is not tenable for students, teachers, or teacher educators. We know that taking action comes with risk. But there are times that call for making a choice between what is ethical and what is legal. When Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, she was breaking a law, yet she was doing what was right. Our first concern is the welfare of our students. We cannot engage in curricular violence against students. Our country has a long tradition of civil disobedience, and for those who are willing and able, this is a moment where we are called upon to make the moral and ethical choice.  (Downer & Behizadeh, 2024, p. 232) 

As we encounter unjust wars, environmental crises, political polarization, and rising inequities, dystopian stories can help us process these realities while imagining ways to act ethically and courageously. Teaching these texts is not just about literature; it is about nurturing criticality, empathy, and hope. I do believe a better world is possible—and I still believe in the power of good to triumph over oppression, greed, and ignorance. Yet for this better world to be realized, we need critical and educated peoples who can be a witness to injustice and then have the vision and collective power to make changes happen. 

References
Amnesty International (2024, December 5). Israel/Occupied Palestinian territory: ‘You feel
like you are subhuman’: Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/8668/2024/en/
​
Apple, M. W., & Au, W. (2009). Politics, theory, and reality in critical pedagogy. In R. Cowen &
A. M. Kazamias (Eds.), International Handbook of Comparative Education (pp. 991–
1007). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6403-6

Behizadeh, N. (2025). Teaching dystopias during difficult times to build criticality. Voices
from the Middle, 32(2), 26-30. https://doi.org/10.58680/vm202432226

Behizadeh, N., Low, D., & Kim, J. (in press). Breaking the silence: Using critical literacy
to discuss Palestine and Israel. English Education, 57(4).

Bruce, H.B. (2013). Subversive acts of revision: Writing and justice. English Journal, 102(6),
31-39.

Democracy Now!. (2025, September 8). Headlines. Democracy Now!
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/8/headlines
​
Downer, A., & Behizadeh, N. (2024). In defense of a critical education. Social Education 88(4),
228-233

Freire, P. (1970/2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). Continuum. (Original
work published (1970).

Human Rights Watch (2025, July 21). “You feel like your life is over”: Abusive practices at
three Florida immigration detention centers since January 2025. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/report/2025/07/21/you-feel-like-your-life-is-over/abusive-practices-at-three-florida-immigration
​
International Genocide Scholars Association (2025, July 25). IAGS Resolution on the Situation
in Gaza. International Genocide Scholars Association. https://genocidescholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/IAGS-Resolution-on-Gaza-FINAL.pdf

Lowry, L. (1993). The Giver. Clarion Books.

Muhammad G. (2023) On criticality. Voices from the Middle, 30(4), 12–14.
https://doi.org/10.58680/vm202332565

NCTE (2024, September 12). Position statement on supporting teachers and students in
discussing complex topics. https://ncte.org/statement/position-statement-on-supporting-teachers-and-students-in-discussing-complex-topics/
​
NCTE/IRA. (2016). Dystopias: Definitions and characteristics. ReadWriteThink.org
https://www.readwritethink.org/sites/default/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson926/DefinitionCharacteristics.pdf   
 
PBS News (2025, September 4). Palestinian death toll in Gaza passes 64,000 officials say after
ceasefire talks break down. PBS News.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/palestinian-death-toll-in-gaza-passes-64000-officials-say-after-ceasefire-talks-break-down
​
Pollock, M., Kendall, R., Reece, E., Lopez, D., and Yoshisato, M.  (2022). Keeping the freedom
to include: Teachers navigating ‘pushback’ and marshalling ‘backup’ to keep inclusion on the agenda. Journal of Leadership, Equity, and Research 8(1) 87-114.

Rhym, R., & Butler, D. (2022). HB 1084: Protect Students First Act. Georgia State University
Law Review, 39(1), 1-26. https://readingroom.law.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol39/iss1/7

Shoffner, M. (2025). Navigating the human element of our political profession. English
Education, 57(2), 88-94. https://doi.org/10.58680/ee202557288

The White House (2025, January 20). Ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs
and preferencing. The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/

York, L., Kabani, S., Rabalais, C. B., Baker, M., Shiloh, M., Ervin, N., Murdock, M.,
Woodbridge, K., Douglas, A., & Behizadeh, N. (2024). Fear, hesitation, and resistance: Georgia educators’ responses to censorship legislation. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 32(61). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.32.8339

I love posts like this one. It is nice to get a glimpse into what our preservice teachers are doing and thinking about. Melanie Shoffner take some time during the beginning of a school year to share what she and her preservice teachers like about YA literature. 

It makes me long for a classroom full of preservice teacher in a methods class or a YA literature class. It is always exciting to take the measure of your new students and find out what they know and what expect to learn.

This semester, in my high school ELA methods course, preservice teachers read and discussed the 2025 NCTE report The State of Literature Use in US Secondary English Classrooms. I was particularly interested in using the report’s presentation of teacher autonomy to launch our discussion of text selection. How much freedom do teachers have to select literature for their classroom? Why do teachers choose the texts they do? What texts do they not choose? What reasons do they give? These are questions I want my preservice teachers to wrestle with well before they enter their own classrooms because understanding our own interests, likes, dislikes, and discomforts is an incredibly important element of teacher development.

On a serendipitously related note, I recently asked some of my preservice teachers what work of YA they would love to teach—not enjoy, not like, love. Below are three of their responses, which provide an interesting companion to the NCTE report. Diverse literature? Check. Modern texts? Check. Teacher interest? Check. Student connection? Check. Preservice teachers who are ready to engage adolescents with some texts they just might love? Check, check, and check.
 
Chae, K., & Ginsberg, R. (2025) The state of literature use in US secondary English classrooms. National Council of Teachers of English. https://ncte.org/literature-use-in-secondary-english-classrooms  

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X. R. Pan is an emotional, captivating coming-of-age tale following teenager Leigh in the wake of her mother’s death. Leigh, the biracial child of a Taiwanese mother and a white American father, believes her mother has returned in the form of an enchanted red bird, leaving hints and stories that will lead her to family truths. This magical element—a nod to Asian storytelling traditions—connects with Leigh’s cultural identity and adds depth to the already vibrant narrative: Leigh has synesthesia, so color is an additional lens on her perception of the world. Her mixed heritage shapes how she processes grief, her relationships with friends and family, and the secrets she uncovers about her mother.

In the classroom, The Astonishing Color of After offers representation of a minority group not present in commonly taught texts, exposing students to both language and culture of that group. Pan’s novel follows the familiar arc of coming-of-age and determining identity but from a fresh perspective intertwining grief and intersectionality rather than centering traditional or intolerant undertones. Readers discover this culture alongside the protagonist as she meets the maternal side of her family for the first time; some readers may also learn about Taiwanese culture for the first time. Elements of fantasy make the story exciting and accessible, while the exploration of mental health, identity, and cultural belonging encourages important conversations. Pan’s novel provides an eye-opening and imaginative entrance into storytelling and character growth that is not only an interesting read but also one that will open the classroom floor for insightful discussions.

Maureen Johnson’s YA novel The Box in the Woods is not a typical murder mystery. It follows teenager Stevie Bell as she tries to solve a decades-old murder at Camp Wonder Falls. While the novel has elements of typical mysteries, it also mixes in contemporary issues about media, privilege, and memory.

What makes The Box in the Woods work in the ELA classroom is Johnson’s work of narrative structure. It is told in the present day with flashbacks to the murders, moving from the modern-day to the 1970s. This allows students to analyze how different voices and timelines create suspense and shape the reader’s interpretation as the story unfolds. Johnson’s balance of honor to and satire of the “slasher” trope allows teachers to move from discussions of narrative structure to ones of intertextuality and conventions of genre. The novel is also not afraid to explore deeper themes. The Box in the Woods asks questions of loyalty, morality, and which stories get told and remembered. The characters must deal with these very topics as well as with how much secrets can weigh on a person.
 
Through a combination of suspense and rich layering, The Box in the Woods is rife with analytical depth that makes it a strong candidate for the high school ELA classroom.

​Incorporating Taylor Swift’s lyrics into the young adult literary canon—as a poet and a songwriter—offers students an accessible and contemporary entry point into literary analysis. Swift’s songwriting is rich with narrative techniques, symbolism, and themes that parallel those found in traditional literature. Her lyrics frequently explore identity, self-discovery, heartbreak, resilience, and empowerment–all topics that resonate with adolescent readers. Songs like All Too Well demonstrate narrative progression, detailed imagery, and emotional depth comparable to the storytelling we identify in Samuel Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a poem on which Swift based her song The Albatross. In a similar vein, The Archer and Mirrorball highlight introspection and metaphor in ways that echo Greek mythology or Emily Dickinson’s poem “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”

Swift’s work also encourages critical discussions about voice and authorship. As a female artist who inhabits multiple facets of the public eye, her lyrics invite analysis of gender, media representation, and cultural influence, giving students the opportunity to connect literature to the real-world contexts of social media and the liminal space of adolescence. I include her work in the literary canon because it validates the texts adolescents already consume while demonstrating that literature is not limited to novels and poetry collections but extends into songs, music videos, and even world tours. By engaging with Swift’s lyrics, students can refine analytical skills, recognize literary devices in places like mainstream media, and see themselves reflected in the stories they study (Bishops, 1990). This makes the canon more inclusive, dynamic, and relevant to adolescent readers.
 
Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives: Choosing and using books for the classroom, 6(3), ix-xi.

If you are a fan of the theater, the first full weekend of June was an emotional one. CNN made history by streaming a Broadway performance live. Regardless of one’s politics, the Broadway play Good Night, Good Luck sparked important discussion about what we can do amid times of political polarization and what the ethics of journalism and reporting are. The next night, during the Tony Awards, the Hamilton cast reunited for an emotional mix-tape performance that wowed viewers. I had the gift of seeing Hamilton during the Summer of 2016 with most of the original cast, so it was amazing for me to see them all together again. I plan to spend this year’s July 4th season re-watching this favorite musical of mine. 

As a Humanities scholar born in the early 1980s, I believe this is the most polarized our country has been in my lifetime. It has been hard for me, at times, not to feel in total despair about the situation and wonder if there’s anything I can do to help. What I’ve decided is that I can control what and how I teach my students. I do not wish to indoctrinate my students and do not believe that it is my ethical responsibility. I do, however, think it’s my responsibility to teach all aspects of history in my Humanities (a blend of ELA and History) course, even the parts of American history that are not as pleasant. Historical fiction is an effective avenue in which to do that, particularly when I teach Colonial History and Early Immigration History. With that in mind, I offer a few suggestions below that I believe can work for 6-12th graders through undergraduate students, with, of course, some age-appropriate scaffolding. 

My favorite historical fiction text that I have taught for several years is Hamilton. This piece can work well with Colonial History or Immigration, either one, depending on your chronological curriculum mapping and/or thematic connections. I usually teach the first two Cabinet Battles of the musical. My students and I use these Cabinet Battle songs to better understand the formation of the American government. Additionally, we discuss the rhetorical triangle persuasive techniques of ethos, pathos, and logos, and how they are present in the songs’ arguments. I have them write about real-life examples of how to use persuasive techniques, such as how to convince your parents to let you go on a school trip if they, hypothetically, were on the fence about it. For younger students, “clean” versions of the lyrics are available online. I will usually play the songs twice (or once at a slowed-down pace) and have students follow along with the lyrics as we listen. An “ethos/pathos/logos” graphic organizer is a helpful notetaking tool. For some students, comprehension questions about the songs may be helpful. Depending on how time goes, I sometimes have them write a poem or letter in which they take a persuasive stance on a chosen topic of their interest. I provide them with age-appropriate options, such as school uniforms and student meal menus. 

Some years, I have also done “Cabinet Battle 3” from the Hamilton Mixtape with the students. This cabinet battle is one to approach with care, as Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington discuss what to do about the issue of slavery post-Revolutionary War. The topic is difficult, but when handled right, the cabinet battle can be an important example of why politicians make misguided decisions and also of the complexity of our Founding Fathers, some of whom claimed to believe slavery was evil, but still owned slaves. It also shows Alexander Hamilton’s courage to be an upstander when some very powerful men did not agree with him. However, Hamilton’s real-life views on slavery were more complicated and nuanced than the song suggests. He was involved with organizations that worked to gradually end slavery, yet he also assisted people with transactions involved with slavery and benefited from the institution. I believe that the song is worth studying, while also acknowledging that Hamilton, not unlike other Founding Fathers, was a complicated person whose actions did not always line up with his words. 

In addition to these aforementioned Hamilton-inspired works, I have shown the “Immigrants: We Get the Job Done” Hamilton Mix-Tape video to some groups of students. It does an excellent job of showing some of the modern-day struggles of immigrants. While it focuses on immigrants to the US, some of the issues are universal. It can be a useful exercise to show this video while studying early immigration and allowing the students to draw comparisons and contrasts to the immigration challenges of the early US immigration years, roughly 1890 to 1915.   

​To continue the conversation about colonial America and how slavery affected it, Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson is a novel that my students have enjoyed and also learned from. There are readers who have questioned Halse Anderson writing the novel as a white woman. However, as is typical of Halse Anderson, she did a lot of research and took a lot of care when writing the book. The authorship issue is one that, depending on the context of your class, should probably be addressed, though, to give a fair voice to multiple perspectives. Candidly, the fact that the novel was written by a white woman from the voice of a Black adolescent protagonist gave me pause at first. However, once I read the novel and saw how beautifully done it was, I felt that it would work in my school context, an independent K12 school. It is important, though, to prepare students for some of the language of the book (which includes Negro, but not the vile N word) and also for a harsh scene where Isabel gets branded. We involved our IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Action) coordinators in conversations about teaching the novel responsibly, and they also did a talk with our students about the evolution of language use in the United States.  

The novel tells the story of Isabel and Ruth, two sisters who serve a Tory household as slaves in New York during the American Revolutionary War. Mrs. Lockton, the mistress of the house, is very cruel and manipulative, and my students have been appalled by her unkindness to Isabel and Ruth. Mr. Lockton, her husband, is a more complex character, and his actions are often ones that show moral ambiguity, if not cruelty. The novel shows fascinating history about New York during the American Revolution, and also can help students to better understand how “fence sitters” and Loyalists experienced this time period, in addition to the Patriots. Additionally, the figurative language of the novel is beautiful and shows excellent examples of narrative writing. Most importantly, the book helps students to build empathy for people who had to endure American slavery and also women of different races and socioeconomic stations who had to endure mistreatment with very few resources of support. The book’s primary intended audience is middle school-aged students (roughly 9-13-year-olds), but it could also be appreciated by high school students. 

Another tangentially related historical fiction novel is Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix. Transparently, my G7 students have had different levels of engagement and reception with the novel during both academic years that I taught the book. Some have loved it, while some students told me they did not find it as engaging as Chains, in part because of its length. However, I believe it would be perfect for high school students, particularly younger high school students, and for some G8 classes. 

Uprising tells the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a real-life historical event that took place on March 25, 1911. Many of the employees were very young immigrant women, and unfortunately, 146 employees passed away. The history of the fire is important because it led to reform in workers’ rights and safety measures. I highly recommend teaching historical essays about the topic, whether or not you can teach the book. 

The novel Uprising has three narrative voices, all of whom are teenage girls: Bella, a “fresh off the boat” immigrant from Italy; Yetta, a Russian immigrant who has been in the country long enough to learn some English; and Jane, a well-off older teenage girl who has developed an interest in the Suffrage movement and who wants to go to college like some of her friends at Vassar, but her father will not allow it because he does not think education is useful to women. The three young women form an unlikely alliance due to various circumstances surrounding the Shirtwaist Factory Strikes, and all three become advocates for the labor reform movement and the Suffrage movement. Therefore, the novel relates well to the US history of the progressive era and early immigration history. 

As an experienced Humanities educator, writer, and scholar, I have both the blessing and the curse of seeing what the worst-case scenario could be, both in classroom scenarios and in the progression of current events. While I cannot control the outcome of historical and current events, I can expose students to our country’s history. Learning history doesn’t always prevent people from repeating it, but it at least gives the next generation a fighting chance of not doing so. Plus, well-written literature can bring light to dark places. 

“I wish none of this had happened…So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.” –JRR Tolkien