The Texts We Select (and Why We Love Them)

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.

Meet Our Contributors

​Ellie Fisher is a senior at James Madison University studying secondary education and English. After graduation, she plans to teach high school ELA and share her love for literature and learning with students. 

Emma Johnson holds a BA in English from James Madison University, where she is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Teaching. She plans to teach high school English upon graduation. She is passionate about bringing new stories into the ELA classroom and moving beyond the traditional canon. A lifelong reader of YA literature, she is particularly interested in how contemporary texts can spark critical conversations among students.

Haley Smiley is a graduate student in James Madison University’s Master’s in Arts of Teaching program. She earned her bachelor’s degree in December 2024, majoring in English with minors in secondary education and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). After graduation, she plans to teach ELA in Virginia. Her work can be found in Virginia English Journal and The Ohio Journal of Mathematics.

Melanie Shoffner is a professor of English education at James Madison University, where she regularly teaches secondary ELA methods, curriculum theory, and English literature - all of which include YA lit. She is the editor of English Education and a former Fulbright Scholar to Romania. Recent articles have appeared in The Educational Forum, Reflective Practice, and Ubiquity: The Journal of Language, Literacy, and the Arts.

The Texts We Select (and Why We Love Them) by Melanie Shoffner, Ellie Fisher, Emma Johnson, and Haley Smiley

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  

Magical Realism: The Astonshing Color of After

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.

Mystery: The Box in the Woods

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.

Music and Lyrics: Taylor Swift

​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.

Take a look at some of the work Dr. Shoffner has produced.