books

Great book endings

So I’m thinking about book endings. I mean, I’m thinking about what makes a book ending GREAT.

Because I’m taking a pause in my writing, I’ve been catching up on reading. (I don’t seem to be able to read and write prolifically at the same time.) I’ve been struck by how much, or how little, I love the endings of some of the novels I’m reading, and I can’t help but be insecure about the impact of the endings of the stories I’ve written.

I’ve been taught that the ending to a novel should deliver the inevitable in a way the reader does not expect. To do this, a story must be meticulously plotted with characters’ actions carefully bringing about the ending. Some novels I’ve read this year seem to be plotted correctly, to build sufficiently to the ending, yet somehow I don’t get the big bang out them that I crave. In truth, very rarely do I get a true feeling of completion, of catharsis, of fulfillment when I read a novel, and although I chalk that up to my impossibly high standards (after all, I do LIKE a lot of books, but here I’m talking about LOVING a book), I think I can pinpoint a couple of reasons I am disappointed by endings.

Ironically, my disappointment in an ending is proportional to my faith in an author’s skill. If I’m reading a book and find myself entranced by its language, its concept, its world-building; if I find myself excited about the thematic complexity; if I say to myself, Holy crap, this author knows what he/she is doing; then I ratchet up my expectations for a jaw-dropping ending. This is probably not fair since I tolerate much less in an ending when the beginning and middle don’t foster such high expectations in me. I can use the example here of TVs Lost and Battlestar Galactica. I adore both stories (own both on DVD), and I like both endings, but ultimately I don’t feel those endings exploited the full potential that was there throughout.

Another way an ending can disappoint me is if I feel essentially unchanged by what the author ultimately has to say. I want a book to have educated me or have made me think about something in a new way. Again, I can get excited during the beginning and middle of a book as I contemplate the premise or the message I think is coming, and when nothing of earth-shattering significance shows up in the conclusion . . . disappointment.

Mostly I am disappointed in an ending if I can sit there with the book closed and think about how I might have made the ending better.

I know I’ve loved the ending when I want to sit there and savor what happened, just the way it did.

It’s hard to talk about specific endings that I’ve loved because doing so obviously creates spoilers, but here I offer, by way of example, a brief list of books I’ve read that have wholly satisfied me with their endings. You’ll likely recognize all of them. The first thing I noticed upon reflection is that several are series, and I think this says something about what I need in complexity in order to feel I’ve had a satisfying pay-off.

The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (my favorite book ever)

 

What do you need in order to LOVE a book’s ending? What ultimately disappoints you about endings? What are some books that have had the greatest pay-off for you? (Be warned I will use your advice to revise my own stories’ endings!)

Speak up:

comment

| TAGS:

Ender's Game, endings, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Hyperion, The Book Thief, The Time Traveler's Wife, Thirteen Reasons Why, To the Lighthouse

Books for high school kids building a classroom library

It took me way too long to discover the value of having a classroom library. I taught high school English for about ten years before it occurred to me to have one, and once I did, it made an immediate and substantial difference in my classroom. The following is a mixture of my actual experience and what I would do if I were teaching now (or will do if I go back!).

Why have a classroom library?

The curriculum at my school didn’t generally contain books my students liked, and it never contained books that were new to the market. This is because the curriculum was largely centered in The Canon, especially in the British literature class I taught, and because the administration was, to put it kindly, traditional. Also, getting approval for a book to enter the curriculum officially took time, money, and a lot of evidence of the books’ educational value, a process which is understandable, but not friendly to the latest releases.

There is some research to show that learners benefit from having a classroom library. Here are a couple of statements I found in a quick search of the web:

“‘The policy of having large classroom libraries was found to be “one of the most important differential policies between high-scoring and low-scoring countries” . . . a powerful indicator for both nine-year-olds and fourteen-year-olds.’ So says an international study by the Australian School Library Association.” Souce here.

“Research shows that students in classrooms with high-quality classroom libraries read 50 per cent more than students who do not have access to a library in the classroom.” Source here.

What books do you use to stock your library?

Probably the most important characteristic of a good classroom library is variety. I tried to stock mine with both literary and genre books (horror, fantasy, science fiction, romance, mystery, thriller). For a high school classroom, include titles that would be considered middle grade (for the less strong readers), some young adult titles (for grade-level readers and age-appropriate interest), and adult titles (because some kids prefer to read up). If you have a book that you feel kids would benefit from reading, but you think a more conservative parent might question, you can always have permission slips on hand that need to be signed before letting a student borrow a book. Or you could send a permission slip at the start of the year stating you have such books in the collection and ask parents if they wish to be notified of their child’s choices.

I found titles in a variety of places. First and foremost, I was inspired by a workshop I attended called What’s New in Young Adult Literature and How To Use It in your Program, sponsored by The Bureau of Education and Research. The workshop presenter had read hundreds of just-published MG (middle grade) and YA (young adult) books, and the workshop itself gave brief overviews of many of them with a view to who would like them and how to use them in class. I came away from the workshop with an annotated bibliography of those hundreds of books as well as notes taken from the comments of the other teachers and librarians in the room. I learned, for example, about Twilight in this setting, back when New Moon was brand new.

I found other titles on YALSA’s (Young Adult Library Services Association) website, where they publish “Best Books for Young Adults” lists by year and list a variety of awards. Some titles I got from my students themselves since every year I had at least a few kids who read a lot outside of school (I came to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series this way). Some books I found from reading reviews about them in the Boston Globe or elsewhere. Some were recommendations from friends. Any place there was buzz about a book, I checked it out. I specifically remember hearing about A Bad Boy Can Be Good For A Girl by Tanya Lee Stone and thinking there’s no way my kids would have the patience to read a novel in verse. I bought it anyway, and it became the biggest must-read in my collection. In fact, one former student still has it . . .

I’ll admit I didn’t have many members of the The Canon in my classroom library because my students were getting so much of that in their regular curriculum. Looking back, I think this was a mistake. I also wish I had included more non-fiction and more non-traditional choices like graphic novels and even magazines.

Where do the books come from (i.e. how do you afford them)?

Since most school systems don’t just hand out thousands of dollars to start a classroom library, you have to find ways to afford it yourself. I created mine with my own money, which is why it probably has a higher percentage of science fiction and fantasy than it should have. I’m not rich, I just love owning new books, and so my classroom library was really a subset of my personal library that I shared with kids at school.

There are plenty of other options, however. I found this website with creative ideas for building up a library without breaking the bank. I like the Amazon.com wishlist idea because it is one way to stock your library with contemporary books. I also like the idea of inviting parents to donate a book in honor of their child because it’s something I would do if extended the invitation. The truth is there are many thrifty ways to stock a classroom library from yard sales, to donations, to public/school library supplements, to periodic exchanges with other teachers’ libraries

What do you do with a library?

One common use for a classroom library is to offer additional reading related to topics studied in class. Doing a unit on life at the turn of the 20^th century? Stock Janet Fox’s Faithful. Talking about modern consumerist culture? Try Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens. Addressing the issue of suicide? How about Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why. Studying Huxley’s Brave New World? Give Allie Condie’s Matched a shot.

I used my library mostly as a resource for discourse about story. Some of my students took away strong messages from their reading (like with anything by Scott Westerfeld) and some simply took away the fun of having read a book. I did like that the library was part of our book review unit where we studied professional reviews as a way of experiencing real world applications for the skills English classes teach. I offered extra credit on the term grade to students who did outside reading and wrote up a detailed review. When you build your library, consider keeping a binder with reviews written by your students. Nothing is more likely to get a high school student to read than the recommendation of a peer.

Note that it’s easier for kids to choose a book if they are grouped according to interest. You can do it by difficulty: easy read/grade level read/challenging read. Or genre: romance/horror/non-fiction etc. Or some other way logical to your students.

But you have to read, too!

In my experience, the having of a classroom library is only as useful at it is part of the culture of the classroom. I like to read. I encouraged my kids to read. I designed in-class projects and extra-curricular projects where kids chose their own books, many of which came from my classroom library. Make your library books a part of what gets talked about in class, and make sure you read all (or as many as possible) of the books in your library.

At the start of each term, or more regularly if you like, take out a few books and hold them up for the class to see while you talk about their premises. Inevitably there will be a few kids who find themselves intrigued. Let the kids tell the class about books they’ve read. Make recommending good reads to others a safe and normal thing to do.

My favorite yes-teachers-read-too idea came from my friend Cynthia, who taught next door to me. She made photocopies of a sign that read “[insert teacher’s name] is reading [insert book title] by [insert author].” She laminated the signs and gave one to each teacher to post outside their classroom door. Most of the teachers in school used them, and it was really interesting for kids and teachers to walk down the halls and see what everyone else in the building was reading. Talk about building a positive book culture!

Do you have any tips for building or using a classroom library? I’d love to hear from you!

 

Speak up:

1 comment

| TAGS:

Allie Condie, BER, classroom library, Janet Fox, Jay Asher, Libba Bray, MG, Scott Westerfeld, YA, YALSA

What should high school students be reading?–follow-up

Because this website is getting so many hits from people Googling some variation of “What high school students should read,” I thought I would post this follow-up. (Original post here.) What follows is curriculum- and research-oriented.

When we were looking into redesigning the English curriculum where I taught, two sources were at the top of our list, and both have stated positions on kids and reading. The first is the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks, published by the Massachusetts Department of Education (obviously my school was in Massachusetts, but you can find the equivalent for your state). The second is the National Council of Teachers of English, of which I am a member (and would recommend you become a member, too, if you are an English teacher at any level). Although I post a couple of passages below, you might consider researching at each source more thoroughly.

From the Massachusetts Frameworks in Language Arts:

Note on range and content of student reading: To become college and career ready, students must grapple with works of exceptional craft and thought whose range extends across genres, cultures, and centuries. Such works offer profound insights into the human condition and serve as models for students own thinking and writing. Along with high-quality contemporary works, these texts should be chosen from among seminal U.S. documents, the classics of American literature, and the timeless dramas of Shakespeare. Through wide and deep reading of literature and literary nonfiction of steadily increasing sophistication, students gain a reservoir of literary and cultural knowledge, references, and images; the ability to evaluate intricate arguments; and the capacity to surmount the challenges posed by complex texts.

From the National Council of Teachers of English:

In order to make sure that all individuals have access to the personal pleasures and intellectual benefits of full literacy, NCTE believes that our society and our schools must provide students with:

• access to a wide range of texts that mirror the range of students’ abilities and interests;
• ample time to read a wide range of materials, from the very simple to the very challenging;
• teachers who help them develop an extensive repertoire of skills and strategies;
• opportunities to learn how reading, writing, speaking, and listening support each other;
• and access to the literacy skills needed in a technologically advanced society.

You may also benefit from looking at NCTE’s position statements on literature.

Also note that while we were researching effective ways to update our curriculum, we spent a lot of time on the websites of other schools in our area and of the top-performing schools in our state. We looked at such variables as what schools offered for required courses vs. electives, what texts were taught at each grade level and each competency level, and how much room there was for individual teachers to select books that worked best in their classroom (as opposed to everyone, across the course, reading lock-step identical texts). You may find it quite eye-opening to see what is being taught in the schools near you.

There are many reasons you might be researching “high school reading choices.” Perhaps you are a high schooler looking for the title of a worthwhile read (in which case, I’m sorry this post isn’t helpful), or perhaps you are questioning the curriculum at your school. Maybe you are a parent concerned about your child’s reading at school or at home. Maybe you are a teacher or administrator looking to reform your school’s curriculum. Although schools vary widely in their approach to change, I found my experience trying to update the curriculum a little frustrating. In the end I had to turn to alternative methods for introducing contemporary texts. The most important alternative was my classroom library, which I might address in another post.

Speak up:

1 comment

| TAGS:

curriculum, Massachusetts Frameworks, NCTE

What should high school students be readingclassics or books they enjoy?

Personally, I wish the answer were. . . What do you mean? Don’t high school kids enjoy the classics?

I always have enjoyed them. I loved, for example, The Red Badge of Courage and The Scarlet Letter when I read them in high school. I was an English major in college, so it would have been torture for me to take all the required courses if I didn’t enjoy the books studied in them. As an English teacher I did a lot of enjoyable re-reading of classics.

Yet being an English teacher taught me pretty quickly that most high school students don’t enjoy “classic” literature. In fact in the suburban, middle-class, mostly-white school where I taught, most students didn’t enjoy reading at all. If I hadn’t had the luxury of teaching the AP class, where just about all of the students admitted they at least liked to read, I might have fallen into a deep depression at the attitude of my other college-bound students, some of whom proudly declared that they had never read a book for school in their lives. They had made it to the twelfth grade by plagiarizing and reading SparkNotes. I honest-to-God once had parents come in to argue to the principal that their son shouldn’t receive a zero for work done with SparkNotes instead of the actual book. If the answers are in SparkNotes, the parents argued, and their son “researched” them, why shouldn’t he receive full credit? Never mind that, ahead of time so there would be no misunderstandings, I specifically forbade the class from using any source other than the book. The boy cheated anyway and expected to get an A.

There is much I could say about teacher education or teacher quality or the million things about teaching in a public school that hamper teachers’ ability to do what they know to be right and effective in a classroom. I could rail against TV, video games, and the internet. I could cite additional examples of unsupportive parents. Although it’s true that there could be improvements made on all of these fronts if we want children to read, still some children do read. The bottom line is that not everybody is a reader, just as not everybody is an athlete or an artist or a good friend. Some people just don’t like to read.

But that is no excuse for educators not to have high reading expectations. (I cringe as I write this because I know how really, truly hard it can be to get reluctant, plagiarism-entrenched, entitled students to do honest reading. I do not know first-hand how difficult it is to get disadvantaged students to read, because the issues with poor students are different than in the middle-class suburban school where I taught, but I do believe teachers when they say it’s hard work.) For a long time it seemed schools resisted the idea of giving kids books they enjoyed because the classics were better educational tools. Now I see schools adding those enjoyable reads, and I have mixed feelings. (Here I cringe again because I write, I like to think, those enjoyable reads, and I feel that there is value in reading for pleasure.)

There is a report out from Renaissance Learning stating that high school students, on average, read texts for school (both self-chosen and assigned) that average at a fifth grade level. This is in language difficulty and complexity, not content, mind you, but still. This statistic is disappointing to me.

You can find a million sources out there to tell you why kids should read books. Heck, why people of all ages should read books. Books expand the imagination. They develop critical thinking. They encourage empathy. They teach about otherness. They teach about the common human condition. They give pleasure. Etc. Etc. Etc.

You can also find a million sources out there to tell you what books kids should read in school. Here are some quotes from students themselves that I found online (Here is the original blog post where I found these quotes.):

As a student, I can firmly say that just because a book has endured through generations does not make it relevant to my generation. The veil of time often blinds young readers to a books meaning.-Jacob Stroud

Current required readings often make students skip the book and go straight to the movie or use SparkNotes to pass the test.-Olivia Reed

By exposing students to more modern literature they can relate to, they may come to view reading as cool or enjoyable, rather than only as homework or something that nerds do.-Ashley Monroe

If you go here, you can read the full answers given by these three students, which are actually much more thoughtful than these quotes might suggest. I would like to focus for the moment, though, on the ideas in these three excerpts alone because, unfortunately, I have heard these very arguments made by adults who should have the benefit of a wider perspective.

The idea behind the first quote drives me wild. Irrelevant? The moral question of responsibility for the bestowing (or ending) of life? (Frankenstein) The question of whether our circumstances are determined by a higher power or by ourselves? (King Lear) The question of what, exactly, makes a person worth marrying? (Pride and Prejudice) A young person who is struggling with the more complex style of older literature can be forgiven the difficulty in seeing the meaning in the text itself. It is the responsibility of the school to guide them past writing style (actually, I would argue, to guide them toward appreciation of style) and toward relevance.

The second quote could have been said by any number of students at the school where I taught. This is simple immaturity in the form of lack of personal responsibility. I didn’t cheat. The required readings made me skip the book and go straight to the movie or use SparkNotes. This is a very difficult challenge for an educator to overcome. Where I taught, a student saying such a thing would be just as likely to cheat on reading a book of their own choosingin fact, many students tried to do just that and would be angry at meat MEwhen their cheating was discovered.

The third quote has potential as an argument, but it is only the beginning, which I will expand upon in a sec.

So what should high school students be reading? In my humble opinion, anything that challenges them.

Challenge them to expand their vocabulary and decipher complex sentence structure. Challenge them to consider a new idea. Challenge them to view something from another’s perspective, from another era’s perspective. Challenge them to stick through a long book to the end. Challenge them to analyze, apply, synthesize. Challenge them to grow, to understand this world and their place in it. Challenge them to enjoy being the “nerdy” type who likes reading books!

School is for learning and challenges are the vehicle for learning. High school students should not be assigned books that fit snuggly into their comfort zone. To use a running metaphor . . . if you’re an 800 runner who races the 800 every meet, it does you good to challenge yourself to the longer 1600 or the faster 400 once in a while. The endurance or speed you pick up from going outside your comfort zone helps you grow as an 800 runner. Similarly, high school students have a reading comfort zone, a type of book they “enjoy.” Reading something that challenges them will affect how they approach the next book they read in their comfort zoneit will help them to see things in the text they might not have noticed otherwise, therefore giving them greater opportunity to grow from everything they read, even if they initially choose texts for their entertainment value only.

Now, I don’t think it’s useful to lay down the law and say, “They must read classics! Only classics are challenging! Everything else is a waste of time!”

I also don’t think it’s useful to say, “Let them read what they want! At least they’re reading!”

It’s likewise unhelpful to state simply, “They should read a mix.”

So much depends on the way the material is handled in the class. It does little good to assign challenging reading when the teacher ends up supplying all the insight, all the “right” answers, and it does little good to let students pick their own books if the teacher can’t then engage them in conversation about what they read.

There are many ways to approach teaching challenging texts (here I mean the “classics”), but I’m currently a believer in what I’ll call, because I’m quoting Barry Gilmore below, the “gateway and destination” approach, best explained in an article written by Gilmore in the above referenced Renaissance Learning report. Here is an excerpt from that article:

“The works students choose are largely what I think of as gateway novels and plays; they introduce themes and stylistic devices similar to those in classic works but often in a less urbane or nuanced manner. The Giver and The Hunger Games are gateways. They open the door to thinking about issues such as the rights of citizens to resist or the value of human relationships in a power-driven society. Julius Caesar, on the other hand, is a destination: a place where students, with their teachers, can investigate the same fundamental themes in depth. But the leap from the former works to the latter is a broad one. It requires the bridge of discussion and reflection.”

I would love to see more high schools pairing “accessible” works with “classic” ones. I like that more and more high schools are seeing the value in using popular YA literature as a teaching tool, and I appreciate that works today are encouraging more and more reluctant readers to read. I found value in having popular works in my classroom, but not at the expense of the challenge classic literature provides.

I once had a student, as her AP project, do a comparison of Paradise Lost (which we read together as a class) and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (which she read on her own and which is supposed to be a children’s version of Paradise Lost). I wish I could produce the paper for you to read her excellent insights. It was the kind of work I wish more kids had the opportunity to do.

Not every child is going to love the classics. Not every child is going to love reading. That doesn’t mean reading isn’t good for them, or that they can’t learn to love books, or that educators shouldn’t try to meet them on their level and progressively challenge them to understand things they might not seek to understand otherwise.

So the short answer to the question posed in this post’s title?

Yes.

P.S. I wrote a follow-up to this post that discusses sources I used to research a high school curriculum book list: http://www.jenbrookswriter.com/2012/06/09/what-should-high-school-students-be-reading-follow-up/.

I also mention a few specific titles for a classroom library in this post:http://www.jenbrookswriter.com/2012/06/25/books-for-high-school-kids-building-a-classroom-library/.

And it seems I couldn’t help but mention the subject again:http://www.jenbrookswriter.com/2013/09/17/thoughts-after-reading-insurgent/.

* * * * *

Articles linked in this post:

“Updating High School English” by LaToya Jordan: http://therumpus.net/2011/07/updating-high-school-english/

“Is the Literature in High School Too Cemented in the Past?” by Stroud, Reed, and Monroe: http://www.mlive.com/opinion/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2011/07/is_the_literature_covered_in_h.html

Renaissance Learning report (you have to click the link “Download your copy here” to get the pdf of the report): http://www.renlearn.com/whatkidsarereading/

Articles for further reading:

“Teaching Kids, Books, and the Classics” by Monica Edinger: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/monica-edinger/teaching-classics-kids_b_1191115.html

“Against Walter Dean Meyers and the Dumbing Down of Literature: ‘Those Kids’ can read Homer” by Alexander Nazaryan: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2012/01/against-walter-dean-myers-and-the-dumbing-down-of-literature-those-kids-can-read-h

“High School Students Aren’t Reading Books by Choice or Assignment” by Maureen Downey: http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2012/04/12/high-school-students-arent-reading-challenging-books-by-choice-or-assignment/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog

“Leveling Up and Keeping Score: High School Students Reading at 5th Grade Levels, Report Says” by Becky O’Neil: http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2012/04/03/leveling-up-and-keeping-score-high-school-students-reading-at-5th-grade-levels-report-says/

“American High School Students are Reading Books at 5th-Grade-Appropriate Levels: Report: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/top-reading_n_1373680.html#s805920&title=20_Marked_A

 

Speak up:

4 comments

| TAGS:

challenge, classics, high school, plagiarism

The question of “too edgy” in YA

My latest YA manuscript contains sixteen uses of the “s” word in various forms, and one use of the “a” word. No “f”s, because that’s where I chose to draw the line with my character. It also has a scene of questionable sexual content, although it is not violent. Is my story appropriate for a YA audience?

I’ve been reading a lot of YA lately, mostly because I want to inform my own writing by studying what’s being published. I have to say, as a writer, former high school teacher, and parent (though my son is only three and still reading picture books), I have very mixed feelings about the issue of content in YA literature. My personal reading tastes tend to the “pure” rather than the “dark,” so I find some of the content of YA novels today stretch the boundary of my comfort zone. Fight-to-the-death contests for national entertainment and drugs in the water that encourage feral mating in the street, are two examples of YA content that makes me uncomfortable, even though both of these examples occur in books that have meaning–discussable, reading-circle meaning–above and beyond the element of shock.

And then there are novels that address such teen issues as drugs, cutting, anorexia, abuse, etc. I don’t deny that these are issues faced by teens today, but I also know that many teens aren’t touched by these issues at all, or if so, in a cursory way. I was touched by one of these issues. My best friend in high school was anorexic, and she directed me once to a novel titled Kessa so that I could understand some of what she was going through. It was helpful for me to read that book when I did, so I do believe “issue” novels belong in the adolescent canon.

It’s just that I fear that so much negativity, so much grotesque content, gives teens an unrealistic wide-angle picture of adolescence. (Much as TV and movie content gives an unrealistic picture of adulthood, or the “real” world, in general.)

Censorship, however, is NOT the answer. Or, let me clarify, censorship on a wide scale is not the answer. I’m all for censorship within a homeparents should be free to choose how to deal with their child’s reading choices in a way that is appropriate for their family.

As a teacher, though, I strongly disapprove of having a single parent’s parenting choices dictate the reading assigned in a classroom. When I was teaching, the issue of content came up only oncewhen I assigned Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth to my Advanced Placement seniors for summer reading. One parent, who had read the book, took issue with the violence, including rape, Follett used. She requested that I assign the book in the Fall so my class had a forum for discussion as the reading occurred (as opposed to summer reading, when they had only their journal to talk to). I thought that was a reasonable request, so I substituted another book on the summer list and read Pillars along with our medieval unit.

The key here is that the parent had read the book and so was familiar with the content of the entire story and how the controversial elements were woven through the book’s themes. She did not demand that I pull the book altogether, but that I (and the class) could talk about any issues raised. In fourteen years of teaching, I never had to deal with an uninformed parent who objected to a book based on a single passage, or with a group of parents who went over my head and asked the school board directly to take action to ban a book. I get very, very angry when I hear these kinds of stories.

The truth is, if an earnest group of parents who had read Pillars of the Earth came to me and said they really wished I would take the book off the list altogether, I would have done so. One thing I’ve learned as an English teacher is that although I may have personal favorites for books I’d like to teach, there is never a book that is irreplaceable. I would not have considered such action a victory for censorship, I would have considered it a victory for adults talking it out and working together to make decisions in the best interests of children.

Of course, Pillars isn’t the best example because it’s not a YA book, but is today’s YA too edgy for the YA audience? Drawing a line is a pretty dangerous thing because there is no way that an entire nation of readers and parents of readers will agree on where that line should be. I just wish that more parents would read what their teens are reading so they can discuss the issues raised and help them to understand how accurately (or not) books portray life.

I’m wondering what the parents of my former students would think of my new book. I’d like to think it warrants placement on a summer reading list or, even better, placement in a classroom discussion, but ultimately, it’s not up to me. And that’s okay.

***

Here are a few articles you can check out if you want to read more on this subject:
This Wall Street Journal article by Meghan Cox Gurdon questions the rationality of having YA lit contain “explicit abuse, violence, and depravity.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576357622592697038.html

This Huffington Post article by Ru Freeman agrees with Meghan Cox Gordon’s ideas.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ru-freeman/im-with-meghan-cox-gurdon_b_879880.html

Carla Javier, on the Knoxnews.com site, disagrees with Meghan Cox Gordon.
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/jul/12/yas-can-handle-ya-lit/

A slightly older, but still relevant, article by Shelley Stoehr in The Alan Review.
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/winter97/w97-02-Stoehr.html

An article by Mike Penprase at News-Leader.com about the upholding of a ban on Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20100909/NEWS04/9090375/Stockton-book-ban-upheld-7-0-packed-public-forum

Speak up:

8 comments

| TAGS:

censorship, edgy YA, YA