Middle School YA Lit?

Okay, I admit it: I am a snob and lazy. As much as I know I should read more "middle school" YA literature, I just find it hard to do. I was never a middle school teacher and haven't spent any extended time in a middle school since I was in eighth grade (1982, I think). I love high school! I love YA and Alex award winners that push the boundaries. So, what do I with middle school YA lit?

I received a copy of Torrey Maldonado's Secret Saturdays recently and picked it up after a very happy reading of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate--which I loved.

However, I just am having a hard time with Secret Saturdays.



His book has gotten some good endorsements, and two very good reviews on amazon.com, but I am not loving it but I think it is because I (a) don't know how middle schoolers, especially sixth graders talk; (b) don't know how urban, big city middle schoolers talk; (c) don't know how middle schoolers think.

I am just over halfway through and am curious to learn the mystery of the secret Saturdays. I do think this novel, subject-wise, would resonate with many students: bullying, self-image, doing the right thing, single-parents.

I am curious if anyone has read this book yet and can tell me if it is authentic.

Little Brother

Finally got around to reading Cory Doctorow's spin on privacy and security in the age of the Internet, Homeland Security, and the Patriot Act. An intriguing read, but I had to really drag myself through it. I don't think the writing's that great--I couldn't pin down W1n5t0n (aka M1k37, aka Marcus Yallow) as a character, couldn't imagine him (see him in my head), couldn't really come to care about him. The pacing was up and down, and I just couldn't wrap my head around a lot of the techno-speak about hacking, arphids, and LARPing (although the VampMob sounded very, very cool. I want a cape, or a Gothic Lolita maid's dress, and some elaborate kabuki eye makeup).

Reviews of the book and lots of other good stuff (including free downloads of the book) can be found here: craphound.com/littlebrother

I will say this, though: reading Little Brother makes me want to go and read George Orwell's classic 1984. I'm not ashamed to say, I've never read 1984. But now I want to. In the back of Little Brother, Doctorow says:

This book couldn't have been written if not for George Orwell's magnificent, world changing Nineteen Eighty-Four, the best novel ever published on how societies go wrong. I read this book when I was 12 and have read it 30 or 40 times since, and every time, I get something new out of it. Orwell was a master of storytelling and was clearly sick over the totalitarian state that had emerged in the Soviet Union. Nineteen Eighty-Four holds up today as a genuinely frightening work of science fiction, and it is one of the novels that literally changed the world. Today, "Orwellian" is synonymous with a state of ubiquitous survelliance, doublethink, and torture.

I can't wait to go read 1984 and see how Doctorow played off of and appropriated Orwell's ideas for today. This is what I love about young adult literature, especially YA lit that is inspired by and dialogues with older classics. It keeps the conversation going, showing how themes written about in books published decades and centuries ago are still relevant today. I think if YA lit can make teens (and adults) want to go read and discover the classics--well, that's saying something.

Saw this bumper sticker on car today. Must get.

Found it here: http://www.bumperart.com/ProductDetails.aspx?SKU=2004082101&productID=8801

Wonder if I could make my own: (Some) (Not Enough) English Teachers Are YA Novel Lovers

A Real Life Lesson: Students' Inability to "Find" Books to Read

Today is one of my favorite days in our summer reading program: Barnes and Noble Day! We set aside money each year to take the high school students to Barnes and Noble to buy books. Each student is allowed up to $15 to pick any type of book he or she wants. I encourage my YA lit students to help--letting the class out 1.5 hours early. I provide my students with tape recorders and flip cameras to "record" their conversations with the teens: What book are you looking for? What type of book do you want to buy? Do you have any favorite authors?

The questions start there, but what my students quickly find out is that it can be hard for them to help the high school students find books. One female student stared at the teen section shelves.

"Can I help you find something?" I ask.

"I want a scary book," she replied.

"Okay," I say. "What type of scary would you like? Monster? Vampire? Blood and guts? Teenagers involved?"

NOTHING. Not a sound.

It was clear that she had no idea what type of scary she wanted. I pressed on.

"If it was a movie, what type of scary movie do you think you would want to see?"

Still nothing.

At that point, another student came up and I grabbed a Lois Duncan book and asked her to read the back and let me know if this was the type of scary she was looking for.

This scene was being played over and over throughout the store. I could tell by my students' faces--and the way the high school kids looked lost.

After the bus took the high school students back to campus, my students stayed behind with me, voicing their frustration over not being able to help the kids (six of us tried to help one student--he ended up getting a nice sketch book instead of a book to read).

Gretchen Dougherty** writes, "One thing that I have taken for granted as a lifelong reader is how I choose books that are right for me and that I know I will enjoy. I noticed that this skill does not come naturally for many of my unmotivated and uncommitted readers. Non-readers are unfamiliar with different authors and genres, and they don’t know how to use the book itself to determine whether or not they might enjoy reading it. These students also have unformed ideas about the types of books that might interest them."

For students to know what they want or like to read, they need exposure to and many opportunities to read for pleausre--without the penalty of lost points for AR. Without a 10 question quiz. Without the mandatory book report. This problem is compounded for our students who are reading several grades below level. They don't like to let others see them reading "baby books." So, they often don't read, not realizing the consequences that lie ahead.

I hope that the experience today stays with my students as they enter their methods block this fall and student teaching in the spring--and their own classrooms down the road.




**http://www.otterbein.edu/education/JTIR/volumeII/dougherty.pdf

What Every Student Deserves

By the time the all of the preservice teachers in our program have graduated, they have had me for at least two courses (YA lit and Methods), so I apologize in every course if they hear me repeat my mantra: "Every student deserves an AP education."

I was lucky enough to go through middle and high school in the advanced/honors/ AP track. At times, like when considering whether or not to take a "harder" science, I opted out (i.e., had the choice) of AP Physics and went for the easy Marine Biology. I was in an insulated world--I had no clue and didn't think to ask what all my non-honors peers were doing in their classes.

And, it wasn't until my second teaching position that I fully realized the different (tracking) worlds in our country's high schools.

At that school (one with an IB program), not only were the "upper" track students given more resouces, so were their teachers. Who knew there were fewer resources for regular teachers like myself!? This is when I first started using YA literature in the classroom [provided with only the textbook and a a classic title or two, I raided the department closet and borrowed novels from my friend who taught pre-IB classes]. But, I didn't just teach them "for fun," I taught them using the same ideas and resources I had learned in my AP training at Duke several years before.

That became the foundation for my beliefs as an English/reading teacher.

So, when I teach YA lit classes, I bring literary theories to the table [there are several fantastic resources for teaching YA lit with literary theories; two I like are Lisa Schade Eckert's How Does It Mean? Engaging Reluctant Readers Through Literary Theory and Anna Soter's Young Adult Literature and the New Literary Theories: Developing Critical Readers in Middle School].

My students and I start with reading for enjoyment, move to reader response, and then dive in deeper with applicable theories. My hope is that these ideas will "stick" when they are classroom teachers and they will not resort to low-level, "right there" questions. Each week, I ask them to write reflections based on the novels we read and the discussions we have had in class.

The reality here (in Alabama) is that YA literature is not read in many classes. The state standards pretty much dictate what is read in each grade and the list is pretty narrow (and identical to what Applebee reported back in 1993). So, my students will teach the classics, whether or not their students are interested in or can read them. My hope is that they can convince their administrators to bring in YA lit as a bridge. And, I do have hope, based on my students' reflections:

"Overall this first week has taught me how to keep my mind open to different theories and connections within texts. Copper Sun, Sold, Little Brother, and Mister Pip contain themes that work across texts but also themes that are particular to their own. By applying literary theories to texts and by finding connections between young adult literature and classic literature an instructor can effectively teach their students ways of thinking critically and may even motivate them to enjoy canonical literature a little more."

One of the most interesting and fun activities was completing the “Literary Theories/Critical Approaches to Literature” worksheet. This activity was done as a group, and it allowed me to interact and discuss the stories with the other members of my group. I found that one questioning idea led to another, and in my particular group, we were springing ideas off each other’s comments. This activity also made the information previously presented more interesting and helpful in analyzing the stories, a coming together of information presented with the selections read. I especially liked completing the hand-out with my group. Each member of the group was spinning his/her ideas off the other’s comments. Looking at the two stories side by side, developing higher order, open ended questions allowed for a good analysis of the stories. This also stimulated ideas for discussion for other activities that could be done in the classroom. It was, for me, an activity that I wanted to take more time to complete because I felt that there was a coherent bringing in of the previously taught information in a meaningful and helpful resource for next year’s classes.

I liked The Hunger Games best—I found the narrator most believable, and the story most compelling. [It] was an exciting, novel approach to a coming of age/hero’s journey novel complete with a fairly well-formed new world. I found many literary and social collective allusions in the novel, and could think of many different novels that it could be taught in repertory with Ten Mile River and Black & White.

Book Whispering

From Donalyn Miller's book, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child:

We have worked so hard to develop systems to teach reading, yet I claim that we had no justification for systematizing an act like reading in the first place. The only groups served by current trends to produce endless programs for teaching reading are the publishing and testing companies who make billions of dollars from their programs and tests. It is horrifying that the people who have the corner on getting children to read--children's book authors, parents, and teachers--get the least credit monetarily or otherwise.

I believe that this corporate machinery of scripted programs, comprehension worksheets (reproducibles, handouts, printables, whatever you want to call them), computer-based incentive packages, and test-practice curricula facilitate a solid bottom line for the companies that sell them. These programs may deceive schools into believing that they are using every available resource to teach reading, but ultimately, they are doomed to fail because they overlook what is most important. When you take a forklift and shovel off the programs, underneath it all is a child reading a book.

Keeping the Reader Alive

I'm doing some reading on struggling readers in preparation for one of the summer classes I start teaching on July 8th, so I'm finally getting around to reading Anne Reeve's wonderful book, Adolesents Talk About Reading: Exploring Resistance to and Engagement with Text. I love what she says about Sting, one of the adolescents profiled in the book, (and inherently, Sting's English teachers):

Some people's commitment to reading is robust enough to withstand years of boredom with institutionally required texts, but others, such as Sting, who seem to derive almost no nourishment whatsoever from English class, need access to what they can absorb....The school risks suppressing Sting's reading and writing energies completely when it tries to redirect them toward academic goals that make no sense to him. (p. 68)

We need to understand that for a student such as Sting, one of our goals should be to keep the reader in him alive through adolescence, even when that goal requires compromising our commitment to teaching school texts. The contribution we can make to Sting's future lies not in the particular texts we admire and promote but in protecting the reader within him. (p. 69)

I love this idea of "keeping the reader alive" and "protecting the reader within" the adolescents we teach. This is where young adult literature is so important, as well as paying attention to what adolescents' out-of-school reading interests are. It means letting go of the Shakespeare if you have to (although there are lots of good YA spins on Shakespeare [check out Alan Gratz's Something Wicked and Something Rotten, Caroline B. Cooney's Enter Three Witches, Sharon Draper's Romiette and Julio] and even grapic novel versions of Shakespeare's plays [I love Gareth Hind's gorgeous versions of Beowulf and King Lear], so you may not have to let him go entirely if you can engage resistant readers through different kinds/levels/choices of texts).

As English teachers, we must always remember there are readers inside of the kids we teach (I like how Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer calls resistant readers "dormant" or "underground" readers). We're doing a pretty good job of killing off those readers--or the idea that reading can be pleasurable--through standardized testing and test remediation for students who score low on these tests. Kelly Gallagher calls it "readicide," the systematic killing of the love of reading. It's happening, right now, in every public school in this country. As English and language arts teachers, we've got to do our part to show adolescents there are other, more personal, more meaningful reasons/purposes/values for reading than to pass a test, go to college, or be considered "literate" at the next cocktail party. We need to bring--with apologies to Justin Timberlake--"sexy back" to reading. And by that I mean bring back the idea in schools that reading can be pleasurable, leisurely, and fun.

YA Hatin'

I recently stumbled upon Patrick Ness's brilliant YA sci-fi (cyberpunk? )novel, "The Knife of Never Letting Go," (thanks to New Yorker article on dystopian YA fiction). It's the first book in the Chaos Walking trilogy. Sadly, I just finished book 2, and found out the 3rd isn't due out until fall (September 28, 2010, to be exact). There really is an actual physical sadness I'm experiencing, knowing I can't get back into Todd and Viola's world any time soon (unless I go back and re-read book 1, which I might just very well do).



Because I've been so enamored with the books, I've been curious to see what other reviewers are saying. And that's how I found this bit of YA hatin', from Frank Boyce for The Guardian:

If I have one quibble, it is that I think it should be sitting proudly on the shelf next to these books [Huck Finn, The Handmaid's Tale], rather than being hidden away in the "young adult" ghetto. There's been a lot of fury among authors recently about the proposal to "age-band" children's books, but in a way they're too late. The real disaster has already happened. It's called "young adult" fiction. It used to be the case that you moved on from children's fiction to adult fiction, from The Owl Service, maybe, to Catcher in the Rye. There were, of course, some adult authors who were more fashionable with teenage readers than others - Salinger, Vonnegut, Maya Angelou. But these were chosen by teenagers themselves from the vast world of books. Some time ago, someone saw that trend and turned it into a demographic. Fortunes were made but something crucial was lost. We have already ghettoised teenagers' tastes in music, in clothes and - God forgive us - in food. Can't we at least let them share our reading? Is there anything more depressing than the sight of a "young adult" bookshelf in the corner of the shop. It's the literary equivalent of the "kids' menu" - something that says "please don't bother the grown-ups". If To Kill a Mockingbird were published today, that's where it would be placed, among the chicken nuggets.

What?!? No he din't!

Yes he did. I think one of his points is that once a book gets tagged as YA, then only YAs will read it, and he really thinks "Knife" is such a great book, everyone--teens and adults alike--should read it. It's that good.

Because he agrees with me about the book, I can almost forgive him his nasty rant against YA lit. Almost.

He doesn't get that those of us who have been advocating for YA lit for a long time have been fighting just as long for that "young adult bookshelf" in the corner of the bookstore. We have wanted the separate bookshelf to highlight the amazing literature written just for teens, not adults--literature that does not just simply, as Boyce contends, "[reflect] the superficial concerns of that demographic." (What is superficial about racism? questions about identity? questions about war, revolution, good guys and bad guys? Is hope useful? Redemption possible? These are concerns that Ness takes up in "Knife," where two teen protagonists must figure this stuff out with little help from adults. In fact, true to YA form, it's the adults in the book who screw everything up in the first place).

I think books like Ness's make the point that YA lit isn't about dis-respecting teens, or telling them to "please don't bother the grown ups." Instead, I think it's very respectful of the adolescent, and the adolescent reader--people who, no longer kids and not yet adults, spend a lot of time thinking about out who they are, what the world is like, and what their place in the world will be. More importantly, these young people have the energy and ability to change the world--especially when, like Todd and Viola--they learn it's full of liars and NOISE.

More Thinking about the Series YA Novel

So, Nicholas Carr has a new book out on what the Internet does to our brains ("The Shallows"), and in it he says screen reading and its inherent skimming, linking, and multitasking is undermining our ability to focus and immerse in what Carr calls "deep reading": A large part of what it means to be human, Carr writes, is our capacity for "deep reading," an ability bestowed on us by Gutenberg's printing press, which fostered an "intellectual tradition of solitary, single-minded concentration." Deep reading, which requires "sustained, unbroken attention to a single, static object," has for ages allowed people to make "their own associations, draw their own inferences and analogies, fostered their own ideas." The Internet works against this, Carr writes, and as a result we're becoming numb, less human, shallow, knowledge jugglers (from NPR review). (I'm thinking "The Shallows" would make a great non-fiction pairing with Patrick Ness's "The Knife of Never Letting Go" or M.T. Anderson's "Feed").

BUT what to make of this in light of supposed Internet-addicted teens' love of series novels? (see more on teens' love of series YA fiction here). Series novels require commitment and focus, immersion, longitudinal reading--isn't this "deep reading?" I mean, hello, remember those books about Harry Potter?? I don't remember seeing copies of those on the discount table at B&N. And look at how those Internet-addicted teens have actually appropriated the Internet to continue and sustain their interaction with Rowling's fiction: There's MuggleNet, there's a Harry Potter wiki, and there used to be an online newspaper called "The Daily Prophet," but not sure what its status is now (looks like it's been re-appropriated by Warner Brothers??).

I kinda wish screen reading/Internet culture critics would quit dichotomizing reading processes into screen reading vs. print-based or traditional reading. Why always pit the two against each other? They're not the same thing: we read books and e-books differently and for different reasons than we read websites on the Internet--all reading, just different. When will we get to a point where we talk about and celebrate the multiple and varied ways we read rather than try to pigeon-hole reading in increasingly narrow, limiting ways? Why be all doom and gloom about the new ways of reading that new Internet technologies require? It's kind of ironic: Internet reading critics and nay-sayers would have us be illiterate to save literacy. Ha! I crack myself up.

Printz Award Winner and Honor Books

From year to year, the set of titles that make it to the top of the Printz award are interesting. Some years, I completely agree (like when John Green won for Looking for Alaska), while in other years I am surprised and left wondering (I won't name years for this).

In my YA lit class this summer, we read four of the five the final titles (I left Punkzilla off the reading list--no room).

The first book we read was Madman Underground. From there, we read The Monstrumologist, then Going Bovine. We finished the list with Charles and Emma this week.

Here are thoughts from some of my YA students:

And I thought And Then There Were None was an awesome horror novel! The Monstrumologist is incredible, though I was definitely scared out of my mind for half of the book! As far as teaching this novel goes, I think it would be fascinating to have it read aloud. There is so much action and suspense from beginning to end, and I think a class would fly through this book. If I was in high school and reading this book, I would LOVE my teacher for letting us read something so unique and engaging.
*****
As for the books, the winner in my mind is definitely Tales of the Madman Underground. Don’t get me wrong, I thought The Rock and the River was excellent. However I enjoyed “Madman” more because the characters are just so complex. Karl is so incredibly witty and I loved the jokes, the language, everything that kid thought or said worked for me. At the same time, he lives this difficult life and can be so dark and cold, but it all weaves in and out perfectly. The same thing goes for his mom, Beth. You have these scenes of her just being the worst mom and doing terrible things to Karl that had me hating her. Then you get these glimpses of her being “normal” and caring and really protecting her son. I don’t know about anyone else but as much as I wanted to hate her fully, I had moments where I just felt sorry for her and you kind of realize she’s just mixed up, too. Repeat everything I just wrote about Beth for Coach Gratz. We are painted a picture of this guy just being a real jerk, (I won’t call him what Karl does), but again there are moments where you see he is in fact human after all.
*****
I think my absolute favorite book so far (and possibly going on my list of favorite books in general) is Tales of the Madman Underground. The main character is so different, and so endearing. It reminds me a lot of Keesha’s House in that it is relaying the stories of all these different kids with troubled lives, who carry on as normal as they can. I know that this story is told extremely well because of the fact that I am a reader who cannot relate at all with the situations of these kids and yet I empathize with them and desire to know more of their stories. I feel like I know them the way any reader should know their characters.
****
I chose Barnes’ Tales of the Madman Underground, and I was glad I did. I am a pretty slow reader, but I read the book in about two or three sittings. I really liked it for a lot of reasons. The narrator was clever, and he was very personable. While reading, I really felt like this kid was opening up to me. It was like I was listening to a recording he made of each day.
While I was reading, I thought about how this book applied to so many different people: misfits, athletes, ‘socials’ as Barnes’ named them, parents, and teachers. It was interesting to see how many types of kids were in the Madman Underground. It gave several accounts of how people from seemingly different backgrounds had more in common than anyone would think. The story showed how students could be brought together through their individual struggles. One student may have problems with anything from just being sad and another may have a family member with boundary issues, but they all recognized how hard like could be for each other, and took care of one another. It was really kind of a cool way to show a bond between an eclectic group of friends.
****
The books we covered this week were Going Bovine (my new favorite), and Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith. I cannot lie, I have not finished Charles and Emma yet, but it is promising and I am interested to see how the story unfolds. Going Bovine is, by far, one of my new favorite books of all time. I never stopped laughing from beginning to end. I was sitting in the library reading it and on more than one occasion, I laughed out loud to point of having to be “shushed” by my peers. I could not get enough of every part of this book. The characters were brilliant, for lack of a better word, and the development of the story was enthralling; I never wanted it to end. I instantly fell in love with Cameron. No seriously, I had a crush on him throughout the book! The thick sarcasm was perfect and accurately depicted the mind of a sixteen year old boy as I would imagine it. The author, Libba Bray, could not have written that story in a better way. It was creative and enticing, leaving the readers with a sense of self-fulfillment through Cameron’s journey of life and death. I think the intended audience ranges to every person with the ability to pick up a book and read the words on the page; this book is limitless and also an inspiration. Though the surface of the book is awesome, there is a deeper element present that made me realize how important it is to not let life pass you by until it is almost over. Cameron taught us that life is too precious for us to simply wait around until it happens. I believe that readers of all kinds and preferences, no matter their qualms with reading, would enjoy this book to the full. I will definitely keep a copy with me at all times and recommend it to everyone I meet.

How I (and my students and their students) Am Spending My Summer Vacation

A recent USA Today news story opened with the quote "Can a $50 stack of paperback books do as much for a child's academic fortunes as a $3,000 stint in summer school?"

I don't know about a $50 stack of books, but what about one book (@$7.99) and four weeks working closely with preservice English teachers?

***********

We are two weeks in to a four week free summer reading program for rising 9th and 10th grade students in our town. I got the idea when I came to Alabama in 2005 after reading about the success of programs in the Baltimore area.

The summer is critical for all students, but especially poor students and students of color. Consider the following statistics from www.summerlearning.org/:

--All young people experience learning losses when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer. Research shows that students typically score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of summer vacation (Cooper, 1996).

--Low-income children and youth experience greater summer learning losses than their higher income peers. On average, middle-income students experience slight gains in reading performance over the summer months. Low-income students experience an average summer learning loss in reading achievement of over two months (Cooper, 1996).


--Summer learning loss contributes to the achievement gap in reading performance between lower and higher income children and youth. Research demonstrates that while student achievement for both middle- and lower-income students improves at similar rates during the school year, low-income students experience cumulative summer learning losses over the elementary school grades (Alexander & Entwisle, 1996).


--Large numbers of students who qualify for federally subsidized meals do not have the same level of access to nutritious meals during the summer as they do during the school year. Only one in five (21.1 per 100) of the 15.3 million children who receive free or reduced-price school lunches on a typical day during the regular school year participate in federal nutrition programs during the summer (Food Research and Action Center, 2002).


--Studies show that out-of-school time is a dangerous time for unsupervised children and teens. They are more likely to use alcohol, drugs, and tobacco; engage in criminal and other high-risk behaviors; receive poor grades; and drop out of school than those who have the opportunity to benefit from constructive activities supervised by responsible adults (Carnegie Council, 1994).

***********

I am working closely with a local high school's English department who identified the required summer reading novels--in this case YA novels (historical fiction for ninth graders and realistic fiction for tenth graders)--and then students enrolled in my YA literature class "teach" the novels over the month of June. **I added a common title (Keesha's House) to bring the two grades together.

It is amazing to watch. The fifteen students in my class range from juniors with little to no education courses under their belts to master's students getting ready to graduate with their second English education degree. They collaborate, teach, reflect, collaborate, teach, reflect--a looping process that occurs every day of the week. Many of them had not had much experience with YA novels until now (except for the Harry Potter fans). To see them see the power of YA lit and the limitless instructional possibilities gives me hope for the future.

It is also amazing to see the students transform. I'll be honest, many are there because their parents are forcing them to (or because if they don't attend, they'll be stuck babysitting younger siblings all summer). Hey, we'll take them! By the end of the second day, they are hooked!

Today was the fourth day that we had them for reading and on the way in off the bus one young 9th grade male asked me if I had another book like Keesha's House. I asked whether he meant the topic or the format. He said the format because he can't "read when the words go all across and down the page."

So, during a break, I went to my office and got a copy of Sold for him. On the way out to leave, he asked if I had any more that were like the stories in Keesha's House!! I have also been doing raffles each day, and the one day I forgot, boy, did they let me know (which is a GREAT sign that they are enjoying the reading).

As soon as I can, I will post some pictures and video clips from our time together. I will also be posting excerpts of the students' (mine and the high schoolers) work.

******

Free summer reading programs-ones that are more than remediation--are hard to find for students. With increased budget cuts, I fear that there will be nothing for many students in the summer other than "summer school" which more and more is being reduced to little more than worksheets and babysitting.

The Series YA Novel

Some local teachers and I recently polled middle school students in a private and public school setting to see what kinds of young adult literature they choose to read on their own (as in, not for school or in school). Our findings will be published in the 2010 summer issue of SIGNAL Journal http://www.kennesaw.edu/english/education/signal/Home.htm, but we thought we'd tell you a little about them here, too.

Across the board, middle school students are choosing to read series YA novels--novels like The Seeing Stone Trilogy, The Spiderwick Chronicles, P.C. Casts' House of Night series, the Vampire Academy series, the Redwall series. Books like that. Books I'm not that familiar with. Books I haven't been reading or paying much attention to. Until now. These series fall predominantly in the genres of fantasy/supernatural (think King Arthur, Tolkien, and vampire romance), and we do have research that tells us these are teens' preferred genres.

But what is it about the series novel that draws teen readers? (or adult readers for that matter? I just finished Stieg Larsson's "Girl" trilogy and can attest to the pull of the series novel. I think, for me, the draw is knowing the story continues and I don't have to say goodbye to a character I have come to know and love [and invested in] when the first book's over. There's something luxurious about the longitudinal reading experience, the longer stretch of time that a series allows. There's depth there, too--a chance to wade in, let the water hit high before heading back to shore. Of course, maybe this is also about my own hoarding tendencies?).

I love what Victor Watson writes in Reading Series Fiction: Watson likens series reading to "going into a room full of friends." This might help explain why reluctant or less confident readers might like series--it's scary to go into a room full of people (a book) you don't know. So much to learn, so much to pay attention to. So much nicer to recognize the friendly face, get the nod, and pick up where you last left off. Watson says series reading is the most important continuous reading young people can do on their own. He says it's central to young readers discovering that "fiction can provide a complex variety of profoundly private pleasures, and that these pleasures are repeatable and entirely within the reader's control." Ah. Repeatable Pleasure. Reader Control. We already know that other "C" word so important to teen reading: "Choice." Maybe we need to pay more attention to this idea of control, too. I imagine teens don't feel like much, if any, of the school reading they do is in their control. Like Teri Lesesne says in her new book Reading Ladders, a lot of school reading is vertical reading, where we "move ever upward" from stuff we like to read straight to difficult classics, with teens having very little say in the matter.

These ideas about reading pleasure and control are interesting to me because there's a (small) part of my English teacher identity (or non-conformist identity? or anti-consumerist identity?) that wants to pooh-pooh the series novel. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've never read the Harry Potter series, probably because it's a series and everyone else was doing it. Or Twilight for that matter. Yes, I did read the first one, and saw the first movie, but after that I just couldn't stick with it. I think part of the problem for me is all the marketing and consumerism tied up with the books (and maybe lack of more visible critique outside academia?). The gobs of money changing hands. And can we please turn on the TV or open a newspaper without seeing Kristen Stewart or Robert Pattinson? (I want the Lifetime movie Kristen Stewart back!) :) And I resisted the Stieg Larsson trilogy for as long as I could, but then read a NYTimes reviewer whom I trust, who said he was sad to see the trilogy end. I thought, well, maybe I should give this a try. And I'm glad I did. But I swear, if I see a Lisbeth Salander action-figure (oh wait. that could be kinda cool). :) I digress.

Henry Jenkins talks about "commodity culture," where marketers promote a sense of fan affiliation with fictional worlds and then exploit this affiliation through the marketing of consumable goods. Jenkins says such gooods offer empty promises of deeper levels of involvement with the story's content and other media users. Where's the control there? the pleasure? Who controls the pleasure? (who pleasures the controller? stop me!!). I think it's this "empty promise" stuff that worries/bothers me...maybe it shouldn't. I did have my fan crushes as a teen, and I knew no matter how many posters I put on my walls or how many objects I bought, it was all a fantasy of sorts. It was fun, it was silly. It was cliche--all my other girl friends were doing the same things, buying the same crap. Hmmm. Is that control? Consumer control? I need to think more about this and how it all relates to reading.

I do think we as English and reading teachers (and we are all reading teachers) need to start paying more attention to the series novel. Reading researcher Anne McGill-Franzen explains it’s the formulaic patterns of series books that can benefit a wide range of readers. McGill-Franzen explains that because series novels are “highly patterned,” readers notice reading conventions they might ordinarily miss or not understand in other kinds of texts (e.g., titles of chapters, dialogue or dialect, italics signifying change in point of view, etc.). Noticing such reading conventions can motivate readers to try on more complex literature. McGill-Franzen reports that as readers mature in both interest and reading skill, they will move from series books to more complex works. But Watson says we never outgrow the series novel; instead, we "grow into them." Hmmmm. I think he means we add the series genre to our textual repertoires?? It becomes one way of reading we recognize, appreciate, seek out at times, reject at others??

And Watson again: "Series-reading is always conscious and deliberate. You cannot read a series of twelve novels by chance. Deciding to read the next book in a series implies a commitment...[and] involves a special relationship between reader and writer which the reader has made a conscious decision to sustain."

Commitment, friendship, and textual conventions? Sounds like there's a lot to take seriously about the series novel.

What YA series novel are you currently reading? Tell us about it, and feel free to weigh in on why you think the series novel appeals to teen readers!

Picking Up Where Our Book Ends

So. My good friend and colleague Lisa over at U of A and I are getting a book about young adult literature published by NCTE this fall (we're so excited!). The book was originally titled Not Just for Independent Reading Anymore: Teaching Young Adult Literature to the Whole Class through Differentiated Instruction. But our lovely editor said a wise marketing decision would be to shorten the title to Teaching YA Lit through Differentiated Instruction. Definitely shorter, but I'm not thrilled with it. The whole impetus for our book is to encourage English/language arts teachers to pull young adult literature (and adolescents' out-of-school lives) from the margins of classroom activity. Traditionally, young adult literature has been used for silent, independent reading or in small-group literature circle activities. Rarely--despite the sophistication of YA lit, and appeal to teen readers--is the young adult novel used in whole-class instruction. The YA novel is just not taken seriously by many English teachers, but we think it should be. We think it deserves careful literary study in the classroom. Not every YA novel, granted, but there are definitely a lot of great YA novels being published right now that deserve teachers' attention.

The book (coming out this fall from NCTE, in case you didn't catch that) will give teachers our pick of the best YA literature published since 2000. We provide a rationale to use for judging "quality" YA lit, and we provide differentiated reading strategies for teachers to consider when using the YA novels in whole-class instruction. It's a jam-packed book. We're excited about it (in case you didn't catch that, either).

This blog will pick up where the book leaves off. We get to keep our title, while you get to hear about more great YA novels! We (and other contributors) will continue to provide our top picks of good, contemporary YA lit for classroom instruction, and strategy ideas. We'll also wax poetic now and then about trends we see occurring in the genre. We hope to be a resource for teachers, as we continue to advocate for the use of YA lit in the classroom. Happy reading!