Why YA Lit is Important to Have in Class (or, What I Learned In the Last Three Months)

Over the past few months our classroom has looked at a plethora of YA books with potential for teaching in the classroom. These have included Divergent, The Hobbit, Alice I think, A Thousand Shades of Blue, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Monkey Beach, Audacious, The Sandman, Thirteen Reasons Why, Maus, Speak and Fahrenheit 451. We have found some pose more difficulties for teaching than others, but oftentimes, the content, style or medium which also makes them problematic is an advantage in another light. I have realized that if possible, a diversity of choice in the classroom should be allowed. This will open up the range of choice and personal connection of students to books (this strategy is encouraged in the grade 10 BC ELA IRP (p. 27). Over the past months, four reoccurring features have stood out which give YA readers high merit for fostering a love of literature in contemporary students. (also a mandate of the grade 8-12 BC ELA IRP [p. 17]). These features are as follows: the literature’s ability to encourage reluctant readers; the literature’s ability to relate with the experiences of Young Adults; the literature’s ability to introduce new topics, language, or genres of interest; and the literature’s ability to integrate with the wider multi-media world.
To exemplify these relationships I have selected two of the books we have discussed recently: The Book Thief and The Hunchback Assignments.


Although it deals with serious themes, the language of The Book Thief is simple enough for lower-lever readers, while compelling enough to encourage the turning of pages. The fact that the book has been adapted to film can create visual links to this end and the presence of an omniscient and often humorous narrator acts as a meta-cognitive guide through the chronology of the novel. The Hunchback Assignments is a short book, so encouraging reluctant readers by the incentive of completion. It also employs the fantastical elements of mystery, super powers, quick moving plot and frequent action. Further, for a reluctant reader, a Graphic Novel with the characters from the book series is due to be released, and could serve as a conduit to the text through visual cues. Pam Cole (2009) writes that in "our efforts to create readers, we can actually squelch desire by forcing students to read books they dislike" (p. 38). Why do that, if we can avoid it?

Both The Book Thief and The Hunchback Assignments provides the relatability of a young protagonist who is experiencing drastic changes in their life, and which provides relational elements to young readers. The Book Thief’s protagonist deals with a change of home and family and encounters difficult relationships and tragic moments. The Hunchback Assignment’s protagonist is forced to explore the world without the help of his surrogate parents and has to cope with a deformity which makes him appear different than most people. These plot elements of both books provide themes that Young Readers can relate and make connections to from their own lives. John Guthrie (2008) writes that "[s]tudents who read for internal reasons (interest, plaeasure, favorite topics) read a lot and achieve highly" (p. 2).

The potential for The Book Thief to open pathways of new interest is huge, especially if combined cross-curricularly with social studies/History. The book deals with elements of WW2 with factual elements coming into play throughout the book. The Hunchback Assignments, though steam punk by genre, still has many factual connections to the City of London England, and makes frequent references and allusions to other literatures. By means of these connections in both books, there is the possibility for student’s understanding of topics to be reinforced cross-curricularly and for them to find reasons to enjoy reading. According to R. Jobe (2002), "[c]onnecting to interest is more powerful than anything else we can do as teachers" (p. 20).

Both The Book Thief and the Hunchback Assignments provide possibilities for students to interact multi-modaly in a way that can connect with their multi-media world. Film and Graphic novel adaptations have been mentioned, but Hunchback author Arthur Slade has set up a web page featuring the multi-modal elements of video, audio, podcast, forum and other interactive elements. Likewise, shmoop.com offers a web page with links for readers to make wider connections with The Book Thief to internet resources on topics introduced through the book. Tracy Tarasiuk (2010) has written accurately that "[t]he combination of reading, writing and technology presents unique opportunities to improve and address the contemporary literacy needs of adolescents." (p. 543)

What I’ve realized is that the above reasons to incorporate YA lit such as The Book Thief and The Hunchback Assignments–or any other for that matter–is not just that it qualifies according to the above criteria, but that it probably does so better than much of the ‘traditional’ literature that is taught in the classroom. Something to keep in mind.
I wish I had had more choice of novels to read in my high school classroom, and that those novels had more relevance to my life. As a potential teacher, the last few months of discovery has given me much to think about in regards to how I can encourage a love of reading in YA readers, with YA lit.

Works Cited:


British Columbia Provincial Board of Education, IRP Guidelines. English language arts grade 10

British Columbia Provincial Board of Education, IRP Guidelines. English language arts grade 8-12

Cole, P. (2009). Young adult literature in the 21st century. Boston: McGraw Hill.

Guthrie, J. (2008). Engaging adolescents in reading. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

Jobe, R. (2002). Info kids : How to use nonfiction to turn reluctant readers into enthusiastic learners. (pp. 16-22). Markham:Pembroke Publishers.

Tarasiuk, T. J. (2010). Combining traditional and contemporary texts: moving my english class to the computer lab. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(7), 543-552. doi: 10.1598

On the Topic of Transmedia

Persepolis is a highly acclaimed graphic novel recently adapted to film. Just another way to consider multi-modal interaction in the classroom

Graphic Novels

“The New Literacies, as they have been labelled, are concerned with multimodal texts…Together these “texts” fill the lives of students, and meaning is accrued as students combine the messages from the different media in to their own construct of the world.” (Booth and Lundy, 2007)

When I began my exploration of Young Adult Literature I hadn’t given much consideration to multi-modal texts, such as internet, audio, or graphic novels. Some presupposition existed in my mind that Graphic novels, at least, were not real literature, and thus shouldn’t be used in the classroom. The more we have discussed the content and medium in class, however, the more I’ve realized that graphic novels not only could be used in the classroom, but should. After all, as Rudiger and Schliesman (2007) have pointed out, "their content parallels the wide range of literature that librarians already collect in other forms, including biographies, poetry, and novels" (p. 57). The other myth which purveyed my mind, moreover, was that the graphic novel was a way to scoop up delinquent readers who have become overtly accustomed to the visual world through internet and television. While this might be an argument for graphic novels (as well as a reason to keep introducing text-based literature with it) I do not feel that this is the primary reason Graphic novels should be included in the teaching cannon. This perspective comes across as a compromise which condescends the visual genre, while, in fact, introducing strictly text-based mediums is a dis-service in a world where we constantly have interactions with many kinds of media. As such, and as responsible teachers, we need to train students to interact with various mediums. Graphic novels not only provide a gateway into reading for struggling readers, but offers a completely different way to read. Color, panel size and sequence are just a few tools the graphic artist can use to play which character, time, nuance, allusion, sequence, suspense, emotion, sense of place, etc. Booth and Lundy (2007) note that,

“[i]n order to become proficient readers, we need to learn how to question, visualize, infer, predict, connect our thougts and respond to the text that is before us. With graphic novels, the scaffolding necessary to create proficient readers is built into the way the graphic novel is constructed. The pictures not only support the text, but are also a part of the text.”(Chapter 1)

I will admit that much of my ignorance of graphic novels came from the fact that I hadn’t read any until recently. If this is your experience, I highly recommend picking up an acclaimed title to help you experience what is possible through this incredible medium. The first one I picked up was the multiple-award-winning Maus, by Art Spiegelman, parts one and two. I was amazed by the metacognitive strategies it employed as well as its unique and inductive way of dealing with a sensitive historical subject.

After Maus I read Pyongyang, a book by Guy Delisle, a cartoonist from Quebec, who wrote about his journey to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang in his 2004 graphic novel of the same name. In true visual form, its easiest to show what some of his conventions accomplish by showcasing a sample of his work:

This full page image strikes me for its ability to connote silence in a way which text has difficulty conveying. Contrary to those who suggest graphic novels do not leave enough room for self-construction of meaning, interpretation, and imagination, I point out that this single frame could spin off a myriad of discussion topics (why is the room empty? What is the author trying to say? Where are the people?) Further, the novel is in black and white, which is a very interesting choice to leave the interpretation of color up to the readers.

Consider how this frame creates a sense of place and attitude of the protagonist.

Sarcasm and humor can be tricky to create as a part of the writers persona. Consider how the visual medium works to this end, and how it could spur conversation on the aptness or appropriateness of humor when dealing with other cultures.

How much can be said or suggested in just two frames! In this case a commentary on a Westerner's perspective of North Korean music and patronage to the North Korean leader.

Another single page frame. This one seems to be a statement on uniformity and false fronts. The problem of how race is represented is also illustrated well here. Representation poses both a difficulty and a discussion opportunity for the classroom.

It would be too simple to say that all graphic novels should be allowed in the classroom, or that they are, as a rule, simple to teach. While perusing my university's library I encountered a book called Teaching the Graphic Novel which has over thirty chapters written by different authors on particular topics or viewpoints of teaching visual medium in the classroom. The fact that so much is being written on this medium proves that any stigma which had been attached to graphic novels as cheap entertainment, is wearing thin.



Works Cited:

Booth, D., & Lundy, K. (2007). In graphic detail: Using graphic novels in the classroom. Markham, ON: Rubicon Publishing Inc.

Hatfield, Tucker, et al. (2009). S. Tabachnick (Ed.), Teaching the Graphic Novel (2 ed.). New York: The Modern Language Association of America.

Schliesman, M., & Rudiger , M. (2007). Graphic novels and school libraries. Knowledge Quest, 36(2), 57-59. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tfh&AN=29968298&site=ehost-live&scope=site

A book in one hand. A computer in the other.

I love how collaborative Lit Circles are by nature. A student might be praised for bringing in a critical element which no-one else had thought of, or perhaps encouraged by a throng of “I was thinking that too!” when bringing up something else. Perhaps, however, I’m being too optimistic? After all, we don’t go far these days without encountering the viewpoint that attention spans in digital-age teens are shorter and bored quicker by traditional literacies. Are Lit Circles, or a young adult book like A Thousand Shades of Blue adequately contemporary for the digital age?

In a one-sentence summary, Thousand Shades is about a teen girl who travels from Ontario to the Bahamas on a sailboat with her family and encounters relationship difficulties, moral ambiguities and risky teen situations. I imagine a book like this could interact with the teen-age digital world. Firstly, the book is written in the first person, partially in present tense and partially in past tense. This is a very common style in which to write the journalistic and documentary-style social media posts which the hot-spots of the internet are rife with. A book like Thousand Shades could inspire students to write their own travel-narrative blogs based on real travels or metaphorical travels. In this regard, the novel provides an informal and conversational, but also literarily commendable format to aspire to. Most students are already representing themselves through text online. Assessing the elements to increase reader engagement and story-building technique are lessons which Thousand Shades could help to teach. Students could be encouraged, in their Lit Circles, to search for techniques the author uses to make us empathize with the protagonist, patterns in the story, or sentence lengths and effects. A Thousand Shades is written in short chapters and shorter sub-sections. Students could analyze the mechanisms of a single chapter or subgroup and then compare it with their own blog posts.

The online world also works well with the Lit Circles research components. Not only could students use online encyclopedias to look up nautical jargon, Google maps to chart the path of the Inter-Coastal Waterway, or online tour-guides to discover the history of the Bahamas, but students could directly email Thousand Shades’ author with questions (something which Stevenson encourages and makes easy on www.robinstevenson.com) and then return to class with the answers.

Thousand Shades has no pictures and in the online world it is uncommon for pages to be text only. Why not encourage a collection of digital images which could be put in an imaginary picture version of Stevenson’s book? Tracy Tarasiuk writes about having students create more multi-modal digital interaction with their novels, noting that student comprehension improved as they “chose music, sound effects, and images, [and] revisited their novels for clarification of the plots, characters, and central themes” (p. 549). Tarasiuk also suggested having students build, or contribute to an online Wiki about the novel they had read. “Instantly, I noticed that students put more effort into the work they completed on their wiki pages than they did on regular worksheets” (p. 548) writes Tarasiuk.

I think I’m starting to catch onto how Lit Circles, a book like Thousand Shades and the digital age can all serve the purpose of improving literacy in the modern classroom.

Works Cited:


Tarasiuk, T. J. (2010). Combining traditional and contemporary texts: moving my english class to the computer lab. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(7), 543-552. doi: 10.1598

Lit Circles

Recently, the students in my Young Adult Literature class and I were asked to participate in “Lit Circles”, the hippest, not-so-recent innovation in grade-school literature classrooms. The exercise works like this: you get in a small group of students who, together, are to read the same book, then individuals in the group are assigned a role to play. There are a number of roles, including “summarizer,” “researcher,” and “illustrator.” The idea is that in the next group session, each person will have something unique to bring to discussion. For instance, the summarizer summarizes the book for the group, the researcher brings some background information about the book, and the illustrator draws a picture which is representative of some part of the book. My group was assigned A Thousand Shades of Blue by Robin Stevenson, and, despite the fact that the Lit Circle model we were testing was geared for teens, I found the exercise invaluably illuminating.

I realized that the variance in roles allowed us to pick roles we liked, or wanted to challenge ourselves with. I was assigned the “Researcher” role, and I quickly realized that, although it was not an overbearing task to find enough background information to bring to class, it felt good to be able to share the information I had found with my classmates. I was fast realizing what confidence-building attributes Lit Circles embodied. I saw how the model necessitates everyone, from the most shy to most outgoing, to share in discussion, therefore naturally prohibiting the conversation from becoming off-topic or dominated by one person. Lit Circles are also highly malleable; group members can take more than one role, trade roles, or even make up new roles. It’s a model made to adapt. I could see it working well in the Young Adult’s classroom.

Think outside the box! Lit circles encourage unique skills or specific interests in students. The “Illustrator” role, for instance, encourages a creative and visual response to a text. There is a “Connector” role which encourages the student to draw connections to their lives or things they know about. At first I thought this was ambiguous, but then I realized that was what I liked about it. Young readers could bring in a song which they think goes with their book, they could bring in a poem they wrote in response to the book, they could simply bring a list of questions which came to mind while they were reading the book. There is no word-count on written responses. There is not even necessarily a mandate to hand-in a physical product. There’s no doubt that this is problematic for a teacher who is used to grading on something more tangible than participation, but the BC ELA reads that

“Effective teachers focus on passion…think of adolescent learners as active constructors of meaning…increase their fluency and develop their skills as thoughtful and strategic readers…[and] gradually release responsibility for thoughtful literacy practices by requiring that students think about what they have just read” (BC ELA, BC Ministry of Education, 2010).

In my mind, these goals are better achieved by a strategy like Lit Circles than a testing process which grades students based on a passionless rubric.

Peggy Silva wrote about her own education, recalling that teachers “who made a difference offered me total immersion in their subjects, not instruction in answering multiple-choice questions” (p. 31) Harvey Daniels tackles the problem of grading without compromising the immersive value of Lit Circles. He suggests that the process itself should be graded based on a multifaceted rubric designed with input from students. “In this way, we bravely grade the activity itself—peer-led small literature discussions—rather than some surrogate outcome” (p. 14).

In my last post I admitted that contemporary YA literature was not encouraged in my high-school classroom.
Now I wish it had been, and that something like Lit Circles occurred to help me realize the commonality of experience and collaboration of skills literacy can, and indeed should, be.

Works Cited

British Columbia Provincial Board of Education, IRP Guidelines. (n.d.). English language arts grade 10

Daniels, H. (2006). What's the next big thing with literature circles?. Voices From the Middle, 13(4), 10-15.

Silva, P. (2003). Can we read today, or do we hafta do english? The English Journal, 93(1), 29-32. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3650566

To Be or Not To Be: How High School English Encouraged Self-Indulgence

As a reader in High School I was, to be fair to myself, a very self-motivated learner. This did not mean, of course, that I took the educational material presented to me in class room like a silverfish to spineback. Rather, I was likely to do thorough reading on a topic which interested me, whether or not (and more often not) it was introduced to me in school. When I was introduced to Shakespeare, however, I found I actually enjoyed Hamlet although I ignored Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. I expect this is because we simply spent more time on Hamlet and its film adaptations. Why I came to enjoy it was linked to the amount of time it took for me to realize it as interpretive material. As any adolescent brimming with creative energy and emotional angst, Hamlet not only provided a character that seemed as overflowing with internal analysis as I, but who garnered a multiplicity of spinoff interpretations. In the manner of Hamlet, thus, even initially dry literature encouraged me to exercise my subjectivity. Whether this was the correct moral to gain, I can't say, but at least I began to value something different from what I ordinarily read.

This semester I'm in a unit which pertains to bringing Young Adult Fiction into the high school classroom. This blog is a reflection of what I learn along the way.
The idea of bringing YA literature into the classroom is gaining new attention now that the YA literature market has exploded. Don Gallo (2010) has noted that around 2000 more YA books were aimed at older adolescents rather than primarily middle-schoolers. The genre has decidedly taken off and continues to grow. Although we have "classic" young adult books in the likes of The Outsiders or perhaps Catcher in the Rye there is a new popular trend in the genre which cannot be ignored.
Groenke and Scherff wrote that, "We know adolescents like young adult novels because, unlike classical, canonical works, these novels have been written about adolescents,with adolescent readers in mind. It is these books that teachers should use in the classroom if today’s adolescents are to see school as relevant to their lives and experiences."

All said, English in High School did not introduce me to any new and exciting genres which I continued with beyond the classroom. Hamlet was a dying flame. Probably the most memorable element of English class, oddly, was watching the film Dead Poet’s Society. I suppose our teacher had us watch it hoping that the film would encourage us to see classical references in pop culture and find our own creative voice, but the film was largely about rejecting social normalization: about seizing your most pronounced self. I remember thinking that this was the most valuable lesson I had been taught in class. It meant that I did not have to enjoy all the literature I read, but it encouraged the notion that I might find inspiration in some. What I read should reflect my own interests. Importantly, I should not be afraid of holding my own points of view.

One day my teacher posted giant laminated copies of poems all over the classroom. She gave us erasable markers and told us to walk around the classroom, reading the poems and writing our thoughts- any thoughts- in the margins. As we made our way through all the works we would start over again, this time reading and potentially interacting with the comments our peers had made. The exercise encouraged stating opinions and defending or attacking poems, even peers’ opinions, which we did or did not like.

YA novels did not have a place in my high-school curriculum, and to be fair, in 2003-2005 there was much less to draw on than there is now. Even so, Harry potter, as the best example, was viewed as something that would never be brought into the classroom. It was disparaged as irreligious by some, in the religious school I attended, but moreover it was viewed as simply not good material. The same would go for many books which have followed in its tradition. But Groenke and Scherff's point above rings true for me. Why not have literature which reflects a young identity, thus creating a collective understanding of what it is to be a young adult and creating a sense of comradeship, this way, in the classroom? Kornfeld and Protho (2005) wrote that "literary embodiements of their own academic experiences help students realize that their experiences are not unique, and help students make sense of their abstract concerns and criticisms of schooling by anchoring them in something more tangible.(221)

Nine years on, I can’t say that the philosophies which justified the expounding of Hamlet, the showing of Dead Poets, or the conjecturing on poetry were off base in any rudimentary way. They affected me, but to what end? Should the literature and exercises youth encounter in High School encourage them to be themselves and not give into social pressures? Certainly. Much literature is about self-realization; certainly young adult literature seems to be, on the whole. Does the value of self-actualization justify putting special value on individual opinions? I’m less than convinced. Speaking for myself, I know that I continued to read the particular genre of fiction and vein of non-fiction as I had been interested in outside of high-school English classes. I continued in an illogical trend of dogma which asserted that my opinion was correct or at the least irrefutable for the very fact that it was mine. Relativism became a platform for my individualism rather than a table of mutual interest, understanding and learning. As I mentioned, High School English, ultimately, did little to inspire me to change my literary tastes beyond the classroom.

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Outside the classroom I was reading Tolkien’s fantasy and Timothy Zahn’s Star Wars fantasy for enjoyment. I was writing my own free form poetry and occasionally read modernist poets as a means of emotional expression and expression. I explored non-fiction, such as history, which made me think myself rather self-made, even if I was a slow reader. The importance and value of empiricism and logic in non-fiction was a dialectic I didn’t learn well, however, until college. The values of self-assertion and opinion had to eventually take a back seat to listening. The importance of learning about the areas of literature that I especially did not enjoy, I realized, had not been explained to me in high school as having a special value: If I did not like something, it probably meant I did not understand the value it had for me.

So I have to face it. Perhaps persistent stubbornness against certain literature has prevailed to my own loss. Beginning classwork which will have me focusing on the world of Young Adult literature for the next two months is going to be an opportunity to break a genre wall, because, to be frank, I did not read very much young adult literature in High School, and I haven't since. Even Harry Potter, the Holy Grail of Young Adult Fantasy, has never been touched by my hand. I have much to learn. But I doubt that Young Adult Literature will be put back on the shelf as quickly as Hamlet was.