About 20 years ago, I was an English education major finishing up my undergraduate education. My courses in pedagogy were behind me, my practicums were behind me (soph-prof, JPE, and senior student teaching), and my English classes were winding down. The spring of my senior year, I found myself signing up for children’s literature. Why not? I thought. It fulfilled an elective required, it was being taught by a professor I knew and respected, and it probably wouldn’t go to waste. That first day in Children’s Literature and Storytelling, Gwendolyn Jones taught me a very valuable lesson – a lesson that has remained with me and has served me well.
Teachers need to read the books their students read, for how else can they recommend books to children?
And thus, my life with young adult literature began.
During Mrs. Jones’ class, I found myself reconnecting with favorite characters from childhood and making new friends. I allowed myself – for the first time since I started college – to read with reckless abandon.
When I was with my cohort of English majors, I found myself hiding what I was reading. After all, children’s literature wasn’t serious literature, was it? What would they think if they caught me reading Tuck Everlasting?
Two months after graduation, I was offered a teaching job – a middle school teaching job. A middle school teaching job in an inner city. A job that college didn’t prepare me for. A job I didn’t envision when I thought of my very own classroom.
And so, the September after graduation, I found myself scraping together books for my 7th and 8th graders, and Mrs. Jones’ words echoed through my head, I needed to read to find books to connect with my students. I wanted my students to read with the same reckless abandon I did when I was in middle school. I went in search of my school’s library – only to find there wasn’t one. So with my first paycheck, I headed to Barnes and Noble. That day in mid-September, 1993, I bought my first YA books as an adult. Instead of just plopping the books on the cart that served as my classroom, I took Mrs. Jones’ advice, and I read them. And it was then my love affair with YA really began.
Unlike my days as an undergraduate, I now read YA proudly – on the beach, on airplanes, in doctors’ offices, and in my classroom. I talk YA with my colleagues and on Goodreads. I talk about YA lit with my students. I haunt my local Barnes and Noble, where I have continually confused the community relations manager at book signings because what adult without children would line up with a bunch of 14 year olds and wait for hours to hear Cassandra Clare speak? I also have been known to randomly give book advice to teens in the YA section. I do preface my intrusion by telling the unsuspecting teen that I am a language arts teacher – not that that excuses my behavior. I can’t help myself. I want to put good books in adolescent hands. I’ve even toyed with the idea of working part time at B&N only to realize that I probably would spend more in YA books than I would make.
And then the other day when I was in B&N looking for books 2 & 3 of Kenneth Oppel’s Matt Cruse series , I noticed something very strange (aside from the subgenres within the YA section, such as Paranormal Teen Romance). There were four people in the Young Adult section. Four People. No big deal, right? Right. Except that the four people in YA were all over 30. There wasn’t a teen or young adolescent to be found. It seems that YA – some 43 years after SE Hinton published The Outsiders – had come into its own. It had arrived. The New York Times essay, “Kids’ Books Are All Right,” was correct. YA had achieved an adult audience.
And so a kernel of an idea, which began a few years ago, began to germinate and take hold. And today that kernel blooms into a blog about young adult literature. It is my hope that you’ll journey through YA with me. If you’re a secondary teacher, perhaps we can exchange some ideas about using YA in the classroom. If you’re an adult reader of YA, hopefully, I can introduce you to some YA books that are just good reads. And if you’re an adolescent yourself, hopefully, I can help expand your horizons and maybe find a new title or two.
I’ll be posting a few times a month. My blog with cover specific topics. Since there are a myriad of book review sites out there, I will try to avoid simply reviewing a book. I hope you’ll join me next time as I explore fairy tale retellings for YA.
Until then. . . see ya!
Cher–
You are teaching me what Mrs. Jones taught you…I need to read the books my students read and the books I wish for them to read! I love reading your Goodreads posts, as I find titles that I can recommend to my Basic Skills kids that truly grab them. At least 6 of my current students have benefited from your shared titles, and that is truly remarkable! (Remember last year–15 year old ESL Maria ate up Lois Lowry and read every book she’d ever written thanks to your classroom library!)
Additionally, my 27 year old “daughter,” Stephanie, an aid reader of all genres, thoroughly enjoyed your Hunger Games/Suzanne Collins’ series recommend reading them all, and is presently loving Zevin’s Elsewhere (I’ve lent Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac to an 8th grade student), as I did!
We have discussed extensively, that engagement is the key with students, and how better to do just that, than to have a review of a title on the tip of your very own tongue!
I appreciate how you walk your talk, immersing yourself in titles for all students.
D