Naked Reading: Uncovering What Tweens Need to Become Lifelong Readers
by Teri Lesesne
Teri Lesesne takes the title of this book from a story about her granddaughter, who loves reading so much that she sits naked after her baths, reading books and air-drying. Lesesne uses her granddaughter's intense enjoyment of reading as an example of what teachers want for all of their students: that they have a passionate relationship to books and reading. Lesesne offers several concrete examples of good ways to get reluctant readers interested and strategies for keeping up with the demands of voracious readers. She also provides a list of good books to recommend to readers in the "tween" age group, between fourth and eighth grades.
I enjoyed this book much more than I usually enjoy class textbooks. I appreciate the practical advice Lesesne provides and I see the possibility of using several of her suggestions in my classroom. I also feet that the book's conversational tone, coupled with several personal anecdotes, made this a much easier and more enjoyable read than the average textbook.
Young Adult Literature Selected Readings Packet
by Various Authors
by Various Authors
For our main text for Young Adult Literature, Dr. Adams assigned a packet of photocopied chapters from several different textbooks. If you are a middle or high schooler you might not appreciate what a great idea this is because you have yet to fork out hundreds of dollars on dozens of pounds of textbooks every semester. This packet was much more affordable and much easier on the back than traditional textbooks. Also, the packet allowed Dr. Adams to choose the best parts of several different books to create a text specifically tailored to our course. I really hope that more of my instructors take this approach to textbooks in the future.
Since every chapter in our packet came from a different book, the chapter numbers are not sequential, but we did start with a chapter one from a book called The Essentials of Young Adult Literature. This chapter addresses very basic information about the genre of young adult literature, which was very helpful to me because previously I had no idea this genre even existed. This book defines young adults as 11- to 18-year-olds and young adult literature as having the following characteristics: the main character is a young adult, the plot addresses issues related to young adults, the dialogue reflects young adult speech, the main character drives the plot and the point of view reflect that of a young adult. The chapter then goes on to outline a brief history of young adult literature as a genre and why YAL is a valuable genre (it gets kids reading) despite some resistance to its adoption into school curricula. Finally, this chapter also provides descriptions of the major YAL awards, who awards them and why they are helpful in book selection. I think this chapter is an excellent introduction to YAL and it was much easier to read and understand than many textbooks I've read.
The next chapter we read was actually chapter four from Literature for Today's Young Adults. My biggest take-away from this chapter was the surprising fact that some critics fear that contemporary YAL could be too realistic. It seems that some people think that YAL has gotten too dark in tone and that too many recently written YA books feature unhappy or hopeless endings. At first I thought this was absurd, why shouldn't kids read books that end unhappily when so many real-life stories end that way? However, our classroom discussion slightly changed my mind on this issue. Some other YAL students pointed out to me that young adults are sometimes easily depressed and that hopeful messages are important for such an impressionable age group. I still believe it is important that young adults see that the world doesn't always provide a fairy tale ending, but I also see the need for young adults to be uplifted and empowered by the books they read. After our discussion I conclude that the best approach to this issue is to offer a variety of books with a variety of endings and to be available to discuss endings that may upset or depress students.
Our next chapter was another chapter four, this time from Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation and Appreciation. This was my favorite chapter of the semester because it changed my mind on a polarizing issue: censorship. Before reading this chapter, and participating in the class discussions about it, I thought that censorship was an irrefutable evil. I thought that the only people who attempted to be censors were religious fundamentalists, bigots or at best very ignorant. This chapter proved me absolutely wrong. I know now that nearly every adult participates in some sort of censorship, whether it be shielding young kids from violence in movies, limiting teenagers access to materials that glorify substance abuse or even deciding not to include books with hateful or racist messages in a school library. I also know that when most parents or educators ask that students be denied access to a certain book, they are doing so out of concern for the well-being of the students. I was surprised to hear that censorship doesn't originate from feelings of hatred or narrow-mindedness, but from a genuine desire to do what's best for kids. I was also surprised to learn that it is necessary for teachers and librarians to keep a log of rationales for the books they choose to put on their shelves in preparation for attempts at censoring carefully selected course materials. Though I had never thought of it before, I think this is an excellent idea. With a pre-written rationale in place, a teacher can avoid the emotional confrontation that could potentially arise when a parent or educator challenges a book. As a future teacher, I find the idea of having a planned response to challenges very reassuring and doing so would help me feel more comfortable bringing potentially controversial books into my classroom. I am so glad Dr. Adams assigned this chapter because it taught me practical information that I can use to be confident and reasonable when addressing censorship in my classroom.
Chapter eight from Literature and the Young Adult Reader was our next reading assignment. This chapter focuses on young adult poetry. Honestly, I'm not especially fond of poetry, but after reading this chapter I feel that it's important to be enthusiastic about poetry when I present it in a classroom. Just because I don't care much for poetry doesn't mean that my students won't find it exciting and I would hate to negatively influence their opinion of poetry. Another concept I took away from this chapter is that poetry, especially YA poetry, doesn't have to be like the British romantic poetry I hate. This chapter gave me some great resources for finding contemporary YA poetry that addresses issues young adults really face and that allows them to express themselves in a unique way.
For our final text reading we read chapter ten from Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation, and Appreciation which is about comic books, graphic novels and magazines. Since I have been a comics fan for a long time, most of the information in this chapter was not new to me. One new thing I did learn is that a standardized definition for the term graphic novel is beginning to be accepted. According to the chapter, a graphic novel is longer than a comic and tells a complete, stand alone story. The chapter also mentions that graphic novels often address more “serious” subject matter than comics. Personally, I disagree with this definition as many comics I have read feature very serious subject matter and many comics have been bound together to form a longer work that tells a self-contained story but are still considered comics. Whatever we call them, however, I have always thought comics make a great addition to the classroom. Still, I am glad we read this chapter because many of my fellow YAL students say that they had never considered comic books to be appropriate for the classroom. Before this unit, many of them had never even read a comic and I am glad that they were exposed to this new form of literature. Even though many of them still harbor an unfair bias against comics in the classroom, I think a few minds were opened up to the potential of comics as a teaching tool.
Overall, this textbook reading packet was one of the most informative class texts I've ever read. I really enjoyed reading from several different texts and getting the perspective of several different authors without having to buy each individual book. Over this semester, I hadn't considered how much I've learned, but after writing this reflection I realize that I learned a great deal from this text packet and most of it is directly applicable to my future career. That is certainly not a statement I can make about any of the other textbooks I've read this semester.