Teaching Reading With Ya Literature

Jennifer Buehler shows how to implement a YA pedagogy--one that revolves around student motivation while upholding the goals of rigor and complexity. Jennifer Buehler knows young adult literature. A teacher educator, former high school teacher, and host of ReadWriteThink.org's Text Messages podcast, she has shared her enthusiasm for this vibrant literature with thousands of teachers and adolescents. She knows that middle and high school students run the gamut as readers, from nonreaders to struggling readers to reluctant readers to dutiful readers to enthusiastic readers. And in a culture where technological distractions are constant, finding a way to engage all of these different kinds of readers is challenging, no matter the form of delivery. More and more, literacy educators are turning to YA lit as a way to transform all teens into enthusiastic readers. If we want to meet the needs of all students as readers, we have to offer books they can--and want to--read. Today's YA lit provides the books that speak to the world of teens even as they draw them out into the larger world. But we have to do more than put YA titles in front of students and teach these books as we've traditionally taught more canonical works. Instead, we can implement a YA pedagogy--one that revolves around student motivation while upholding the goals of rigor and complexity. Buehler explores the three core elements of a YA pedagogy with proven success in practice: (1) a classroom that cultivates reading community; (2) a teacher who serves as book matchmaker and guide; and (3) tasks that foster complexity, agency, and autonomy in teen readers. With a supporting explication of NCTE's Policy Research Brief Reading Instruction for All Students and lively vignettes of teachers and students reading with passion and purpose, this book is designed to help teachers develop their own version of YA pedagogy and a vision for teaching YA lit in the middle and secondary classroom.

Thanks to the success of franchises such as The Hunger Games and Twilight, young adult literature has reached a new level of prominence and popularity. Teens and adults alike are drawn to the genre's coming-of-age themes, fast pacing, and vivid emotional portrayals. The essays in this volume suggest ways high school and college instructors can incorporate YA texts into courses in literature, education, library science, and general education. The first group of essays explores key issues in YA literature, situates works in cultural contexts, and addresses questions of text selection and censorship. The second section discusses a range of genres within YA literature, including both realistic and speculative fiction as well as verse narratives, comics, and film. The final section offers ideas for assignments, including interdisciplinary and digital projects, in a variety of courses.

This book introduces the reader to what is current and relevant in the plethora of good books available for adolescents. Literary experts illustrate how teachers everywhere can help their students become lifelong readers by simply introducing them to great reads—smart, insightful, and engaging books that are specifically written for adolescents.

In this book, Rodríguez uses theories of critical literacy and culturally responsive teaching to argue that our schools, and our culture, need sustaining and inclusive young adult (YA) literature/s to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse readers and all students. This book provides an outline for the study of literature through cultural and literary criticism, via essays that analyze selected YA literature (drama, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) in four areas: scribal identities and the self-affirmation of adolescents; gender and sexualities; schooling and education of young adult characters; and teachers’ roles and influences in characters’ coming of age. Applying critical literacy theories and a youth studies lens, this book shines a light on the need for culturally sustaining and inclusive pedagogies to read adolescent worlds. Complementing these essays are critical conversations with seven key contemporary YA literature writers, adding biographical perspectives to further expand the critical scholarship and merits of YA literature.

Each chapter opens with an introduction to and description of a different popular genre or award category of YA lit--science fiction, realistic teen fiction, graphic novels, Pura Belpre award winners, nonfiction texts, poetry, historical YA fiction--and then offers suggestions within that genre for whole-class instruction juxtaposed with a young adult novel more suited for independent reading or small-group activities. Groenke and Scherff present a variety of activities for differentiated instruction for the novel they've chosen for whole-class study, and provide an appendix of titles, by genre, that interest adolescent readers.

A concise, engaging, practical overview of children's literature that keeps the focus on the books children read. This brief introduction to children's literature genres leaves time to actually read children's books. Written on the assumption that the focus of a children's literature course should be on the actual books that children read, the authors first wrote this book in 1996 as a "textbook for people who don't like children's literature textbooks." Today it serves as an overview to shed light on the essentials of children's literature and how to use it effectively with young readers, from PreK to 8th grade. The authors use an enjoyable, conversational style to achieve their goal of providing a practical overview of children's books that offers a framework and background information, while keeping the spotlight on the books themselves.

“A call-to-action to everyone out there who wants to fight back.” —Bustle “Scandal, justice, romance, sex positivity, subversive anti-sexism—just try to put it down.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Cuts straight to the core of rape culture—masterfully fierce, stirring, and deeply empowering.” —Amber Smith, New York Times bestselling author of The Way I Used to Be Three misfits come together to avenge the rape of a fellow classmate and trigger a change in the misogynist culture at their high school transforming the lives of everyone around them in this searing and timely story. Who are the Nowhere Girls? They’re everygirl. But they start with just three: Grace Salter is the new girl in town, whose family was run out of their former community after her southern Baptist preacher mom turned into a radical liberal after falling off a horse and bumping her head. Rosina Suarez is the queer punk girl in a conservative Mexican immigrant family, who dreams of a life playing music instead of babysitting her gaggle of cousins and waitressing at her uncle’s restaurant. Erin Delillo is obsessed with two things: marine biology and Star Trek: The Next Generation, but they aren’t enough to distract her from her suspicion that she may in fact be an android. When Grace learns that Lucy Moynihan, the former occupant of her new home, was run out of town for having accused the popular guys at school of gang rape, she’s incensed that Lucy never had justice. For their own personal reasons, Rosina and Erin feel equally deeply about Lucy’s tragedy, so they form an anonymous group of girls at Prescott High to resist the sexist culture at their school, which includes boycotting sex of any kind with the male students. Told in alternating perspectives, this groundbreaking novel is an indictment of rape culture and explores with bold honesty the deepest questions about teen girls and sexuality.