Archives For YA literature

Dear Jason Reynolds, Please…Stop….Talking

April 2, 2019 — 1 Comment

Dear Jason Reynolds,

This past weekend, I saw you on TV on a book club channel.

You were being interviewed for some book conference. I think it was in Virginia.

You were charming.

You talked about your mother.

You were funny.

But as you talked and tossed your dreadlocks and smiled, I could not help but think:

“Stop talking! Get back to writing!”

Forgive me.

I know this is selfish, but if you don’t get back to writing, there will be fewer reading options for students.

Fewer options to offer students who have (literally) raced through the track series Ghost, Sunny, Patina, and Lu series.

Fewer options for those who have devoured Miles Morales, Spider-Man.

And fewer options to offer the student who finished reading A Long Way Down (independently).

He stands there asking,

“Miss, anything more like this one?”

You should know that this student has stretched a long-dormant reading muscle.

He can read; he chooses not to.

He chose the book because it didn’t have too many words on the page.

He finished the book because the words were compelling.

He wants more.

His teacher makes suggestions, “How about this one?”

But Poet X and Brown Girl Dreaming are not this particular kid’s cup of tea.

Not Booked or Crossover…not sports.

To bridge him from your book…to what’s next?

So, please stop talking.

Get back to writing.

Forgive me.

But, you started it… and they want more.

In Education, Reader, Reading, Silent Sustained Reading -SSR, Young Adult YA literature , , , , , , , , ,
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Go Ahead. Read Whatever You Want, Including YA

June 10, 2014 — Leave a comment

Screenshot 2014-06-10 21.50.37So… who appointed Ruth Graham of Slate Magazine to the book police patrol? In a recent piece Titled Against YA (6/5/14) Graham lays out an argument that adults can,

“Read whatever you want. But you should feel embarrassed when what you’re reading was written for children.”

Why? The best books tell good stories, and good stories are what we share as humans. Good stories are found in picture books; good stories are found in children’s chapter books. Good stories are found in folk tales, fairy tales, and fables. Good stories are not exclusive to one age group or another.  Why the need to separate required serious or not serious book choice by a reader’s birthdate?

The problem Graham is fabricating is that readers will become “stunted” on steady diets of YA (young adult) literature. Her snobbish references to Alice Munro (who I love) and John Updike (who I do not love) as those ” authors whose work has only become richer to me as I have grown older” is self-aggrandizing. There are plenty of “serious” award-winning authors who make me “roll my eyes,” but I would not withhold a text from someone who wants to read it. A good story is ageless, a good story is timeless.

So, Ruth Graham, I say readers should be able to read anything. Readers will learn, like you said, what “authors have to say about love, relationships, sex, trauma, happiness, and all the rest—you know, life—from the reading they choose to do,” regardless as to whether the book bears the stigma of YA, or maybe, because that book does.

Continue Reading…

In Young Adult YA literature , , , ,
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