It's Lit, Y'All

At 13, my younger brother, who is three years my junior, was diagnosed with a chronic illness. Afterwards, he retreated inward and found solace and entertainment in books. Although I had always been an avid reader, this was the time when he discovered his love for reading. At 16, my reading preferences and habits were naturally very different than his given our age and gender divides, but when he begged me to read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, I reluctantly acquiesced. While it wasn't anything I would ever read by choice, I read it for my brother. I saw it as a way to spend time with someone who was spending less and less time with people, and more and more time with books. I loved it. And I have no shame. I remember thinking it was so cool that the author explained events about Lincoln's life that were common knowledge through the lens of his (fictional) career as a vampire hunter. Yes, this book also lives in the space of fantasy, but the historical fiction element of ...

I am not the biggest fan of graphic novels in my personal reading life. This is not because I doubt their worth. I read the Twilight series, and I was happy as a lark while doing it. I think reading snobs are boring, and I don't think they read half as often as they pretend to. I don't love to read graphic novels, but I love anything that gets my students reading. For this reason, graphic novels have a welcome home in my classroom library.  As teachers, we don't have to like, love, or even understand the reading trends of our students. We need to be aware of what they are reading. We need to monitor in some ways the content of the texts. But we don't have to love books in order to bring them into our classroom. We only have to love students.  Teachers often question and denigrate the value of graphic novels, and many teachers who do use them view them only as stepping stones to more complex texts. When we do this, our students notice. Pernille Rip explains that when...

The following is a unit plan for unit one for my ninth grade unit. My project is to refine and design unit one based on what I've learned this semester especially incorporating Sacks' Whole Novels method. In addition to a unit one plan, I will establish a theme that will reoccur for my students throughout the semester as well as an independent reading plan that fits our in class reading needs. The unit plan below will eventually be updated with hyperlinks that fully explain each of the assignments listed. It is color coded by task. Unit One Plan

When I read the title of this article, I bristled immediately annoyed. Then before continuing, I considered the idea that the title might be misleading, and the article might contain a defense of adults reading YA after all, so I continued on hopefully. To this end, I was disappointed.  In the article Graham writes that " once upon a time, an adult might have felt embarrassed to be caught reading the novel that inspired it. Not because it is bad—it isn’t—but because it was written for teenagers." I laughed at this  because what is about condescending readers and their penchant for glorifying the past. For me, glorifying the past almost always feels icky, and it supports the notion that newer generations are deficient in some way. As a proud millennial,  who has a lot of fundamental  issues with both boomers and gen x, I find this assumption that yesteryear was better both problematic and offensive.  Graham also points out that the majority of people buying Y...

Ya'll this teacher of reading is excitedly jumping on the whole novels train. While there are adjustments I will have to make for my curriculum and the expectations and context of my school, I am buying what Sacks is selling. In her presentation of the whole novels system, Sacks explains the rationale behind her choices very simply with two main points: 1. Prescriptive curriculum limits students. It gives them a point to reach, but does not ask them to keep going. When teachers expect a specific answer from students, they may invalidate the myriad of answers that students might produce on their own. 2. The novel as a format is meant to be enjoyed as a whole. The whole novels system allows students to experience the novel the way they might in a college course or in a book club. When teachers chunk up a novel into sections, they deny students the opportunity to experience the art the way it was intended, and they prepare students to be high school students of English, but not ...