Mariah Ryan's Response Paper #2, Prompt 3

Eleanor and Park: Analyzing Teenage Love Through the Novel’s Complex Situations

            Many educators are reluctant to teach seemingly simple texts with fear their students will not gain the superior educational experience they desire the pupils to have. Novels such as Great Expectations or To Kill a Mockingbird hold great value in English classrooms. Teachers may believe contemporary young adult (YA) novels are mundane or fail to exhibit the complexities novels need to thoroughly evaluate students’ knowledge. However, with the new push to introduce YA novels in the classroom, teachers are finding themselves hustling to build a library of age-appropriate YA novels for their students to dive into. Rainbow Rowell’s novel, Eleanor and Park, showcases how beautiful young love can be whilst the characters are in the mix of intense personal situations they struggle with daily. Furthermore, Eleanor and Park both share a deep connection that is limited by their familial circumstances that many students can find relevance in, even given the 30 years difference between the published date and the current society. I assert Eleanor and Park’s newfound love is what makes this novel relatable in the classroom, while the complicated social issues both characters face gives the novel its complexity teachers need to have in their literature classes.

            The sense of helplessness and being lost runs wild throughout Eleanor and Park as both young teens journey through a world of adversity. Eleanor is poor and has been introduced to a home life where she feels unloved and unwanted. While Park is fortunate enough to have a loving family, he feels like an outcast due to his ethnicity and later his love for Eleanor. In an article by Linda Holmes, she points out that Eleanor and Park’s teenage love “makes them feel less lost” (Holmes, “True Love”). While many of the issues the characters face in the novel might be inappropriate for middle school readers, I do believe many high school students would relate immensely to the idea of one’s first love. High school is a tough transition for many young adults; the new idea that one isn’t a child anymore because they have four years left before the real world, gaining some ground on their identity, and experiencing those around them as potential love interests makes many individuals feel lost and alone. It is easy to believe that finding one person who clicks with you on every level, and an attraction is mutually share among the two, would help any high schooler feel complete and safe. Readers can see Eleanor and Park experiencing one another in new ways during an intense intimate moment in Park’s parents’ house.  Rowell describes Park’s desire for Eleanor to touch him “like a cat who pushes its head under your hands” as Eleanor “brought her hands down Park’s chest with her fingertips” (Rowell, 250). This new and lustful love the two share makes many adult readers today reminisce about their first boyfriend or girlfriend and what it was like to be placed in an intimate situation for the first time. The way Rowell depicts the encounter between the two as “awkward” in comparison to how “in movies, [intimate relations] happens smoothly or comically” (Rowell, 250). This situation will have teenagers thinking closely to their own relationships they are currently in, or have experience already in the past. The ability to relate to a situation is what makes the novel work in the classroom—it helps keep the students engaged in what they are reading and they are able to compare what is going on in the text to their own lives. This is one aspect that allows teachers to use YA novels as a tool for complex thinking.

            Teachers want students to read a text and analyze complex issues as a method of assessing higher order thinking. As stated before, one of the biggest arguments about YA novels are the lack of complexities embedded into the storyline. Contrary to this belief, Eleanor and Park not only exhibits conflict, but also very intense and difficult situations that teachers can use for deep instruction. While the controversies that are describe in the novel are tough and sensitive, students can practice empathy and critical thinking about these issues in the context of Eleanor and Park’s young romance. For example, Rowell lets the readers into Eleanor and Park’s intimate scenario when Park asks Eleanor if their relationship is “going to be weird now” and Eleanor replies, “only for a minute, only a little” (Rowell, 253). The encounter they both experienced together is new, it is complex because neither knows what to think about what happened besides they care for one another—Park even explicated tells Eleanor during it that he loves her—and that they both feel pleasure from being touched. Rowell lets the situation become even deeper as the readers peer into Eleanor’s fears that she might “never [have] the chance to touch him like this again” (Rowell, 250). The readers are forced to think about Eleanor’s home life and how each day with Park might be the last; this is partly due to her stepfather being increasingly more violent towards Eleanor, leaving her with the choice to stay and endure potential death/rape or to run away and find safety with her aunt and uncle in Minnesota. The readers are able to see the struggles both Park, and especially Eleanor, face internally and externally. Their relationship becomes more complex as it develops more romantically throughout the chapters.

            Rowell’s Eleanor and Park gives adults an inside advantage of teenage struggles all while providing an outlet for those same teens to feel not so alone. This novel works very well in a classroom because of its content and deep rooted issues the characters are forced to deal with. It is because of the sensitive nature of the novel that students can feel they aren’t alone in their search for a better life or knowing their true identity. The love Eleanor and Park share can be transmitted for young adults in their own romantic relationships by Rowell providing a detailed explanation of the two characters as individuals and as a romantic pair. Teachers are able to use YA novels like Eleanor and Park to meet state standards, engage their students with an interesting storyline, and analyzing complex issues and ideas found in the novel. Through the relationship we watch unfold between the two, Eleanor and Park leave the readers with many questions about the future of the relationship, but ultimately hope that both are better because of the experiences they had while in each other’s presence.     

Works Cited

Holmes, Linda. “True Love, Book Fights, and Why Ugly Stories Matter.” NPR. NPR, 18 Sept. 2013.              Web. 31 May 2016.                                            http://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2013/09/18/223738674/true-love-book-fights-and-why-              ugly-stories-matter

Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor and Park. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2013. Print.

“Literature is the better part of life […] provided life is the better part of literature.”

Wallace Stevens, From Adagia

The document entitled Parent Findings & Additional Proposed Guidelines for the Review and Approval of High School Reading Materials (Proposed Guidelines) has been carefully reviewed by the staff of Anoka-Hennepin High Schools. The thoughtful ideas presented through thorough research are well-reasoned and the issues raised are not taken lightly. It is the finding of the staff—the Principle, the English teachers, the Library Media Specialists, the School Counselor, and the School Board—that the novel Eleanor and Park be removed from the summer reading list for 2013 but remains allowed to be taught in the classroom under the careful supervision of Literature Educators. The themes of love and hate, violence, sexuality, and abuse of Eleanor and Park is incredibly relevant to teenagers in our community, and the truths of these difficult subjects transcend the nastiness of the language and the action of the plot to a place of understanding, compassion, love, and acceptance for the two protagonists of this particular novel.

Eleanor and Park is taught as a contemporary realistic fiction that presents important issues of bullying, developing sexual identity, verbal, sexual, and physical abuse clearly outlined in the Proposed Guidelines. However, it is precisely the realistic portrayal of these issues that is necessary for the truths of the themes to reach our young adults who may struggle with life’s ugly difficulties that cannot be censored. In discussing the importance of the realistic fiction genre, Butcher and Hinton summarize Aronson’s argument in Exploring the Myths: The truth about teenagers and reading: “[…] a writer of realistic fiction like a great painter, must go beneath the surface of life to explore discontinuities, examine the subconscious, and investigate unsettling truths. The results must not be sugar-coated stories of perfect lives but frank examinations of the choices young adults must make” (Butcher & Hinton 128). Within the context of the English Literature classroom, Eleanor & Park is an important example of the realistic fiction genre that investigates unsettling truths of abuse and sexuality through shocking realism. To censor the book is to sugar-coat the difficult issues our teenagers face. 

As the Proposed Guidelines states, we are confronted by the nasty language and sexually explicit themes within the first chapter. Setting the opening scene on the bus situates the language and the complexities of developing sexuality within the social structure of kids themselves. Teenagers will swear and threaten each other, and they will grapple with issues of romance and sex, and the consequences (e.g. pregnancy) thereof as realistically painted in this first chapter (Rowell 5-9). Rainbow Rowell creates this horrific scene for Eleanor’s entrance in the story as well as the new kid in school. The 666 school bus (hell) as Eleanor states with devils such as Tina (Rowell 10-11) is precisely the place where she will rise with Park above the ugliness. In her online article “True Love, Book Fights, and Why Ugly Stories Matter” by Linda Holmes, she states, “Ultimately, Eleanor & Park is an enormously optimistic book about love and connection, about the capacity of people to be powerfully consoling and healing to each other, even when they’re 16.  And for that healing to be meaningful, there has to be some honesty about the injury” (Holmes). The stark and realistic portrayal of nasty language and the sexual issues of teenagers is necessary for the beauty that Eleanor and Park create through their love, which is moral. Although they get real close to having intercourse, Park hesitates at the end of the book for two important reasons: he doesn’t have a condom and he doesn’t want to believe he’ll never see her again: “‘Eleanor, no, we have to stop. […] I don’t even know how to…I don’t have anything. But I don’t want you to get— […] I need to believe that it isn’t our last chance […] I need you to believe it, too’” (Rowell 302-303). Showing maturity and real love for Eleanor, Park fights his hormonal urges and finds the beauty and intelligence of making the very important decision to abstain from sex. Protected sex and abstinence are the important lessons here for our teenagers as they grapple with their own immature hormonal tendencies for physical desire.

The staff here at Anoka-Hennepin High School agree with the Proposed Guidelines on the issue that “it is possible for those educators to have a disproportionate impact on the moral and societal views of our children […] as the family unit continues to be eroded and children receive less and less intentional instruction in these areas” (Proposed Guidelines). However, to be able to instruct in the moral area of difficult and ugly subject matters, we as educators need to be as strikingly honest as Rowell is with her novel Eleanor & Park. Referring to the NCTE Position Statement on The Student’s Right to Read, “English Teachers forced through the pressures of censorship to use only safe or antiseptic works are placed in the morally and intellectually untenable position of lying to their students about the nature and condition of mankind” (NCTE Position Statement). The truths of the text Eleanor & Park and the important truths of pedagogy far outweigh the aesthetically displeasing nature of ugly and difficult subjects relevant to the lives of our youth.  Therefore, the staff here at Anoka-Hennepin High School has decided to allow this novel to be taught in the classroom under instruction, but we will remove it from the summer reading list so as to not promote without instruction the ugliness of foul language and sexual activity.

Works Cited

Aronson, M. Exploring the Myths: The Truth about teenagers and reading. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow (2001). As summarized in Bucher, K. & Hinton, K. Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation, and Appreciation 3^rd Edition. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.

Bucher, K. & Hinton, K. Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation, and Appreciation 3^rd Edition. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.

Holmes, Linda. “True Love, Book Fights, and Why Ugly Stories Matter” Monkey See Pop Culture News and Analysis from NPR. npr.org. National Public Radio. (18 September 2013). Online article. http://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2013/09/18/223738674/true-love-book-fights-and-why-ugly-stories-mattergly%20Stories%20Matter

NCTE Position Statement. “The Students’ Right to Read.” ncte.org. National Council of Teachers of English. (November 2012). Website. http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/righttoreadguideline

Parent Findings & Additional Proposed Guidelines for the Review and Approval of High School Reading Materials. parentsactionleague.org. Parents Action League. (24^th July 2013). PDF. http://www.parentsactionleague.org/storage/post-images/Parent%20Findings%20and%20Additional%20Proposed%20Guidelines%20-%20130724%20v1_1.pdf

Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013. Print.

Stevens, Wallace. Adagia. As quoted in: NCTE Position Statement. “The Students’ Right to Read.” ncte.org. National Council of Teachers of English. (November 2012). Website. http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/righttoreadguideline

Music as a [defensive] Weapon

While preparing for this response, I asked myself why the author, Rainbow Rowell, had chosen the mid-80s as the setting for Eleanor & Park. I checked her on-line bio and found that Rowell was born in 1973; she would have been about 13 years old for the majority of the story. My first impression, after completing the book, was overall a positive one, but I was left thinking:  this backdrop is 30 years old!  I understood the movie, music, literary, and even the bus-riding references without having to look up the explanations or definitions or context. The book was very well-received, as I found it had won as least seven (7) literary awards (the cover of the copy I purchased listed it as a #1 New York Times bestseller and a 2014 Michael L. Printz Honor Book for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, to name just two). So, what, given today’s tech-saturated life, made this book a success, given its almost “historical novel” perspective.

Then, it hit me. Music was such an integral part of the story that I would argue that it was another character. From the first time we meet Park on the bus to the last page where Rowell writes, “It filled his head with song lyrics,” I was struck by how Eleanor and Park’s shared love of music helped meld their solos to a duet. (Rowell 5; 325) The variety of music that was their soundtrack was impressive; it covered the 60s (Joni Mitchell and The Beatles), the 70s (Bread), and the 80s (from Danzig to Henry Rollins/Black Flag to Foreigner to The Smiths). Music literally moved Eleanor and Park closer – the book jacket shows the two of them sharing headphones.

For context, let’s remember that MTV had launched almost exactly five years prior (August 1981). MTV afforded a generation access and exposure to artists that weren’t readily available via AM/FM radio, something that Eleanor acknowledged during their first real discourse (Rowell 45). And I believe Rowell purposely chose music that wasn’t mainstream to accompany and frame Eleanor and Park’s budding relationship – a sort of misfit music for misfits. So when Park shared his Walkman and The Smiths (Rowell 52) with Eleanor that first time, he opened up a world for her, in both music and emotion. This newly-discovered shared love of music drew them closer to each other, while helping insulate them from the rowdy kids in the back of the bus.

The mix tapes that Park made for Eleanor also became a sort of lifeline for those days they were separated. Her home life was filled with ugliness, abuse and neglect; those mix tapes provided Eleanor with a means of escape, if only while the AA batteries that Park gave her lasted. (Rowell 56-7) There’s a sort of irony here, too, because even as Eleanor listens to some contemporary track by The Smiths, she is completed cut off from other types of communication. Her house has no phone or cable and likens her environment to living underground. (Rowell 81) Here, again, I believe Rowell showcased Eleanor’s loneliness and detachment. I could not help but feel the poignancy of Eleanor’s plight. She had to feel torn between the safety of her loneliness (this almost equated to invisibility for Eleanor – it was safer for her if she could erase herself from her environs) and the warmth of Park’s friendship. Rowell wrote, “She practiced being in a room without leaving any clues that she’d been there.” (36)  I think Rowell wanted readers to grasp Eleanor’s turmoil - how do you reconcile the need to hide with the need to be loved?  Of course, readers, as well as Park and his family, are led to the conclusion that Eleanor’s physical, emotional and mental well-being rely on that need to be invisible, especially to her step-father Ritchie.

Rowell didn’t include lyrics with most of the songs she referenced, but I found myself calling them to mind on several occasions as I read:  when Eleanor first visited Park and his family, she noted that Wang Chung was on MTV – I wondered if it was “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” (Rowell 124); as Eleanor and her mother walked home on their “field trip” – her mom was humming “Both Sides Now” (Rowell 182); and, when Eleanor heard something like “Mother” – she hated it because she felt Danzig was yelling at her (Rowell 230).

As the book continues, song titles become a running summation of their relationship, from “Breakin’ Us in Two” to “I Want to Know What Love Is” to a Bon Jovi song that I imagined was “Livin’ On a Prayer.”  In the final analysis, I can see why Park’s head was filled with song. Music truly connected Eleanor and Park, and it continues to connect all those willing to lend an ear (or AA batteries).

Works Cited

Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013. Print.

Shelby's Teach This Mystery Novel

Teach This Mystery Novel

Reconstructing Amelia—by Kimberly McCreight

            Presented as a duel narrative, Reconstructing Amelia follows the present day narrative of Kate, and the flashback narrative of Amelia. Kate, the workaholic lawyer and single parent of Amelia has constantly struggled with her ability to juggle the demands of her job and the demands of being a single parent. Recently, Kate has felt even more detached from Amelia. At fifteen-years-old, Amelia has become more secretive, a trait that Kate reluctantly accepts as her teenager’s coming-of-age coping mechanism. Kate thought she understood her daughter as well as any parent knows their teenager until she saw the cop cars at Amelia’s school: Amelia jumped off the roof of the building. Amelia was dead. Kate pleaded with the police to investigate Amelia’s death, she refused to believe that Amelia would commit suicide—whatever problems Amelia was dealing with, suicide was not in her character. Finally, Kate gets the confirmation she needed in an anonymous text message, “Amelia didn’t jump.” With law enforcement still denying her evidence, Kate enlists the help of her detective friend, Seth, to reveal the truth of her daughter’s death. By examining text messages, blog posts, and social media sites, Kate reconstructs the last few days of Amelia’s life, revealing Amelia’s struggle to cope with her absentee father, cyber bulling, and homosexuality. Understanding the truth of Amelia’s death, Kate discovers the daughter she never knew she had, and must preserve the memory of the daughter she could not save.

Why Should I Teach This Text?

            Using a mystery novel in the classroom is a great way to peek student interest and encourage critical thinking skills. In their book Young Adult Literature: Exploration, Evaluation, and Appreciation, Bucher and Hinton explain that a good book in this genre will encourage “reasoning and problem solving, as well as questioning and examining evidence, fact, and motives” as well as “explor[ing] values and social morality” (165). In this way, a good mystery is a great way to introduce students to the idea of looking for contextual evidence to support their claim as well as understanding the complexities of human emotion. Kimberly McCreight’s novel Reconstructing Amelia is a valuable mystery for the classroom because it is more than a simple “whodunit.” By considering Reconstructing Amelia as a teachable text, students will benefit from a complex mystery that simultaneously engages students with relatable topics such as homosexuality, cyber bullying, nontraditional families, and vicious peer pressure as well as providing an easily digestible introduction to postmodern form.

 By frequently asking students to determine the outcome of the novel with each additional reading, students will develop a greater understanding of how to properly support a claim with specific contextual evidence, as well as how to effectively change their interpretation when presented with new information. Reconstructing Amelia has embedded clues such as text messages, blog posts, and Facebook statuses throughout its dual narrative, giving the reader the ability to join Kate as an amateur sleuth. Unlike classic mystery novels like Sherlock Holmes and The Moonstone, Reconstructing Amelia’s digital inclusion is much more likely to engage the young reader because the book “speaks their language” while still asking them to look for patterns and connect the dots to figure out what happened to Amelia.

Where Reconstructing Amelia may fail in multiculturalism, the novel makes up for these shortcomings by addressing a myriad of universal challenges faced by all young adult readers that will most definitely inspire each individual student to relate, reflect, and challenge their perceptions of the social construct. Issues like cyber bullying, peer pressure, absentee parents, and homosexuality are colorblind and will thereby be more likely to reach the entirety of the class in a way that a novel focusing on the struggles of an African American student will not. This is not to say that studies in multiculturalism are not significant, but only teaching novels centered on one particular issue may alienate the majority of the student population from having a direct connection to the text; therefore I would suggest that all teachers consider using at least one book (or other text) such as Reconstructing Amelia alongside multicultural texts to ensure your classroom content resonates personally with every student in some way. By presenting these universal problems, Kimberly McCreight’s novel goes beyond the normal boundaries of a mystery novel and explores a genre that Bucher and Hinton refer to as “realistic fiction.” Bucher and Hinton explain that this genre is particularly beneficial to young adults because it attempts “to make meaning out of a number of related events in ways that present young adult readers with new ideas, add new depths to their lives, and allow them to see themselves in new ways” (126). Sifting through the digital trail left by Amelia, Kate discovers that her daughter was forced to post nude pictures of herself on the internet in a desperate attempt to join a particular ‘clique’ at her school. Though it is unlikely that many students will be experiencing something this severe, it is safe to assume that many students will experience some type of “friend initiation,” or just feel an overwhelming desire to be accepted. This could also be a good opportunity to discuss why teenagers feel the need to be accepted by certain groups, the morality of groups that require an “initiation” as well as warn students about the permanent nature of the internet. Bucher and Hinton say that a mystery novel should “[explore] values and social morality” (165), consider asking students why values and social morality seem to be different in high school. Kate also discovers that her daughter had been secretly dating another girl at her school. Amelia’s homosexuality is only a small portion of the novel and I would not consider this a “gay text,” but it is an important topic to cover with high school students and the context in which it is presented in Reconstructing Amelia is important. Amelia never “came out” to her mother. She kept her relationship and her sexuality secret her entire life. Because this book is only narrated in the present time from Kate’s perspective, the reader only gets to see the outcome of a distraught mother who wishes that her daughter would have told her. It is implied that Amelia thought that her mother “just wouldn’t understand.” How many high school students don’t tell their parents things because they assume the parent won’t understand? Probably all of them. It is also revealed that Amelia had been having secret contact with a man who thinks he may be Amelia’s father. Kate had an unplanned pregnancy and raised Amelia alone from the day she was born and therefore the communication between the two came to Kate as a complete shock. The novel also leads the reader to believe that a lot of Amelia’s subordination towards Kate is due to her mother’s secrecy regarding her parentage. It is likely to assume that many students, from every different background will be able to understand Amelia’s broken-home frustration. Reconstructing Amelia also follows a series of blog posts where a high school girl is relaying every piece of school gossip, including relationship statuses, embarrassing situations, and even gossip regarding school faculty. The point here is that there is enough happening in this book that everyone should relate to some degree, Reconstructing Amelia is not just about a white girl from New York, it is about high school.

When discussing what text to use in the classroom, teachers often forget that the format of the text itself can be just as beneficial to high school students as content. Aside from state standards in argumentative essays and genre, educators will also be required to teach students how to identify postmodern form which is, conveniently, the structure used in Reconstructing Amelia.  In their book Teaching Young Adult Literature, Bean, Bean, and Harper define postmodern form as a text that “generally include[s] font shifts, point-of-view shifts, [and] mixed genres within a single novel” (213). McCreight’s novel presents font shifts to distinguish between different media formats, point-of-view shifts between Amelia and Kate, as well as the aforementioned blend of the mystery and realistic fiction genres. Furthermore, the shifting viewpoints between Kate and Amelia are a great way to help students recognize narrative structure because Kate’s narrative is entirely from the third person perspective while Amelia’s is from the first. It is important to keep these formatting and technical aspects in mind when choosing a book, for it may provide a valuable way to pack multiple state standards into one lesson and make an effective use of the 2+3 lesson plan system.

Picking a text for classroom use will be one of the most challenging tasks an English teacher faces every year. In order to ensure a successful text, teachers should be looking at text complexity, student interest, relatability, and a plethora of state standards that could be applied to a single reading. For these reasons, I highly recommend Kimberly McCreight’s Reconstructing Amelia as a viable, teachable text.

How to Teach This Text:

Connecting Amelia to Virginia Woolf

Throughout the novel, Amelia is constantly updating her Facebook status with Virgina Woolf quotes, including (but not limited to) quotes from A Room of One’s Own (225), Mrs. Dalloway (310), To the Lighthouse (362), and The Waves (376). These references provide the teacher a great opportunity to tie this YAL text to the literary canon. In groups, have students pick one of the Virginia Woolf texts referenced by Amelia and ask then to determine why that text, and that particular quote, may have been significant to Amelia. Amelia obviously shares a personal connection with the work of Virginia Woolf. Why? Students will present the Virginia Woolf text of their choice to the rest of the class and explain its significance and relevance to Reconstructing Amelia.

Group Detective Board

Put students in groups at the very beginning of the book. This will be their “investigative team” throughout the novel. Each team will be required to constantly pull contextual evidence throughout the novel to determine what happened to Amelia. This is including, but not limited to, the frequent blog posts, text messages, and Amelia’s testimony leading up to her death. Students will be asked to describe different characters and determine possible motive. This information will be constructed into a group detective board (see photo). The group detective board is a fun and interesting way to get students involved in the novel’s smallest details while also serving as a graphic organizer. Graphic organizers are much more fun if the student doesn’t realize they are simply filling out a graphic organizer.

Peripheral Characters and Creative Writing

Due to the novel’s postmodern format, Reconstructing Amelia offers the point-of-view of both Amelia and Kate, but what about everyone else’s perspective? Students will write a chapter from the point-of-view of a character who is not given a narrative voice. Students will be allowed to write either a “with the grain” or “against the grain” reading, but must be able to defend their character’s narrative with supporting evidence from the original text. With their new chapter, students will be asked to write a paragraph explaining why they wrote their chapter. These chapters will then be made into a “classroom compilation” titled Deconstructing Amelia, in which the class will be able to read everyone’s chapter and have a subsequent group discussing about how they feel this chapter works with the overall novel.  

Work Cited

Bean, Thomas W., Judith Dunkerly-Bean, and Helen J. Harper. Teaching Young Adult       Literature: Developing Students as World Citizens. Print.

McCreight, Kimberly. Reconstructing Amelia. New York: Harper, 2013. Print

Short, Katherine Bucher and KaaVonia Hinton. Young Adult Literature: Exploration,        Evaluation, and Appreciation. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.

Shelby's Response #2 Prompt #5

Reading Response #2 Prompt #5: Engaging Reluctant Readers with Eleanor and Park

            The one challenge every English teacher will face at the start of every single year is the reluctant reader. Eventually, every teacher will see progress in their classroom management skills and will gradually solidify a solid lesson plan, but the reluctant reader is an issue that will appear year after year, and always with a different reason. One hundred and fifty new kids, one hundred and fifty different levels of reading proficiency, and one hundred and fifty reasons not to read the book. What is a teacher supposed to do? Like every other book, Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park presents its own unique set of challenges regarding the reluctant reader, but I will argue that the firm commitment of simple techniques such as teacher-first-enthusiasm, maintaining awareness of cultural trends, and student choice will encourage a higher percentage of reluctant readers to give Eleanor and Park a chance.

            Attitude is everything. Bucher and Hinton suggest that a good way to engage reluctant readers is to “allow students to ‘self-select’ their own books” (69), but it is important for an educator to remember that the process for engaging reluctant readers does not stop there, nor is it the only way to get students interested in a book. Oftentimes, free-reign book selection will lead to reluctant readers picking the novel version of a movie they have seen recently, thereby having the opposite effect on reluctant readers. Similarly, student selection from a pre-approved book list still needs a level of teacher involvement an accountability to encourage reluctant readers. Here is a brief anecdotal story from my own life to show what I mean: When I was in high school, I had a teacher who handed each of us students a sheet of paper with the titles and synopses of seven different novels. We were asked to look over this list, and pick the novel we wanted to read and explore as a class for the next few weeks. A vote was cast, and our class had picked Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter as the book we were most interested in reading. I myself voted for this book. Once our teacher saw the results however, he walked over to his desk, grabbed his copy of The Scarlet Letter, and exclaimed, “This book sucks! But I guess we are going to read it anyway,” as he forcefully dropped the novel onto his podium. I did not read The Scarlet Letter that year, even though I initially voted for it as the book I was most interested in reading. The attitude of my teacher was enough to make me a reluctant reader. Whether Eleanor and Park is presented to a class as a choice or a requirement, the teacher’s enthusiasm is just as important as the book itself regarding student participation. Consider dropping comments about how excited you are to read this book weeks in advance to build curiosity among your students. Furthermore, make sure students know just how excited  you are to be discussing this book the day it is presented to them. I took a look at Eleanor and Park the day I bought it and immediately thought to myself “oh god, what is this? A teenage love story? This is going to be awful.” Many students will feel the exact same way before they ever open it. Use a wide variety of adjectives to describe the novel upon presentation in hopes that one of these descriptions will peak interest. Tell students that Eleanor and Park is a love story, but it is also very dark. Eleanor and Park is also a bit of a mystery and explores themes of abuse and neglect, all while being a story about not fitting in and the everyday struggles of high school. Every book should be pitched like an original screenplay looking for funding: talk it up, explain why it’s for everyone, be excited.

            For reluctant readers, books need teaser trailers too. Like many YAL books, Eleanor and Park begins with a small passage, with no context, which is meant to get the reader interested for the remainder of the book. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the passage chosen is strong enough to encourage the reluctant reader. Fortunately, this presents a great opportunity for a read aloud to peak student interest and involvement before they ever open Eleanor and Park. Bucher and Hinton explain that the stereotypical reluctant reader “is a boy who has below-the-grade reading ability” (69). Though Bucher and Hinton continue to say that this stereotype may be false, I will be using this example as a potential student for the remainder of this argument. Eleanor and Park is first and foremost a love story. How do you get a teenage boy interested in a love story? Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps instead, the teacher gets this student interested in another aspect of the story, to show reluctant readers that Eleanor and Park has more to offer. Generally speaking, female readers are more interested in stories involving a relationship and male readers are more interested in stories involving a conflict. In this way, reading a passage aloud regarding Eleanor’s home life may be a way to peak interest among readers who are unenthused with Eleanor’s relationship. Here is a possible passage to consider for a read aloud:

She woke up to shouting. Richie shouting. Eleanor couldn’t tell what he was saying. Underneath the shouting, her mother was crying. She sounded like she’d been crying for a long time—she must be completely out of her head if she was letting them hear her cry like that.

Eleanor could tell that everyone else in the room was already awake. She hung off the bunk until she could see the little kids take shape in the dark. All four of them were sitting together in a clump of blankets on the floor. Maisie was holding the baby, rocking him almost frantically. Eleanor slid off the bed soundlessly and huddled with them. Mouse immediately climbed up into her lap. He was shaking and wet, and he wrapped his arms and legs around Eleanor like a monkey. Their mother shrieked, two rooms away, and they all five jumped together. (48,49)

Read this passage aloud to the class before they are ever given a copy of Eleanor and Park. Without any prior knowledge of the text, this puts the strong readers and the reluctant readers on equal footing. After reading, ask the students to answer questions about the passage you just read. “What do you think is happening? What do you think is going to happen next?” Without any other information, reluctant readers are more likely to engage in the read aloud because there is no risk to be wrong, and the students are already thinking critically about the text. It is after this initial discussion that students should be given their copies of Eleanor and Park. By enabling a discussion about the book without offering any concrete answers, the teacher is far more likely to get reluctant readers to open the book, interested to know what was happing in the anonymous passage presented at the read aloud. For twenty-first century students, teaser trailers are a cultural phenomenon, use them to your advantage in the classroom.

            Promote success, not book reports. Even if a teacher is enthusiastic about a novel, and gives the best read aloud in high school history, a reluctant reader may still give up all hope at the sound many teachers’ two favorite words—book report. In modern-day classrooms that are filled with inclusive practices and UDL framework, a traditional book report may do more harm than good. If a student’s reluctance to read stems from their inability to read at grade-level-proficiency, then requiring that student to write a traditional book report will most likely set the student up for failure and further their disdain for the written word. Bucher and Hinton suggests that reluctant readers should be offered an alternative to the traditional book report in order to promote student success (69). It is important to note that unless the alternative is presented to specifically apply to an IEP, then the book report alternatives should be given to all students, not just the reluctant reader. A good way to supply book report alternatives is to encourage students to explore all outlets of creativity. Remember, these choices are in lieu of a final book report, so the choices should still require a good bit of work. For Eleanor and Park, I suggest the following:

·        1.  Illustrate the characters: Eleanor and Park is being reprinted with pictures and you have been commissioned for the artwork. Illustrate, paint, or otherwise create an accurate representation of Eleanor, Park, and three other characters from the novel. These representations should be accurate, provide the in-text evidence to support your artistic choices.

·     2.     Create a soundtrack: Eleanor and Park is being made into a movie, but the director wants to set the story in 2016. Look up 7-10 songs Eleanor and Park reference in the book, and find modern-day songs that have a similar meaning that Eleanor and Park would listen to. Provide a song-by-song comparison for each track to support your modern-day choices for the movie soundtrack.

·      3.    Create a comic book: Eleanor and Park love comic books. As a tribute to their nerdy past time, create a 7-10 page comic book using the Comic Life! software in which both Eleanor and Park have developed some type of super power. These super powers should be logically based on the descriptions of Eleanor and Park in the novel.  

Each year, less and less students are reading for entertainment. Unfortunately for

high school English teachers, many students have decided if they like reading or not long before they ever step foot in their classroom. Turning around reluctant readers is a difficult task, but through a little ingenuity, a lot of enthusiasm, and creative YAL novels such as Eleanor and Park, future generations may still learn to be bibliophiles.

Work Cited

Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park. New York: St. Martin’s, 2013. Print.

Short, Katherine Bucher and KaaVonia Hinton. Young Adult Literature: Exploration,        Evaluation, and Appreciation. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.

Alex Severson Response 1; Prompt 8: Gay, Lesbian, Pan, African, Asian, Latino, Muslim, and Everything in Between: The Case for Young Adult Literature Diversity in School Curriculums

Gay, Lesbian, Pan, African, Asian, Latino, Muslim, and Everything in Between: The Case for Young Adult Literature Diversity in School Curriculums  

Alex Severson

        Sarah Dyer’s “Read This, Not That: Why and How I’ll Use Young Adult Literature in My Classroom” makes a convincing, relevant argument for why the literary canon has become an archaic, whitewashed library of books that does a disservice to young adult readers with its lack of multiculturalism.  While Harold Bloom may keel over at the idea of reading outside the western canon in schools, it is important to understand that students today are experiencing more varied and difficult social anxieties than arguably any other time in history.  Given that every child has a right to an education, educators should be making an effort to expand the perspectives brought in to the classroom in order to build stronger, progressive, and compassionate generation of young adults.  Dyer successfully shows how contemporary Young Adult (YA) literature creates a more accessible avenue than the western canon for adolescents to think about and consider social and gender issues that will be applicable to their lives now and in the future. 

            The most common thread binding the majority of canon texts together is that they were written by white males.  This is problematic in itself because of the lack of diversity that students will encounter in the classroom and in their lives, considering how diverse America is compared to when most canonized texts were written.  Dyer writes that “most classic texts were written from a white, male, Christian, heteronormative viewpoint” (34).  The counter argument to such a claim will be that there is nothing inherently wrong with a white writer who is strong in their craft, and such a claim would not be mistaken because a person cannot control their race.  The central argument, however, is that young adults are growing up in varied classrooms that are “filled with young people who are part of an even more diverse global population” and educators need to recognize that students need to see how “other viewpoints are no less valid” (Dyer 34). Dyer’s strength is that she acknowledges how students need to see things from different point of views in order to make sense of the world and she understands that the traditional canon may not be sufficient to accomplish this.  Dyer expresses how YA literature is “filled with female voices, LGBT voices, and voices from all races and cultures” in a way that insurmountably outpaces the classic, western canon (Dyer 34).  These contemporary voices are more fit to deal with the social and gender issues in today’s classroom than most classic texts.  While I believe Dyer believes these classic texts are irreplaceable, and are forever cemented as literature that should be read vigorously, she certainly shows compelling evidence that the canon is unprepared to face the challenges of today because of the changes climate.

            Classic texts provoke serious plots by which readers can develop into empathetic individuals, but they do not do the job that YA literature can or has been doing in modern times.  By including YA texts that are more relatable to the multicultural needs of students, we are giving adolescents the opportunity to develop “into empathetic members of a diverse society” (Dyer 35).  Dyer understands that young readers today need literature that applies to the diverse world they live in.  For example, with the passage of legality in gay marriage, more people are openly aware and tolerant of homosexuality in schools.  However, gay individuals still have much less of a space in schools and literature in which they can be proud of, but YA literature gives them  readily available heroes that allows them to see that they can succeed just as well as anyone else.  Dyer makes it clear that she understands the need for gay protagonists or works from gay writers, something that is not typically found in the canon.  Furthermore, including LGBT voices into literature works two-fold as it also allows students who have been raised to be homophobic a chance to become more empathetic to the needs of the LGBT community.   According to Dyer “many educators feel that the inclusion of LGBT voices helps non-heterosexual students feel more comfortable with themselves and more accepted within their classroom community and helps homophobic students change their hurtful beliefs” (35).  Dyer foresees how inclusion of these texts would add a layer of empathy in students so that homophobic behavior could eventually be minimalistic. Her foresight strengthens the idea that in order to build a “just” society we need to analyze every background, which according to Dyer, YA accomplishes.  Of course, becoming a society that is accepting of all backgrounds means that we also need to make an effort to include more minority writers in schools.  According  to Dyer “not only does a curriculum containing nothing but Hawthorne, Shakespeare, and other literary giants prevent students from studying non-white and non-male viewpoints, but sometimes those viewpoints have been rewritten” (Dyer 34).  I do not believe that Dyer means to dismiss the importance of Hawthorne or Shakespeare, but rather, I believe she seeks to show that these great others that we idolize may have missed something in terms of diversity. Theorist Edward Said wrote that some novels such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness “works…to silence [the] colonized culture, which cannot ‘talk back,’ or write about itself” (Dyer 34). Dyer understands how traditional literature has left some people without a way to defend themselves, while current YA literature has strived to give these people their very own voice.  YA literature gives students the means to understand what different, diverse, or sometimes disenfranchised voices have to offer. 

            YA literature works as an open forum for students to express how they feel about different ideas.  Dyer writes that “literature discussions open the door for students to discuss their personal lives and experiences in such a way that any threat of ridicule is erased” (36).  YA literature can prompt students to talk about subjects that are more difficult to open up with. Dyer brings up openness because it is something that is specifically difficult for young adults.  Young adults are very involved in their own world, and Dyer sees how YA authors are the link between students and allowing them to open up.  YA literature will also allow teachers to reach into students’ in order to get more out of them both academically and emotionally.  Erik Winkler, a young adult writer, said that “stories can help teenagers look at their feelings, or come to emotional resolution, from a safe distance. If, as an author, I can make an emotional connection with my reader, I have already started to help him or her heal” (Dyer 36). Dyer’s use of Winkler shows that she is has gone to the source of literature and thought about why YA authors may be more suited in schools.  These authors pick up on what young readers need, and Dyer understands their needs through Winkler.  Complexity is more than just complicated sentence structure, syntax, or needed background knowledge.  Complexity can also be derived from emotional stimuli, and if students are not connecting with the text, they are not developing emotionally.  This does not mean that texts should only reach for an emotional appeal or for some kind of cathartic experience.  Educators have to academically challenge their students so that they grow as learners.  Dyer acknowledges this by giving a solid list of YA literature books such as The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Feed, and Monster that reach students on an emotional level but also reach an academic depth that students would not receive from some classic literature because they would have not picked the book up in the first place. Most importantly, Dyer provides a list of texts that promote diversity in the classroom in a way that classic texts have not. 

            There is no reason for students to focus entirely on canonical texts if they are not drawing much from them.  Educators can introduce both YA literature and classic texts to students in order to ensure that they have a broad, successful background in literature.  However, Dyer thoroughly shows the need to add diversity into classrooms.  Given how the education system has changed over the course of its existence in America, the curriculum needs to adapt to the social diversity in schools in order to become effectively accepting of different kinds of multicultural aspects of society.  Dyer’s suggestion for allowing YA literature to become the primary source of literature and setting up canonical texts as the secondary source of reading is a much needed discussion the education system needs to have if we want students to be successful. 

Dyer, Sarah. "Read This, Not That: Why and How I'll Use Young Adult Literature in My Classroom." The Virginia English Journal, 64.1 (2014): 33-43.