A Reflection on Young Adult Literature: Take #2

 A Reflection on Young Adult Literature: Take #2

            It is no secret that I have taken this class once before. My previous experience with Teaching and Reading Young Adult and Adolescent Literature was only a bit more structured than a housewives’ book club. This “academic redo,” however, has been exceptionally helpful and knowledgeable regarding my ability to use young adult literature in the classroom. That being said, I would like to suggest that further sections of this class be structured with a more equal balance between high school and middle school appropriate content.

            As students seeking a masters in teaching within the English content area, students in this class will be certified to teach grades 5-12. As the class syllabus currently stands, only two of the eight books are appropriate for middle school, with a third, Mrs. Marvel, debatable for use in the 8^th grade classroom. Therefore, about 25% of the class’ reading list represented 50% of our certified area.

            As a solution, I recommend trading out Little Women and The Catcher in the Rye for novels that are better suited for the 10-13 age bracket. Bucher and Hinton note that some of the purposes of young adult literature are to teach “adolescence about diverse peoples and the world beyond their own community,” as well as “reveals the realities of life” (10). I argue that neither Little Women nor Catcher in the Rye serve these purposes. Little Women is about a white family living during the American Civil War in a narration that pushes historical racial tension to the margins of the text. The closest Alcott’s novel comes to diversity is in the half-hearted gender reversal of Jo and the scarcely seen Irish servant. The Catcher in the Rye is the story of a boy who barely even glances into the outside world enough to know if there is diversity there to be seen. For these reasons, I do not believe that either novel “reveals the realities of life” for modern day students the way young adult literature is intended. YA books should be able to reflect on the realities of a life the students are currently living, or perhaps the realities lived by their parents. These novels are too far removed to fit the purpose—in short, they are dated.

Bucher and Hinton also state that a purpose of young adult literature is  to focus “on ‘essentials’ that make order out of chaos” (10), another failure I see of these two novels  in the young adult category. Both Little Women and Catcher in the Rye are actually very rich texts with a lot of information to absorb to understand the many text complexities. Little Women alone is 500 pages of content awaiting a well-crafted critical essay. Therefore, I must also argue that these books also fail to fit the purpose of focusing on the essentials. I am not arguing that either Little Women or Catcher in the Rye are not good books. In fact, I believe that both of these books actually deserve more room on the syllabus of a college English class. They can even be used (if the teacher chooses) to be a part of the public school curriculum as part of their standard literary texts. The argument here is that they simply do not meet the requirements for this specific class.

Along with the consideration to add more young adult books for 5-8 students, I will also ask for the consideration that one of those books discusses exceptionalities. In this current generation, there is a huge push for inclusion in the classroom, but not just inclusive practices, full inclusion. Full inclusion, as defined by the ever-growing SWIFT (Schoolwide Integrated Framework for Transformation) movement, is the elimination of all special education classrooms. This means that all students regardless of the severity of their disability, will be in the general education classroom for the entire day with the general population. As teachers, we will need to understand both how to accommodate for students with exceptionalities as well as help our general education students better accept this change. The disabled population is larger than all other minority groups combined and it is the most under-represented in all forms of media. Introducing students to books that discuss exceptionalities is a good first step to take to help students assimilate if inclusion is not already a part of their everyday life. If inclusion is a part of their everyday life then I am positive that those students with exceptionalities would appreciate a character they can finally identify with.

This class has been more beneficial to me and my impending career than all of my other classes thus far. I am grateful to have been able to have such enriching discussions with so many intelligent people regarding books that matter. The points listed above are only suggestions, but ones that will, if taken into consideration, benefit future English teachers on an even larger scale.

Thank you. 

Works Cited 

Short, Katherine Bucher and KaaVonia Hinton. Young Adult Literature: Exploration,  

      Evaluation, and Appreciation. 3rd ed. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.