~ Place I've Been: Knowlton, a village in Quebec, Canada. (Three Pines, mystery writer, Louise Penny); Dachau, Germany

~ Place I Want to Go Soon: Back to NZ; Ireland

~ Place I've Visited Through Reading: Narnia!

• Where I'm from: Originally from Virginia Beach, VA; currently in Wake Forest, NC

• Place I've been: I visited Banff Nat'l Park in Alberta this summer

• Place I want to go soon: Japan

• Place I've visited through reading: Jurassic Park

~A place I've been is Quito Ecuador

~A place I want to go is Scotland

~A place I have visited through reading is the future!

Grew up in Winchester, VA or Shenandoah County. I currently live at Fort Bragg, NC.

~Place I've Been:

Went on my first cruise to Cozumel, Mexico!

~Place I Want to Go Soon:

Universal Studios, the Super Mario land.

~Place I've Visited:

Through reading: The Shire

Place I have been to: Salt Lake City, Utah

A place that I want to go to: Arizona

A place that I have visited through reading: West African-inspired kingdom of Orïsha (Children of Blood & Bone)

• Realistic Fiction

• Science Fiction

• Dystopian

• Fantasy

• Horror

• Mystery

• Supernatural

• Historical Fiction

• Romance

• Coming of Age Stories

• LGBTQ+

• Sports

• Adventure

• Graphic Novels

• Sci-Fi

• Fantasy

• Thriller

• Mystery/Dective Fiction

• Dystopian

• Supernatural

• Romance

• Historical Fiction

• Comedy

• Graphic novels

• Autobiography

• Manga

• Multi-cultural

In their chapter “Historicizing Youth, Adolescents, and Teens,” Hinta & Tribunella conclude how we think about youth affects how they are represented in literature.” This stood out to me and offers a positive critical framework to help teachers reframe any negative interpretations of  YAL over the last few decades (i.e. it’s not serious literature, adults who read YA are lazy readers, etc). Most books bought in the US are YAL speaks to the fact that we as a society see our young people as society’s readers. This, from the perspective of an English teacher, can only be seen as a good thing! As the authors point out, prior to the  twentieth century, most fiction was designed for a mixed-age audience. Perhaps we have finally returned to this era.

Adolescence as a social construction - which doesn’t mean that it is a fiction, just that the time between childhood and adulthood has meant different things in different historical contexts. Surely as we have just undergone a major technological revolution as a society, we need to be reflecting on what we mean by “young adult” at this particular moment in time, when children have access to more information than any other time in history. 

The authors cite Hall’s study, which found that the social ills associated with modern life came to be embodied by the adolescent, and note that his “pioneering study tells us as much about adult fears as it does about actual young people.” This is such an interesting observation, and one to which I will keep returning. (Jill)

As a reader (and by extension a teacher) I related to the strong feeling of wanting to call out injustice. I frequently had this feeling as a young person, and King’s novel offers an example of how to negotiate this types of situations. This was a mirror moment for me. 

It was also easy to have sliding door moments in this novel, since the author does a fantastic job of world building, in this idyllic, fantasy town that resembles Stars Hollow, where everybody walks everywhere and everyone knows each other. The book also offers plenty of teaching moments and built-in teaching exercises - for example, students could practice writing their own letters to the editor, or creating blackout poems, or looking up other real life censorship stories. Even if students haven’t experienced censorship in their own lives, this could be a window into that reality, as it was for me.