What’s Happening in YA Literature
Over the past decade adolescents have been one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population (Magazine Publishers of America, 2004; U.S. Census Bureau, 2003). This increased “market” has spawned more products designed for the young adult (YA) population, resulting in a growth spurt in YA literature and other reading materials targeted to teens, such as teen websites, magazines, and graphic novels. The numbers of books published for young adults, ages 13—19, have grown extensively in recent years (Bean, 2003; Donelson & Nilsen, 2005; Horning, Lingren, Rudiger, & Schliesman, 2004), and new YA imprints specifically for more mature teen readers have appeared, such as Edge, Push, and Speak. Another indicator of the rise in YA literature is the introduction of two YA book awards, the Michael L. Printz award (through American Library Association) for the best YA book of the year, and YARA, the Young Australian Readers’ Award, a readers’ choice award.
These developments in the publishing industry are paralleled by robust activity in the area of Merrell Shoes adolescent literacy. Since the International Reading Association issued its position statement detailing a “deepening crises in adolescent literacy” (Moore, Bean, Birdyshaw, & Rycik, 1999, p. 1), adolescent literacy has become one of the hottest areas in the field of literacy education (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004; Cassidy & Cassidy, 2008). In the process of increasing awareness and understanding of literacy learning and teaching during the teenage years, an appreciation has developed for the significance of the wide range of “texts” adolescent literacy practices encompass, including websites, text messages, and blogs, in addition to trade books and school texts (Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding, 1998; Moore et al, 1999; Reeves, 2004; Worthy, Moorman, & Turner, 1999). Yet, “traditional” print texts known as YA literature continue to maintain a central role in the literacy development of teenagers.
Interestingly, there has been little explicit examination of the body of literature published for today’s teens. And although it may seem basic and therefore not all that thrilling, information on publishing trends would contribute to answering a number of significant questions related to the literacy education of adolescents, including the following: Discount Merrell Shoes
To what degree is current YA literature fulfilling the needs of adolescents
In what arenas might available YA books contribute to adolescent literacy
What gaps and needs remain
Therefore, in order to understand better the books being made available to today’s teens, we systematically reviewed the recent corpus of YA books to answer the question, What are the characteristics of English language YA books currently being published
We learned a great deal about operating book clubs with adolescents from our colleague James Flood. For example, he taught us that each book club needed a moderator. The moderator could be a teacher or a student. Jim favored student moderators and encouraged us to meet with the moderators in advance and to teach them the structure of the club and how to function in their role. He also reminded us that every student could learn to be a moderator, and he wanted to be sure that the job of moderator was shared so that every student experienced a leadership role within the classroom. Jim’s guidelines for moderators are provided in Figure 2.
In addition, Jim believed that student book clubs needed to operate within specific guidelines to be effective. Starting in the beginning of the year, we provided students with guidelines for participating in weekly book club discussions based on the work Jim did many years ago. Each student received a copy and we created a classroom poster of the guidelines (see Figure 3).
We are overjoyed that in addition to piquing their interests, their selections regularly lead them to a next text, sometimes even a classic. An example of this occurred during this unit on racial profiling. After one group of students finished The Day They Came to Arrest the Book by Nat Hentoff, they presented a whole-class share of what they had discussed in their book club. The whole-class share led to an online book rap. Based on their conversation, we made connections with other texts and shared these with our students. The result was a request from Robert to form a book club on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The book club subsequently engaged in discussion about the motivations, actions, and reactions of the characters within the book and contrasted them with those of Barney, Luke, Harlem, and Principal Moore, the characters they met in Hentoff’s novel.
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