"Of Times, Teens, and Books"

I have to say that by the time I got to the end of this chapter, I was so interested and enthralled in the multiple ideas and changes described that I'd completely forgotten what I'd just read in chapter five. We had already talked in class about graphic novels, and I read Maus (books one and two) when I myself was in middle school (in social studies class, actually, even with us using an interdisciplinary unit with english class).

The change in the way young adult literature is written is just so amazingly exciting. Multimodal, multigenre, multivoice - YA writers and the teachers that use these books are revolutionizing literature itself. We are on the way to throwing "the western canon" out on it head. While there are canonical books that I do believe are incredibly worthwhile reads - Catcher in the Rye and The Lord of the Flies are two - the heirarchy of literature was just as bad as any heirarchy. By devaluing certan types of literature we were devaluing certain parts of culture and certain people. We were saying to our kids that they weren't readers unless they read x, y, and z. What a way to turn kids off on reading.

With works like the ones Lesesne describes, we are catching our students right where they exist and making readers out of them (or reinforcing their existence as such). This is 21st century literacy, baby - there's more to it than dusty old books. That is great for everybody, not just for our kids.

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Additionally, I really love the idea of book playlists - not only using the author-provided ones but having kids create their own. The former enhances the process of reading, comprehension, and understanding for our students, but the latter requires that higher order thinking that is so important for our students' success. They have read the book, "read" the music they listen to, and then find a way to connect the two. A person has to develop a in-depth understanding of character/scene/event/etc and the music to do.

This whole idea brings to mind a really great piece of fiction I came across online. There was the text itself, but there were also images, video, and music. The multimodality really enhanced the final product.