Modern Classics

Great Books Make Great Movies

2006-12-13T14:16:00.000-05:00

I've always been a huge fan of movies based on my favorite y.a. books - and traditionally, the movie's stay true to the book, but make it readily available to a wider audience. Following in the footsteps of widely popular y.a. books-turned-movies 'Harry Potter', 'The Chronicles of Narnia', and 'Stuart Little', 'Charlotte's Web' bring's E.B. White's classic story of a loveable pig to the big screen.

I've always been a voracious reader, but my first encounter with "Charlotte's Web" as a kid changed the way I read. E.B. White's classic children's novel has a habit of doing that. It's one of those rare pieces of genuinely great literature that leaves anyone who reads it permanently altered....'Charlotte's Web' is a special book, the kind of book that opens minds. Since its first publishing back in 1952, E.B. White's masterwork has changed millions of young lives. How do you turn something so culturally transcendent, so significant, so perfect into a feature film? If you're director Gary Winick, you do it beautifully.

Winick's film doesn't just tell the story of 'Charlotte's Web'; it captures the spirit, the essence, and the significance of E.B. White's classic. It gets the big picture, the broader strokes of what White's book does so well. It's more than a movie about Some Pig, it's a story about exalting in life, celebrating change, and finding hope in death. Charlotte's Web isn't just a good adaptation, it's a great film. A piece of moving poetry, the kind of movie that just might broaden young minds in the same way the book has for so many years.
http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Charlotte-s-Web-1945.html

Adults Reading YA Lit

2006-12-13T14:08:00.000-05:00

In a recent issue of "The Oregonian", columnist April Henry debuted her new column surrounding the young adult literature genre.

As my daughter has grown older, the books I read to her every night have changed. Through her, I'm revisiting some books for teens I loved when I was her age, like Elizabeth George Speare's "The Witch of Blackbird Pond," and discovering contemporary books, such as Margaret Haddix's "Running Out of Time."
Now my little secret is that young adult novels make up about half of my reading. They can be every bit as complex or thoughtful as books for grown-ups. And Harry Potter notwithstanding, most of them are on the short side, making them easier to fit into my busy schedule.
Whether you are a teen, librarian, teacher or parent who cares about what young adults read, or even just an adult looking for a quick read, this new column aims to bring you some of the best new young adult books with a Northwest focus.
http://www.oregonlive.com/O/artsandbooks/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/116526932092990.xml&coll=7#continue

Henry's column will be dedicated to reviewing some of the newest y.a. literature available to young readers, but presenting it in such a way as to gain adult interest. Henry always gives the title, author, price and the number of pages, as well a full synopsis, to make it easy for her readers to pick and choose what books might suit thier interests and busy schedules.

Henry is not the first adult I've come across that enjoys reading contempoary y.a. lit - many teacher's I've had over the course of my education have often been found reading y.a. novels to help guide their students to novels they might enjoy.

Graphic Novel Controversy

2006-12-13T13:47:00.000-05:00

Even though this article is outside of my blog emphasis, I believe it's worth posting:

Parents Challenge Graphic Novels By David Twiddy The Associated Press

When Amy Crump took over as director of the Marshall Public Library in central Missouri two years ago, she decided to build up the library's offerings for young adults by buying the literary world's hot new thing - graphic novels.

"The bulk of our graphic novels are for young adults and they're very popular," Crump said, estimating the library's collection has gone from only a handful to around 75.
Among the new acquisitions was "Blankets" by Craig Thompson and "Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic" by Alison Bechdel, two semi-autobiographical accounts of the respective authors' turbulent childhoods that include ruminations on strict religious upbringing and
homosexuality.

The two novels touched off what Crump said was
the first challenge of library materials in Marshall's 16-year history, as
parents complained that the books, which include pictures of a naked couple,
could be read by children, attracted by the comic book-like drawings.
"My concern does not lie with the content of the novels. Rather my concern is with the
illustrations and their availability to children and the community," said one resident, Louise Mills, during a recent public hearing reported in the Marshall Democrat-News. "Does this community want our public library to continue to use tax dollars to purchase pornography?"
The library board has since removed the two books from circulation while it develops a policy governing how it collects materials in the future, a policy that would determine the novels' eventual fates.
Libraries across the country are increasingly buying graphic novels as they seek to reconnect with younger patrons and respond to popular trends.
The novels, using the pictures and dialogue balloons of comic books to tell sometimes sophisticated stories in book form, are one of the fastest-growing sectors of the publishing industry, selling $250 million last year, according to market research firm ICV2 Publishing.
Milton Griepp, chief executive of ICV2, which tracks pop culture retail, estimated libraries add another 5 percent to 10 percent to retail sales of graphic novels, which totaled only $75 million in 2001.
"The last two or three years' growth has been pretty rapid in libraries, and that's because graphic novels have started to be respected as legitimate literature," Griepp said.
"Maus," a Holocaust memoir by Art Spiegelman, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992 while Gene Luen Yang's "American Born Chinese" this year became the first graphic novel to be nominated for the National Book Award.
But the books are also gaining more visibility among parents and other community
members who may have never heard of graphic novels but are alarmed to see "cartoon" characters doing and saying very adult things.
"I think there's still a perception in the general public that comics are just for kids, which isn't true and hasn't been true for years," Griepp said.
The Chicago-based American Library Association said it knows of at least 14 graphic novel challenges in U.S. libraries over the past two to three years, which they said reflects the
increasing popularity of the genre with librarians and patrons.
Among the titles were "The Watchmen" by Alan Moore, which was challenged in Florida and Virginia as unsuitable for younger readers; "Akira, Volume 2" by Katsuhiro Otomo,
challenged in Texas for offensive language; and "New X-Men Imperial" by Grant
Morrison, challenged in Maryland for nudity, offensive language and violence.
Even "Maus" and its sequel, "Maus II," were challenged last year in Oregon as anti-ethnic and unsuitable for younger readers. Sometimes the challenges are successful. County officials in Victorville, Calif., removed from their library "Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics" because the book included nudity and sexuality.
"Some people find graphical depictions of things more offensive than text," said Carrie Gardner, a spokeswoman for the ALA's Committee for Intellectual Freedom and a professor at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
Gardner said discussions around graphic novels is similar to what happened when libraries began carrying videotapes and providing access to the Internet.
"Librarians are trained to conduct reference interviews and guide patrons to the resources most appropriate for them," Gardner said. "They should be making those decisions."
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First off, I do believe that certain types of graphic novels, as what Benny has been discussing on his blog, are great for education. They can bring unmotivatied students away from watching movies as a short-cut to writing their book reports, into a world rich in language and literature by presenting the novel in a way that's of more interest to them.
But at the same time, I also understand the point of view of the parent's in the library's community - caution in choosing the graphic novels, not only for the library but also for education, does need to be exercised when choosing appropriate material for student's and children in the community.
The graphic novels "Maus" and "Maus II" are acutually great teaching materials for classrooms when discussing WWII, and the Nazi's oppression of the Jew's (In the novel, the Nazi's are appropriately depicted as cats, and Jews as mice). After looking through these particular graphic novels myself, I believe that using the "Maus" novels would be an excellent teaching tool in my future classroom. Again, bringing the unmotivated students into the discussion and learning processes.
Graphic novels are going to become even more popular over the next decade, especially with the Penguin Graphic Novel Series bringing more classic pieces of literature to life in comic-book form. Teachers, and students, can benefit from their way of presenting the novels in a new way - keeping students interested in the material, and even more importantly, having them appeal to a larger student population.

Taking YA Lit to New Websites...

2006-10-22T20:23:00.000-04:00

Cathy's Book: If Found Call 650-266-8233

It was only a matter of time before publishers figured out how to meld the the appeal of internet gaming and online social networking with books. Enter Cathy's Book.

Cathy's Book: If Found Call 650-266-8233 is about a teenage girl whose life goes from difficult to worse when her best friend becomes angry with her and her boyfriend Victor, who may not be the boy he appears to be, breaks up with her.

This young adult mystery was crafted with an interactive marketing eye. Not only does Cathy's Book have its own website (there are actually two), the characters from Cathy's Book have their own phone numbers; there is a Cathy's Book MySpace page; there are Cathy's Book AIM Journal pages; and more. In other words, online marketing for teens meets book publishing.

After all this effort, lets hope the book is worth it.

http://contemporarylit.about.com/b/a/256366.htm
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Cathy's Book by Sean Stewart and Jordan Weisman is leading the pack in new young adult lit mysteries - and with students becoming technology literate at younger and younger ages, the publishers/writers of the novel have created a genius marketing tool by creating various websites that readers can visit and discuss the book.
I personally think this is a great way to keep students interested in reading as they grow older. This book has to much to offer it's readers that it seems impossible not to find something appealing about the novel, the mystery, the interactive websites, or the real phone numbers readers can call to find out more information.
By including real life elements within the fictional world of the novel, writers will keep readers coming back for more - and keeping students interested in reading outside of the classroom walls.

MCTE Fall Conference 2006

2006-10-22T19:30:00.000-04:00

Ealier this month, I had the honor of attending a lecture by Alfie Kohn at the MCTE Fall 2006 conference in Lansing. Hands down, he is one of the most impassioned, intelligent, and interesting speakers I have ever encountered throughout my high school and college career.

The main point of his lecutre revolved around the "Tougher Standards Movement", and more importantly, what's wrong with it. During his lecture, Kohn made five key points against standardized testing:

Five Fatal Flaws

1. It gets motivation wrong. Most talk of standards assumes that students ought to be thinking constantly about improving their performance. This single-minded concern with results turns out to be remarkably simplistic. The assumption that achievement is all that counts overlooks a substantial body of psychological research suggesting that a focus on how well one is doing is very different from a focus on WHAT one is doing. Moreover, a preoccupation with performance often undermines interest in learning, quality of learning, and a desire to be challenged.
2. It gets pedagogy wrong. The Tougher Standards contingent is big on back-to-basics, and, more generally, the sort of instruction that treats kids as though they were inert objects, that prepares a concoction called "basic skills" or "core knowledge" and then tries to pour it down their throats. State standards documents, in particular, typically contain long lists of specific facts and skills that all students in a given grade level are expected to master. This is a model that might be described as outdated were it not for the fact that, frankly, there never was a time when it worked all that well. Modern cognitive science just explains more systematically why it has always come up short.
3. It gets evaluation wrong. In practice, "excellence," "higher standards," and "raising the bar" all refer to scores on standardized tests, many of them multiple-choice, norm-referenced, and otherwise flawed. Indeed, much of the discussion about education today is arrested at the level of "Test scores are low; make them go up." All the limits of, and problems with, such testing amount to a serious indictment of the version of school reform that relies on these tests.
4. It gets school reform wrong. Proponents of Tougher Standards have a proclivity for trying to coerce improvement by specifying exactly what must be taught and learned - that is, by mandating a particular kind of education. There is good reason to doubt that the way one changes schooling is simply by demanding that teachers and students do things differently. "Accountability" usually turns out to be a code for tighter control over what happens in classrooms by people who are not in classrooms - and it has approximately the same effect on learning that a noose has on breathing.
5. It gets improvement wrong. Weaving its way through all these ideas is an implicit assumption about "rigor" and "challenge" - namely, that harder is always better. The reductive (and really rather silly) idea that tests, texts, and teachers can all be judged on the single criterion of difficulty level lurks behind complaints about "dumbing down" education and strident calls to "raise the bar." Its first cousin is the idea that if something isn't working very well -- say, requiring students to do homework of dubious value -- then insisting on more of the same will surely solve the problem. As Harvey Daniels puts it, the dominant philosophy of fixing schools today consists of saying, in effect, that "what we're doing is OK, we just need to do it harder, longer, stronger, louder, meaner, and we'll have a better country."
http://www.alfiekohn.org/standards/rationale.htm

In addition to the five points stated above that Kohn made throughout his lecture, he also made some interesting points about the Michigan MEAP test, and state-wide standards:

"Great writing is messy - the greater the writing, the messier it is. Michigan standards are oderly."
"Higher MEAP scores are not always meaningless, sometimes they're a bad sign."
"The MEAP measures what matters least - it can over and underestimate student's abilities."

"Pop Fiction" vs. The Classics

2006-09-24T20:32:00.000-04:00

"True, some classics are required by school districts, but, increasingly, I see teachers making substitutions. In a time when some of my colleagues are turning away from the classics and assigning pop fiction novels, because they're easier to read and kids like them, this Steinbeck novel led me to reflect on the advantages of "plowing through" a classic work with students.

Why wouldn't kids be more interested in "pop fiction"? Given a choice, they'll likely turn down the classic. Newer, inexperienced teachers, without a broad literature background, may feel more secure teaching modern literature. I've also seen teachers cut out the classics because they're tired of hearing their students complain about them -- but at what cost?

Even though teaching the classics might require a little more teacher and student effort, I think that extra effort is totally worthwhile. Classic fiction stories are just as interesting as their pop counterparts, if not more. The classics provide a great opportunity for higher-level learning because their plots are often more complex and the character development often is richer. The classic works have been around for a long time; their lessons are timeless.

So, when my juniors moaned as I told them we were going to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, I still pushed ahead. Everyone loves a good story, I figured. I "hooked" them with the classic's story line: "Hester is a girl who faces a pregnancy in a Puritan society," I told them. "Alone, she protects the father's identity from a judgmental society."

Now what teenager could resist that?"

Pop Fiction No Match For Classic Literature, National Education Association.

http://www.nea.org/classmanagement/ifc031209.html

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Kathleen Modenbach, educator and author of the article above, is one of the seasoned English teachers who believe that the classics are "The Classics" and using modern works (aptly named "Pop Fiction", is a cheating method used by younger teachers who are intimidated by the texts and the challenges of teaching them to their young students. I disagree - on so many levels.

Yes, the classics are going to be difficult to teach to our future students - but using modern editions is certainly not cheating by any means. Classics are a very valuable part of our culture, and can teach students to be critical thinkers - something that every English teacher strives to achieve. While I agree with Modenbach that the classics hold more complex character and plot development, the timeless lessons they teach are just that - timeless - meaning newer, "pop fiction" works can teach students those same lessons, only in such a way that our students will actually relate to.

"The American Dream" found in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, can also be found in it's 2003 counterpart Jake, Reinvented; The Scarlett Letter's interesting plot and story line can also be discovered in Speak, a young girl is a social outcast after her actions are looked down upon in a highly judgemental society (Puritans and High School Students can be equally judgemental); and the trials and tribulations found within forbidden love is taught in both Romeo and Juliette, and it's younger cousins Romiette and Julio and West Side Story.

Teaching "pop fiction" should not replace the classics, instead it should supplement and enhance those timeless ideas and lessons found within their pages. We shouldn't cut the classics out of today's curriculum - we should include their modern counterparts to enhance our student's learning.

Relating to Characters

2006-09-24T19:48:00.000-04:00

"Young people relate strongly to the characters and language in the books they read. ...

Good literature provides some truth about life. Not all at once. Not all in the same story or poem. Not all at the same age. But when young people read enough stories and poems about enough characters trying to figure out what to do, the truth gradually emerges as something recognizable and familiar.

Students change — physiologically, intellectually, and emotionally — every 12 months. There's a generation gap between each age from birth to adulthood. The books that students need change, too."

Help a Child Enjoy the Love of Reading, September 21, 2006. News-Leader.com
http://www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060921/OPINIONS/609210306/1006/OPINIONS
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While my blog is dedicated to finding modern versions of the classic texts taught in today's English classrooms - the first step in finding the right book to help keep your students engaged. As the above article suggests, young adults are more likely to become engaged in a novel or short story when they can relate to the characters they're reading about.

This may seem obvious to many of us, but as far as current secondary English cirucurriculum is concerned many of today's students are still reading novels containing mainly adult characters, older dialogue, and many novels contain situations to which young adults cannot relate to at this point in their lives.

While I do agree that classic literature is a key point in teaching English (in fact, my favorite novel, The Great Gatsby, was taught during my junior year high school advanced English class), today's young adults need stories they can relate to in order to help them better understand the situations and characters found in the classics. By finding novels with younger protagonists is only the first step to keep students engaged in what they're reading.

A New Spin on the Old Song and Dance

2006-08-30T18:06:00.000-04:00

By using contemporary young adult literature in today's English classrooms, will teachers still be able to get the basic concepts of classic literature across to their modern-day students? This is the answer I'll try to discover over the course of the coming semester by comparing modern young adult literature to the classics commonly taught in classrooms.

The sources for my blog include, but are not limited to, the following:

The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Detroit Free Press
Yahoo! News
Two Google Reader Search Query specifically targeted for "Young Adult Literature" and "Contemporary Literature"