What is better for the YA audience? A book with higher "literary quality", a more "popular" book, or a "readable" book?
1 comments: Cris said...
Hmmm good question. Now that you've experienced the Eva Perry teens talk about books, how would you answer your question? Any epiphanies?
February 19, 2011 9:54 PM
I believe that a "readable" book that kids enjoy is the highest praise a book can have. Kids will read more and so learn a valuable skill and experience. Forcing them to read books that OTHER people like or CRITICS say is high quality will not keep kids reading.
I hope you'll come to see in this course, Shannon, that there's such a wide range of teens with their interests, abilities, motivations, and intellectual/emotional developments that we need all types of books. We spend so much time in English class "teaching" the classics. The focus in this class with the first project on literary quality is to explore the kind of literary quality that contemporary YAL offers. The Eva Perry kids devote themselves to reading high quality books and learn through the process. They also read lots of "readable" books like Stephanie Meyer and Sarah Dessen for fun. So much depends on the purpose. And on choice. I applaud your championing of choice for teen readers and hope that you'll create the conditions in your classroom where there's freedom and choice along with rigor and achievement. It need not be either or.
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