Voices from the Middle - Volume 5, Issue 2, 1998

Argues that the number one goal in teaching literature should be to create lifelong, reflective readers, and that the job of a novel at its highest level is to illuminate the human condition. Argues that good adolescent literature does all of these things, and does it in such a way thatadolescents will ask for more.

Describes how the author came to love Mark Twain’s writings, taught “Huckleberry Finn” and other of Twain’s writings to a ninth-grade class in a Hasidic Jewish Academy, and learned to really love Samuel Clemens. Describes how this love inspired the author to write two books celebrating what she has valued most in 40 years of reading Mark Twain.

Describes how one urban middle school teacher uses young adult literature to encourage lively class conversations, to develop students’ fundamental skills, and to sharpen their abilities to connect literature with their own lives. Discusses parent/guardian permission and interdisciplinary connections, supplementary readings, literature “matchmaking,” and ways books can relate to other facets of English.

Discusses the importance of talk in the classroom, in particular talk about books. Includes student conversations and comments about such discussion, and the lack of it in their classrooms. Describes what such discussion has to offer to individuals, classrooms, and society. Notes the difficulties of achieving discussion in the classroom.

Describes how the author has her students create "found poems" and use them in conjunction with the students’ own Readers/Writers Logs to help students make more of a text, own it, and discover the power of effective language. Includes instructions, student samples of found poems, and samples of the entire process.

Argues that classic authors can and should still be kept at the center of the literature curricula in the middle school. Uses Leo Tolstoy as an example, describing briefly some of Tolstoy’s works that are especially appropriate for early middle school readers, later middle schoolers of average reading ability, and the most able middle school readers.

Describes how two fifth-grade boys developed and sustained a love of fantasy books. Describes how these two discriminating readers have developed taste and a social context for their reading experience. Shows how their experience demonstrates important principles about reading and about reading curriculum.

Young adult author Ben Mikaelsen writes lovingly of his "child": a six hundred pound black bear named Buffy.

In this themed issue, “Young Adult Readers,” the editors first address the question, “What do adolescents want from reading?” By inviting YA literature into our classrooms, we invite trust in our students to choose the reading that is meaningful to them and we help fulfill our goal as teachers to create lifelong learners.

Available in print issue only.

Available in print issue only.

Available in print issue only.