Entering my first class on Young Adult Literature, as a 24-year-old grad student and English teacher, I had a lot of unspoken misconceptions about YA Lit as a genre. Because the Twilight series was the most conspicuous phenomenon in YA Lit during my own preteen and teen years, I made the assumption that all YA literature was essentially the same. I figured that, like Twilight, most of it was grounded in some level of wish fulfillment and didn’t invite the kind of introspection that facilitates growth and change in readers. The time I’ve spent engaging with YA lit this summer has opened my eyes to how YA Lit takes up some of the fundamental questions and challenges of human life in ways that young people will find relatable and accessible.
I think one of my biggest challenges moving forward in my practice as a teacher who reads will be resisting the tendency to retreat to my “reading comfort zone” and return to a diet of books that don’t stretch my worldview. I’m going to have to consistently remind myself that I’m now reading not only for myself but for my students and need to stay open to books that may not strike my fancy but will awaken my students’ excitement for reading.
Miss Harrell Reads 