Thanks to the success of franchises such as The Hunger Games and Twilight, young adult literature has reached a new level of prominence and popularity. Teens and adults alike are drawn to the genre's coming-of-age themes, fast pacing, and vivid emotional portrayals. The essays in this volume suggest ways high school and college instructors can incorporate YA texts into courses in literature, education, library science, and general education. The first group of essays explores key issues in YA literature, situates works in cultural contexts, and addresses questions of text selection and censorship. The second section discusses a range of genres within YA literature, including both realistic and speculative fiction as well as verse narratives, comics, and film. The final section offers ideas for assignments, including interdisciplinary and digital projects, in a variety of courses.

Teaching Young Adult Literature Today introduces the reader to what is current and relevant in the plethora of good books available for adolescents. More importantly, literary experts illustrate how teachers everywhere can help their students become lifelong readers by simply introducing them to great reads—smart, insightful, and engaging books that are specifically written for adolescents. Hayn, Kaplan, and their contributors address a wide range of topics: how to avoid common obstacles to using YAL; selecting quality YAL for classrooms while balancing these with curriculum requirements; engaging disenfranchised readers; pairing YAL with technology as an innovative way to teach curriculum standards across all content areas. Contributors also discuss more theoretical subjects, such as the absence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young adult literature in secondary classrooms; and contemporary YAL that responds to the changing expectations of digital generation readers who want to blur the boundaries between page and screen. This book has been updated to reflect the wealth of new YA literature that has been published since the first edition appeared in March 2012, and to reflect new trends in technology that influences how adolescents are reading and responding to literature.

Teaching Young Adult Literature: Developing Students As World Citizens (by Thomas W. Bean, Judith Dunkerly-Bean, and Helen Harper) is a middle and secondary school methods text that introduces pre-service teachers in teacher credential programs and in-service teachers pursuing a Masters degree in Education to the field of young adult literature for use in contemporary contexts. The text introduces teachers to current research on adolescent life and literacy; the new and expanding genres of young adult literature; teaching approaches and practical strategies for using young adult literature in English and Language Arts secondary classrooms and in Content Area Subjects (e.g. History); and ongoing social, political and pedagogical issues of English and Language Arts classrooms in relation to contemporary young adult literature.

In this book, Rodríguez uses theories of critical literacy and culturally responsive teaching to argue that our schools, and our culture, need sustaining and inclusive young adult (YA) literature/s to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse readers and all students. This book provides an outline for the study of literature through cultural and literary criticism, via essays that analyze selected YA literature (drama, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry) in four areas: scribal identities and the self-affirmation of adolescents; gender and sexualities; schooling and education of young adult characters; and teachers’ roles and influences in characters’ coming of age. Applying critical literacy theories and a youth studies lens, this book shines a light on the need for culturally sustaining and inclusive pedagogies to read adolescent worlds. Complementing these essays are critical conversations with seven key contemporary YA literature writers, adding biographical perspectives to further expand the critical scholarship and merits of YA literature.

This new volume answers both questions by explaining how YA literature promotes learning across cultures, genres, disciplines, and grade levels, and by giving practical lessons and teaching tips

Jennifer Buehler shows how to implement a YA pedagogy--one that revolves around student motivation while upholding the goals of rigor and complexity. Jennifer Buehler knows young adult literature. A teacher educator, former high school teacher, and host of ReadWriteThink.org's Text Messages podcast, she has shared her enthusiasm for this vibrant literature with thousands of teachers and adolescents. She knows that middle and high school students run the gamut as readers, from nonreaders to struggling readers to reluctant readers to dutiful readers to enthusiastic readers. And in a culture where technological distractions are constant, finding a way to engage all of these different kinds of readers is challenging, no matter the form of delivery. More and more, literacy educators are turning to YA lit as a way to transform all teens into enthusiastic readers. If we want to meet the needs of all students as readers, we have to offer books they can--and want to--read. Today's YA lit provides the books that speak to the world of teens even as they draw them out into the larger world. But we have to do more than put YA titles in front of students and teach these books as we've traditionally taught more canonical works. Instead, we can implement a YA pedagogy--one that revolves around student motivation while upholding the goals of rigor and complexity. Buehler explores the three core elements of a YA pedagogy with proven success in practice: (1) a classroom that cultivates reading community; (2) a teacher who serves as book matchmaker and guide; and (3) tasks that foster complexity, agency, and autonomy in teen readers. With a supporting explication of NCTE's Policy Research Brief Reading Instruction for All Students and lively vignettes of teachers and students reading with passion and purpose, this book is designed to help teachers develop their own version of YA pedagogy and a vision for teaching YA lit in the middle and secondary classroom.

Provides book titles and commentary that aid in teaching ESL students, showing how each title, ranging from fiction to nonfiction and from history to science, is appropriate for the instruction of children in all age groups.

This book advocates for a stronger role for young-adult literature in ELA classrooms, compellingly documenting how this body of work meets both the needs of adolescent students and the demands of the common core for complex texts and tasks. Integrating Young Adult Literature through the Common Core Standards provides a compelling template for teachers that uses young adult literature and inquiry learning to meet students' needs and the demands of the common core standards. The first part of the book addresses the widely adopted common core state standards by examining closely the standards' model of text complexity and demonstrating how young adult literature can fill the requirements of this model. The second part provides theoretical discussions and analysis of the standards as well as concrete applications of young adult literature within the classroom in order to give school professionals a comprehensive understanding of how young adult literature and the standards can work together. The book empowers schools and teachers to make intelligent, informed decisions about texts and instructional practices that benefit their students. Finally, the authors explore a powerful teaching approach that integrates current understandings about learning, young adult literature, and the common core standards in a way that will facilitate greater learning and understanding in English classrooms.

Each chapter opens with an introduction to and description of a different popular genre or award category of YA lit--science fiction, realistic teen fiction, graphic novels, Pura Belpre award winners, nonfiction texts, poetry, historical YA fiction--and then offers suggestions within that genre for whole-class instruction juxtaposed with a young adult novel more suited for independent reading or small-group activities. Groenke and Scherff present a variety of activities for differentiated instruction for the novel they've chosen for whole-class study, and provide an appendix of titles, by genre, that interest adolescent readers.

The authors who contributed to this text believe that young adult literature (YAL) can meet the Common Core’s push to include literacy across content areas, as well as meet the standards in creative and effective ways. This text is intended to give educators a resource to aid them in creating a literacy curriculum. The included chapters written by experts from different universities across the country offer a variety of methods for using YAL to meet the standards while connecting with students. Following a framework first chapter introducing the importance of YAL and discussing its relevance, other authors tackle various ways to teach it. Each chapter may suggest different strategies and rationales for utilizing YAL, but each shares a common purpose with the others: to promote the efficacy of YAL to engage students while at the same time meeting the rigorous standards set forth by the Common Core.