ALAN

I attended the ALAN workshop at NCTE this week. I took notes on all the speakers and was going to recap each speech, but since there were more than 30, I decided I'm too lazy.   Here are a few of my personal highlights:

1. Teri Lesesne had so many great things to say, but one that struck a cord with one of my current issues is that we have to defend YA as having equal quality as "the classics." I am dealing with this fairly often because I have one teacher who requires their students to only read "adult" books for SSR. I think this is a poor distinction since "adult" doesn't make it "good," and many YA books are much better "quality" than most of the adult books they're choosing. Plus, I am definitely of the opinion that we should just be encouraging students to read what will give them enjoyment. I think there's a good debate to be had about introducing them to books they might not pick up on their own or choose for themselves that they'd like or get a lot from, but that isn't really the point of SSR (in my personal opinion). The other thing I keep coming back to is that many "classics" would likely be published as YA if they were published today, so why not consider that today's YA could have as much literary merit as those "classics?"
2. M.T. Anderson gave a speech about how all children's lit is necessarily political to some extent, whether it's intentional or not. There are encoded messages about how one has to act to be successful in this world, and that's political, even if it's not overt. I liked his points about how to act as if books are politically neutral diminishes the power of literature. Also, often authors, librarians, teachers, etc. will claim that reading "bad" things in literature won't cause kids to go out and do bad things, but on the other hand, they'll laud how transformative the "good" literature can be.
3. Read John Green's entire speech. It was excellent! He saved me from having to highlight by posting it all online. (Can I repeat what I've said before about how awesome JG is about writing speeches directed at his audience? He's talking to a bunch of English teachers, and he makes his speech related to that. The former speech teacher in me loves this.) One of his points was that, yes, he does intentionally put "English stuff" like figurative language in his writing. I appreciate that he says this because I remember as a student thinking that authors probably didn't intend all this crap we're assigning to it in English class, but then I read a Toni Morrison interview where she was talking about one paragraph she wrote. For about two pages, she described how and why she wrote that paragraph the way she did. There's no way I would EVER have gotten even half of what she was saying from my own reading, but it was (1) very illuminating and verified that authors do put this much intentionality into their work, and (2) I appreciate the work so much more when I can see beyond the initial surface. I know a lot of students think analyzing literature "ruins" the experience for them, and I'm not going to refute that if it's true for them, but I'll say that for me, analyzing literature can make me enjoy it a lot more. Hemingway, for example, I don't think I'll ever like, but analyzing it can make me at least appreciate it.

My favorite quotes from the conference:

"And another thing, you bastards, I fucking love the harpsichord." -M.T. Anderson

"If they are reading books you think are crap, get over yourself." -Walter Mayes

"I've always wanted to be twittered by Walter Mayes." -David Levithan

Also, my new author loves are Lauren Myracle and Matt de la Pena.  Loved them.  Can't wait to hear them speak again.

Back From Poland

I'm back from Poland! And I have a few things to share.

First, I took autographed copies of Alive and Well in Prague, New York, by Daphne Grab and The Secret Rites of Social Butterflies by Lizabeth Zindel. I was afraid that the students might think these were lame, like who would want more books to read. But I am happy to say that I was so wrong. They were a huge hit! The students have amazing English skills and were really eager to read things in English. The magazines I took were also a hit. I thought the People and Seventeen magazines would be most popular, but it turned out that Time and Newsweek were the most popular. Plus, after I passed out the books, one of the students asked me to write a dedication, and then the whole class wanted one and had each other sign their books too. I'd post a picture, but we're not allowed to post pictures of the students.

The other thing I have to report is about Stephenie Meyer's books. As you can see from the pictures below, I saw them being sold in bookstores in Polish. However, I asked several students who said they like to read if they've ever heard of her, and none had. I told them how popular the books are here in the U.S., so maybe that will peak their interest.

But that's not all! I noticed this book on display as I walked past a bookstore. It was on clearance for $1, so I bought the last three copies they had. I can't read Polish at all, but this is one of my all-time favorite books. I figure that I'll have a chance to have it signed at some point. I bought the extra two copies to give to the Polish students. Too bad it's in Polish instead of English, but at least I can spread the gospel of M.T. Anderson some more. I'd be very interested to know how the translation works since language (and even some made-up terms of the future) is a huge part of the book.

And I noticed that Melissa Marr's books were in the adult romance section at the JFK airport bookstore.

Audiobook Love

I've listened to some audiobooks recently that I haven't felt interested in blogging about: Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause (good book but pretty awful audio, IMO, because it was way too overly dramatic in tone throughout the entire performance) and Twisted and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (both solid performances, and I liked Mandy Siegfried even more in Speak than in Lockhart's books). But I felt compelled to blog about my most recent audiobook: Feed by M.T. Anderson. The book has been out for quite a while now, so if you've read it, you know how amazing it is, both intellectually thought-provoking and emotionally engaging (and I'm not a sci-fi fan at all). But the audio production and performance is probably my favorite ever. David Aaron Baker gives a fantastic performance as Titus. I thought the friends' voices were a little overly Valley girl/surfer boy-ish, but he did an excellent job at portraying the emotion and differentiating all the character voices. And every time there was a feed with news or ads, they used different people to perform them and added music. Whenever the characters were chatting, they had some kind of echo effect so that you could tell they were hearing it inside their heads instead of out loud through their ears. Awesome. This is an example where the audio really adds something to the book instead of just reading it well.