login:
fromIP: E127.0.0.1
A summer reading list for next school year
shouldn't be the same as the summer library programs reading list.
[Maybe Scarlet Letter should be retained for
historical information-- once upon a time
adultery was not looked upon with favor.]
>High school reading lists get a modern makeover
>Find out what recent bestsellers are taking
>their place next to classics at schools across the U.S. By Amy Brittain
>
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0808/p13s01-legn.html?s=hnsfrom the August 08, 2007 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0808/p13s01-legn.htmlHigh school reading lists get a modern makeover
Find out what recent bestsellers are taking their
place next to classics at schools across the US.
By Amy Brittain | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
"It was the best of times; it was the worst of
times." Charles Dickens's famous line in "A Tale
of Two Cities" could be used to describe what is
probably hitting home about now for millions of
American high school students: Lazy summer days
cut short by the frantic rush to finish required
reading lists before school starts.
"Most teens spend the summer doing whatever, and
then cram the reading in during the last two
weeks," says 2007 high school graduate Henry Qin of Boston.
Precious summer minutes spent poring over
Shakespeare or Nathaniel Hawthorne may seem less
than appealing to teens, but some experts say
there is a slowly growing trend to infuse more
modern literature into summer reading. As a
result, the revered literary cannon, which
includes such classics as "Hamlet," "The Grapes
of Wrath," and "The Scarlet Letter," may be due
for a shake-up. Glance at high school summer
reading lists across the United States and you
are likely to find more recent authors such as
Alice Sebold, Walter Dean Myers, and even Tour de
France champion Lance Armstrong alongside Dickens and the Bront&#EB; sisters.
"The natural evolution of these lists is that
they expand and include voices that are
underrepresented," says American Library
Association (ALA) president Loriene Roy. "If you
don't include authors like Amy Tan or Virginia
Woolfe, what does that mean? A lot of discussions
have come up over the last 20 years over what one
needs to know. [The question is], 'Who do you bump off?' "
Summer reading lists vary widely. Some high
schools require books and even give essay
assignments to be completed by the first day of
school. Mr. Qin of Boston still remembers his
frenzied rush to finish Victor Hugo's "Les
Mis&#E9;rables" before his high school freshman year.
"I didn't understand why we were reading it,"
says Qin, who will be a freshman at Duke this
fall. "Summer reading is a good thing if and only
if there's a context for it. I don't like the
idea of just handing us a list. If you say, 'Read these books,' tell us why."
Other schools choose a more flexible model and
present students a list with choices often
recommended by local librarians. But what is
clear: Cementing one's status on a required
reading list is no easy feat, as librarians or
summer reading committee members must argue to
bump a classic for a book with undetermined longevity.
Practical concerns such as budget and time cause
administrators to resist including recent young
adult literature, or literature geared toward 12-
to 18-year-olds, on required lists, says Beth
Yoke, executive director of Young Adult Library
Services Association, which is the fastest
growing division of the ALA. But Ms. Yoke says
she sees a trend to include more diverse
literature in required reading. "Kids want books
that they can identify with," she says. They want
to see an African-American character, or a Muslim
character, or a strong female character."
Yoke says that it often takes at least a
generation for a new young adult book to make required lists.
"If you're doing required reading in schools,
you've got to buy a bazillion copies of these
books and you have to have developed the lesson
plans of all that supplementary material," she
says by telephone. "Teachers have been teaching
'To Kill a Mockingbird' forever and a day, and
they don't want to have to develop all new materials."
In addition, educators feel that classics still
have important lessons to teach, even if they are
from different time periods. Betsy Ginsburg, a
librarian who edits a recommended reading list
from the Houston Area Independent Schools Library
Network, says a variety of summer reading is
crucial for intellectual breadth. Schools, she
says, should keep classics on lists since they
frequently relate to students' curriculum and
capture a time and place in history.
For the most part, reading lists are still heavy
on classics. But consider the differences between
reading lists from the 1960s and those in the
1980s. Of the nine most commonly taught books in
public high schools in 1963, only one (the 1938
play "Our Town") was written in the 20th century.
By 1988, the 10 most commonly taught novels in
public schools included four books from the 20th
century: "The Great Gatsby" (1925), "Of Mice and
Men" (1937), "Lord of the Flies" (1954), and "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960).
But not all novels take a generation to catapult
to required summer reading lists. Some new
staples in summer reading lists: "Life of Pi" by
Yann Martel, "The Kite Runner" by Khaled
Hosseini, "Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-time," by Mark Haddon, "Monster" by Walter
Dean Myer, and "The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold.
"Ten years ago, these reading lists didn't have
new books like that," says Alleen Nilsen, Arizona
State University English professor and co-author
of the textbook Literature for Today's Young
Adult. "These are really popular new books."
So what catapults "Life of Pi" and "The Lovely
Bones" to the elusive reading list club? Both are
bildungsromans, or stories of young people coming
of age. Ms. Nilsen says this theme is crucial for
reading list inclusion, as youth need to feel a connection to the literature.
J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" is an
example of a long-lasting bildungsroman. The 1951
book was widely panned for its controversial
subject matter, but it soon won the hearts of American teens.
"That was a book done for adults, but kids loved
that book," Nilsen says by telephone. "Every year
there are like 10 books that get compared, and
it's like, 'Oh, this is the new "Catcher in the
Rye." ' Of course, none of them ever are. But
they're in that style ` the flip, honest kid that's critical."
Nilsen says she understands why teens are
frustrated with heavy assigned summer reading but
says she's encouraged by the modernization trend.
Her own granddaughter has chosen to read the
young adult award-winner "Monster" rather than a difficult classic.
"It used to be, no matter where you were in high
school, you got this list of classics that the
value was to talk about them with other people,
not to read them yourself," she says. "We're
taking this lesson from the [physical education]
teachers. Rather than making kids do these things
they hate, they're letting them choose what they
want to do, so that when they're adults, they'll
keep exercising. Summer reading is the perfect
time if we want to get kids to read the rest of
their lives without us sitting over their heads
and telling them what to read. Let them ... just
lose themselves in a good book."
What students are reading
High schools are updating their summer reading
lists to include books focused on modern themes.
Here's a sample pulled from high school websites across the nation.
University Heights, Ohio:
"Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
"A Hand to Guide Me" by Denzel Washington
"Bad Boy: A Memoir" by Walter Dean Myers
"Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" by Frederick Douglass
Lexington, Ky.:
"The Pearl" by John Steinbeck
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
"The House on Mango Street" by Sandra Cisneros
Torrance, Calif.:
"Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bront&#EB;
"Night" by Elie Wiesel
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
Buffalo, N.Y.:
"Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson
"Breathing Underwater" by Alex Flinn
"Bless Me Ultima" by Rudolfo Anaya
"The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway
"Tuesdays With Morrie" by Mitch Albom
"Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
Dallas:
"Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger
"The Bean Trees" by Barbara Kingsolver
"Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon
"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding
"The Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama
"Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt
Atlanta:
"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers
"Native Son" by Richard Wright
"A Bend in the River" by V.S. Naipaul
"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini
Old Bridge, N.J.
"Angels and Demons" by Dan Brown
"The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
"It's Not About the Bike" by Lance Armstrong
"The Lovely Bones" by Alice Sebold
"The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien
"A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright &#A9; 2007 The
Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
