Reading Their World: The Young Adult Novel in the Classroom (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Reading Their World: The Young Adult Novel in the Classroom Sid S. Glassner (bio) Reading Their World: The Young Adult Novel in the Classroom. Second Edition. Edited by Virginia R. Monseau & Gary M. Salvner. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 2000 As recently as 1999, the Conference of English Education (CEE) of the NCTE engaged in some charged discussions seeking a suitable definition of young adult literature. To this writing, agreement on a single definition has not yet been reached. Some committee conversations went so far as to question the efficacy of defining the literature at all and, as a result, members of the CEE committee have largely agreed to disagree about defining young adult literature. Committee members, however, did agree on one thing. And that was that a book could be written describing the difficulties they encountered while pursuing answers to their questions about young adult literature. So into this milieu of intellectual tumult and academic confusion about characterizing young adult literature comes the second edition of Reading Their World: The Young Adult Novel in the Classroom, which attempts to develop a somewhat coherent system of thought about a subject still waddling in the mud of polemic. Although this text contributes little to moving the discussion out of the literary quagmire, it does offer, in spots, a few worthy elements. It is because of these elements, expressed with conviction and commitment, that the reader is sustained. However, there is an irony in these elements as well, an irony that clearly denotes the need for much greater intellectual and pedagogical penetration of the subject. Of the thirteen essays, five manage to give the book a bit of substantive texture. The essays written by Ted Hippie, Leila Christenbury, John Noell Moore, Virginia R. Monseau (one of the two editors), and Gloria T. Pipkin all contain passages that nourish the spirit of inquiry, affirm a sense of possibility, and provoke one to think critically about current practices in the teaching of literature and professional development. Hipple, in his essay on themewrites, "Yet possibly what most makes literature literature, what moves it from words on a page that we read to that which we return to again and again, is theme, the underlying philosophy embodied in the work, the view of the human condition it offers" (1). With such a comment Hipple invites the reader to consider one of literature's finest moments. However, in an effort to couple themes with particular novels, Hipple has short-circuited the more substantive aspects of his essay. Consequently, much energy was sapped from the piece. Leila Christenbury's essay connecting young adult literature with the classics thrusts upon us a number of practical educational concerns that in themselves have become "classical" pedagogical issues. For example, when Christenbury writes: "familiarity and tradition may be the central criteria for the continued use of the classics in secondary curricula. And, while it is not the most laudable aspects of the profession, it is undeniably true that many overworked English teachers do not continue to read widely beyond their own university education and find in the classics to which they were exposed as students comfort and an intellectual ease" (16). She reaches into issues that without resolution insure the denial of genuine literacy. But once again, one of the missions of the text, to provide teachers with categories and lists of books, has taken precedence over matters of substance. John Noell Moore's voice in his essay, "Interpreting the Young Adult Novel," illuminates literature's inherent capacity to delight, to deepen, to inform, and to enchant the senses. Beautifully orchestrated, Moore takes us through multiple readings of one text, Spite Fences. Throughout the essay, Moore emphasizes the extent to which students are deprived valuable textual experiences when braces are put on their literary encounters. Doing what good writers do, Moore ends his essay with the beginning of another one. He does this by quoting Paulo Freire and asking us to focus in on what Parker Palmer ( The Courage to Teach1998) talks about as great things. "Teachers first learn how to teach," quotes Moore, "but they learn how to teach as they teach something that is relearned as...