Teaching Young Adult Literature Today: Insights, Considerations, and Perspectives for the Classroom Teacher

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.

Judith A. Hayn is associate professor of English education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She is the chair of the NCTE Conference on English Education Commission on the Study and Teaching of Adolescent Literature and of SIGNAL, the Special Interest Group Network on Adolescent Literature for the International Reading Association. Hayn began her career in education as a middle and high school English language arts. Jeffrey S. Kaplan is associate professor of English education at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Kaplan is President-Elect for ALAN, the Assembly for the Study of Literature for Adolescents. He is also the Research Connections Editor for the ALAN Review, a leading peer-reviewed journal on the study and teaching of young adult literature. Kaplan is a former middle and high school English Language Arts teacher. Karina Clemmons, is an assistant professor of secondary education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She has taught English for Speakers of Other Languages to middle school, high school and adult students in the United States and abroad.