Young Adult and Canonical Literature

Paula Greathouse is associate professor of secondary English Education at Tennessee Tech where she teaches English methods, literacy, and young adult literature courses. She was a secondary English and Reading teacher for sixteen years. Victor Malo-Juvera is a former middle school teacher and current associate professor of English Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington where he teaches courses in young adult literature and multicultural young adult literature.

Secondary English teachers often struggle to infuse their classrooms with literature from the canon along with the proliferation of young adult texts that are often more relevant to their students. Not since Joan Kaywell's edited volume Adolescent Literature as a Complement to the Classics (1993), and her updates a decade later, has there been a definitive work combining these texts as complements to each other. This two-volume work offers unique options for teachers, with chapters organized chronologically by the publication date of the canonical text, providing a wide array of pairings with unique approaches to pedagogy within the strictures of the National Council of Teachers of English. Each chapter is organized with an introductory section; a summary of texts (without an emphasis on the canon); and instructional activities (with options) for before, during, and after the unit. Chapters also include extension activities and substantive lists of relevant references. This book will be valuable to veteran teachers who have at least some graduate work relating to further canon study and a broad understanding of relevant young adult texts. Highly recommended.

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTSPREFACEINTRODUCTIONVictor Malo-Juvera and Paula GreathouseCHAPTER 1A Poet, a Girl, and Her Golem: The Journey from Innocence to ExperienceDawan Coombs and Rachel KnechtCHAPTER 2Remixing Pride and Prejudice for Gentrification Study and Writing DialogueKristine Mensonides GritterCHAPTER 3Monsters, Cyborgs, and Medical Ethics: Cinder and Frankenstein; or, The Modern PrometheusMelanie Hundley and Sarah K. BurrissCHAPTER 4 Young Adult Literature as Companion to Sex, Gender, and Consent in the Canon: Pairing Gabi, a Girl in Pieces and The Scarlet LetterRuben Zecena and Ashley S. BoydCHAPTER 5Beginnings, Transformations, and Connections: Teaching Gansworth’s Apple alongside Kafka’s MetamorphosisRicki Ginsberg and Kit MageeCHAPTER 6Examining Prejudice and Intersectionality in Of Mice and Men and We Were HereEllen FoleyCHAPTER 7Disrupting the Canon with Dystopia: Neal Shusterman’s Scythe and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451Sarah Flemming and Keith NewvineCHAPTER 8Saints, Angels, Butterflies, and Owls: Magical Realism BeckonsSharon KaneCHAPTER 9Trauma in the Beauty Ideal in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and An Na’s The FoldSarah DonovanABOUT THE EDITORS ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS INDEX OF CANONICAL AND YA TEXTSSUBJECT INDEX