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.

• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSPREFACE INTRODUCTIONVictor Malo-Juvera and Paula GreathouseCHAPTER 1Feral Youth, The Canterbury Tales, and the Power of StoriesShelly ShafferCHAPTER 2Exploring Feminist Themes in Jane Eyre and Dark CompanionAmber Spears and Ciara PittmanCHAPTER 3Governed by Rules: Possibilities and Consequences in Wuthering Heights and The Hate U GiveMichael Macaluso and Kati MacalusoCHAPTER 4 “I wish I weren’t so high”: Substance abuse and addiction in We Were Liars and The Great GatsbyJanine DarraghCHAPTER 5Justice Served? Teaching Native Son and AllegedlyLisa ScherffCHAPTER 6They’re Still Watching: 1984, Little Brother, and the Staying Power of the Techno-DystopiaSarah Burriss and Melanie HundleyCHAPTER 7Identifying and Interrogating Toxic Masculinity in Lord of Flies and The Chocolate WarKaty Corvino, Anna Consalvo, and Natalie ChaseCHAPTER 8Fallen Angels and The Things They Carried: Bringing the Vietnam War to LightCrag HillABOUT THE EDITORS ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS INDEX OF YA AND CANONICAL TEXTSSUBJECT INDEX