World Literature That High School Students Actually Want to Read- Share a Story, Shape a Future 2012

I teach World Literature and I love the responsibility of introducing my students to literature from across time and across the world.  Along with the canon literature that I am required to cover, I try to bring in as much multicultural YA as I can, through booktalks, book trailers, displays, and read-alouds.  Over the past year I have been compiling a list of books that have caught the attention of my students and I am excited to share them today. This is by no means a complete list, as I focus on the areas of the world that my curriculum centers on.

Multicultural YA for Discerning Teen Reader

• Africa
  • Purple Hibiscus: A Novel by Chimamanda Adichi
  • Akata Witch Nnedi Okorafor
  • Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You by Hanna Jansen
  • A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beal
  • Many Stones by Carolyn Coman
  • The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba
• Asia
  • A Million Shades of Gray by Cynthia Kadohata
  • Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins
  • Iqbal by Francesco D’Adamo
  • Karma by Cathy Ostlere
  • Climbing the Stairs by Padma Venkatraman
  • Sold by Patricia McCormick
• Europe
  • Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
  • Nothing by Janne Teller
  • Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
  • The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
• Middle East
  • The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
  • Words In The Dust by Trent Reedyhold
  • Under the Persimmon Tree Suzanne Fisher Staples
  • Where The Streets Had A Name by by Randa Abdel-Fattah
  • 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye
• Central/South America
  • The Queen of Water by Laura Resau
  • The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom by Margarita Engle
  • The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan
  • The Firefly Letters: A Suffragette’s Journey to Cuba by Margarita Engle
  • Keeper by Mal Peet

The Power of a Book

When I was in middle school, my mother used to yell at me for reading.  It sounds crazy, right?  But sometimes she was right. (I won’t agree that she was right all the time!)  In the days before cell phones and e-readers, I carried a book with me everywhere.  Ok, sometimes more than one book.  I am the oldest of six, so as a child I was always at someone’s basketball or soccer game.  It was a way of life.  But what middle schooler enjoys watching their siblings at practice?  Boooring. So I brought my book(s) with me.

Those books meant I was far and away from the physical place where I sat.  My mother told me I was anti-social.  And maybe she was right.  I remember her telling me that classmates walked by and said hello without any acknowledgement from me.  I was sitting there, reading my book, and had no idea they had been there.  I was in my own world.  I was in my book’s world.

Those books transported me from the loud gym, the hot soccer field, the hard bleachers, to worlds all their own.  It’s been many years since I was in middle school, but I can still list some of the books that I carried with me. (I was a big rereader).  I read the entire The Complete Anne of Green Gables series multiple times.  Instead of sitting in the cold gym, surrounded by the crashing of basketballs and the sounds of sneakers squeaking on the floor, I was sitting in a rowboat on the Lake of Shining Waters.  I was with Anne, my kindred spirit, exploring Prince Edward Island.  Those books had the power to transport me out of New Jersey and into Prince Edward Island.

I also love L.M. Montgomery’s lesser-known series, the Emily series. As a young tween, I stumbled upon two old books in my grandmother’s house.  They were published in 1925 and 1927, and the romantic in me fell in love before I realized they were written by one of my favorite authors.  I read and reread those two books over and over, for years.  They connected me to my grandmother, and to the person who had owned them before her.  Someday, I will pass them on to my own children.

Someday, those books, and those two girls- Anne and Emily- will hopefully be kindred spirits for the girls who come after me.

Someday, another young girl will find the two books in the picture. Maybe on an old bookshelf, or in a closet.  Maybe in a trunk, or an attic.

And some other young reader will know the power of a book to transport one to another world.  The power of a book.

 

 

 

Check out today’s hosts:  Carol at Rasco from RIF and Donalyn Miller, the Book Whisperer!

Share a Story, Shape a Future 2011

It’s here, it’s here!!

This week is the annual Share a Story, Shape a Future Literacy Blog tour.  We have been hard at work behind the scenes and are so happy that it’s time to unveil the amazing week ahead.  Be sure to check back tomorrow for links to the posts for day 1.

What do you have to look forward to this week?  From the Share a Story, Shape a Future blog:

• Author and TV personality Katie Davis (of Katie Davis’ Brain Burps) has an exclusive interview with Terry Doherty, founder of The Reading Tub. Look for her podcast early in the week.
• Mrs. P. of MrsP.com has written an original story, will give us a demonstration of how her website is a portal to reading, AND is launching a new program. [Still a secret!]
• Award-winning authors Tanita S. Davis and Mitali Perkins, and Hannah Ehrlich ofLee & Low Books join Terry Doherty in a roundtable discussion aboutmulticulturalism in books for children and teens.
• Elizabeth Dulemba, Sarah Mulhern (The Reading Zone), Donalyn Miller (The Book Whisperer), Franki Sibberson and Mary Lee Hahn (A Year of Reading), and their author and illustrator friends  will be talking about how they fell in love with reading, who gave them the gift of reading, becoming a write, and … well, we can’t tell you everything now, can we? Here are some of their friends: Sarah Darer Littman, Kathi Appelt, JP Voelkel, Paul W. Hankins, Terri Lesesne, Mitali Perkins,  Megan McCafferty,  Jess Leader, Jonathan Auxier, Courtney Sheinmel, Barbara Dee.

It’s going to be a fantastic week!!