Allusion is powerful, and worth exploring.
An allusion is “a reference in a literary work to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature.” Often, we encounter allusions to works we wouldn’t voluntarily read in the works that we are voluntarily reading. The title of the book comes from William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, which the author makes explicit in the book. I don’t know many fans of TFIOS that would voluntarily go out and read Caesar, but that gives the literature teacher a way into the conversation. Students should be encouraged to read both John Green and William Shakespeare, and teachers should be the leaders of that encouragement. Conversations about who is right (Cassius or Green) and the extent to which he is right lead to deeper conversations that students need a classroom space to explore freely and honestly.
Your students are reading; it just might not be Dickens or Austen. Yet.
Whether it’s because I’m paying attention more or because it’s happening more, more and more of my students come into class with books (sometimes multiple) that I didn’t assign and would never think to assign. They are reading books of their choice, their genre, their preference, and their enjoyment. At the library housed in the high school where I teach, there is essentially a waiting list for certain titles, TFIOS included. I would hazard a guess, though, that those books weren’t written by Charles Dickens or Jane Austen.
But, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be. If we read the book with an eye toward making recommendations, we could not only enhance our relationship with our students by reading what they read, but enhance their reading by challenging them with classics, and giving them a way into them. This sounds as simple as “Oh, you were bored with Hazel’s parents? You should check out the Bennets!” Right then, the students have a reason for reading Pride and Prejudice, and are introduced to a completely different work of romance and humor that they will find to be not altogether different from the work they’ve just read.
More than meeting kids where they are, we should meet them where they read.
As mentioned above, students are reading books that you might not have ever heard of. Ask them about those books, find out what and why they’re reading, and then go do some of the reading yourself. The Fault in Our Stars took me a day to read, but that one-day investment in the book has paid incalculable dividends as I’ve argued with students about the book, tried to give them new perspectives on the characters, and make recommendations for other reading. My students, among other things, thought about their personal worldview in relation to the text. The conversations that led up to and followed from that essay’s writing were some of the most meaningful of my career. And all because I decided to exit the debate about who should and shouldn’t be reading YA Lit and simply read a book.
Debates about literature are for anyone who reads the book.
Apparently there are adults who are arguing that other adults shouldn’t be reading YA and there are those saying YA Lit is for anyone. I think you can guess the side on which I would currently enter the debate, but that was not always the case. I felt the same self-righteous indignation that Ms. Graham expresses in the first linked article, and felt it intensely. How dare adults STOOP to the level of a teenager to read books and then feel good about themselves!!! But, the books are in fact increasingly more sophisticated, and it is because authors are beginning to get really good at recreating teenagers’ conversations and they end up treating their characters as—gasp!—real people. And anyone should read books about real people because we all know them. To my mind, the only people that should be kicked out of a debate about a book are the ones who haven’t read it. And they should be encouraged to read the book, and then encouraged to read others.
Movies are actually important to the reading experience.
Again, this is a thought that I used to hate hearing expressed. When I began teaching, I thought that teachers who showed movies in their classroom were weaker teachers. As with most things I thought when I began teaching, that line of thinking has died. The more I’ve taught the more I understand that books are alive in the minds of my students, and there is something of value in showing how the author and other professionals envisioned their work on the screen. I’ll never forget starting to teach Julius Caesar for the first time by reading the first couple of scenes and then showing the film adaptation of the play starring Marlon Brando. I had about 5% of the audience while we were reading before showing the clip, and then the majority of the class after showing the clip. Students got an idea of the people and how they moved (and what they might’ve looked like) and were as into the play as they could have been. Reading should always come before viewing, but viewing isn’t to be excluded.
An allusion is “a reference in a literary work to a person, place, or thing in history or another work of literature.” Often, we encounter allusions to works we wouldn’t voluntarily read in the works that we are voluntarily reading. The title of the book comes from William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, which the author makes explicit in the book. I don’t know many fans of TFIOS that would voluntarily go out and read Caesar, but that gives the literature teacher a way into the conversation. Students should be encouraged to read both John Green and William Shakespeare, and teachers should be the leaders of that encouragement. Conversations about who is right (Cassius or Green) and the extent to which he is right lead to deeper conversations that students need a classroom space to explore freely and honestly.
Your students are reading; it just might not be Dickens or Austen. Yet.
Whether it’s because I’m paying attention more or because it’s happening more, more and more of my students come into class with books (sometimes multiple) that I didn’t assign and would never think to assign. They are reading books of their choice, their genre, their preference, and their enjoyment. At the library housed in the high school where I teach, there is essentially a waiting list for certain titles, TFIOS included. I would hazard a guess, though, that those books weren’t written by Charles Dickens or Jane Austen.
But, that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t be. If we read the book with an eye toward making recommendations, we could not only enhance our relationship with our students by reading what they read, but enhance their reading by challenging them with classics, and giving them a way into them. This sounds as simple as “Oh, you were bored with Hazel’s parents? You should check out the Bennets!” Right then, the students have a reason for reading Pride and Prejudice, and are introduced to a completely different work of romance and humor that they will find to be not altogether different from the work they’ve just read.
More than meeting kids where they are, we should meet them where they read.
As mentioned above, students are reading books that you might not have ever heard of. Ask them about those books, find out what and why they’re reading, and then go do some of the reading yourself. The Fault in Our Stars took me a day to read, but that one-day investment in the book has paid incalculable dividends as I’ve argued with students about the book, tried to give them new perspectives on the characters, and make recommendations for other reading. My students, among other things, thought about their personal worldview in relation to the text. The conversations that led up to and followed from that essay’s writing were some of the most meaningful of my career. And all because I decided to exit the debate about who should and shouldn’t be reading YA Lit and simply read a book.
Debates about literature are for anyone who reads the book.
Apparently there are adults who are arguing that other adults shouldn’t be reading YA and there are those saying YA Lit is for anyone. I think you can guess the side on which I would currently enter the debate, but that was not always the case. I felt the same self-righteous indignation that Ms. Graham expresses in the first linked article, and felt it intensely. How dare adults STOOP to the level of a teenager to read books and then feel good about themselves!!! But, the books are in fact increasingly more sophisticated, and it is because authors are beginning to get really good at recreating teenagers’ conversations and they end up treating their characters as—gasp!—real people. And anyone should read books about real people because we all know them. To my mind, the only people that should be kicked out of a debate about a book are the ones who haven’t read it. And they should be encouraged to read the book, and then encouraged to read others.
Movies are actually important to the reading experience.
Again, this is a thought that I used to hate hearing expressed. When I began teaching, I thought that teachers who showed movies in their classroom were weaker teachers. As with most things I thought when I began teaching, that line of thinking has died. The more I’ve taught the more I understand that books are alive in the minds of my students, and there is something of value in showing how the author and other professionals envisioned their work on the screen. I’ll never forget starting to teach Julius Caesar for the first time by reading the first couple of scenes and then showing the film adaptation of the play starring Marlon Brando. I had about 5% of the audience while we were reading before showing the clip, and then the majority of the class after showing the clip. Students got an idea of the people and how they moved (and what they might’ve looked like) and were as into the play as they could have been. Reading should always come before viewing, but viewing isn’t to be excluded.