Knowing your Audience

As English teachers, part of our job is to help students see the value in Literature; we can do this by knowing our audience, knowing which books will draw in which students. There are a plethora of worthwhile Young Adult books out there, and it's helpful to be in the know about them as an adolescent English teacher for a couple reasons:

1. It can help us build rapport with our students. Twilight, for example, has been a hot issue among middle and high school students (mostly girls) for the last year. Every week at my placement in Monroe Woodbury Middle School, I would watch the girls reading Twilight come in and gush to each other, and to their teacher, who had read the book, about the plot, the characters, ect.

2. Teaching Synergistic Texts. Some YA works can be taught side by side with "classics" to help students understand works that are complex. For example, the YA novel Jake Reinvented, by Gordon Korman, is a retelling of The Great Gatsby.

3. Engaging students, creating excited readers. If we know the right book to give to the right student, we have a chance of helping that student become a reader for the rest of his/her life.

This article, by Cindy Lou Daniels, addresses YA lit and its increased popularity and merit: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4063/is_200601/ai_n16350744/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1