I think that YAL is like anything else and it has trends. Right now we are in the vampire era of YAL. Go to any book store and the YAL shelves are just loaded with stories about vampires. I am sure that this stems from the Twilight era, which in turn stemed from Harry Potter. I have to say that I didn't read much of the Harry Potter series, but I have read all of the Twilight books and I really enjoyed them. It was fun to be transported to another world and to re-live the feeling of falling in love for the first time. I am sure that this is what draws our young adult readers to fantasy books. It is fun being transported to another time and place. In what other setting could you fly on a dragon, or visit middle earth? There are many reasons why students are drawn to the idea of fantasy. Is their home life not what they want it to be? Are they having trouble at school or with friends? A good fantasy book can take you away from all of your troubles. It takes you away from the Real World, and sometimes that is a good thing!
I agree that kids are not allowed to visualize in this era. Imaginations are squashed because of the high tech world that we are living in. It is important that we try to enhance the imaginations in our classroom. There is one great visualizing activity that I have just recently read about. It is called: Judging a Book by it's Cover. The book cover is what initially draws a reader to the book. Many times a book cover can give you ideas of what is within the pages of the book. A book cover can be the deciding factor of whether a child picks up the book to read or passes it by. The activity that I read was about having the students create their own book covers for a read aloud book. The student created covers can be displayed on a board and the students are asked to use their imagination, instead of having it already presented to them. I thought that you could take this even further, and have students create book covers for stories that they write or reports that they write.
I am interested in hearing about other visualizing activities that you have all heard about....
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So I just had to add this in since it came about while I was subbing this week. I am doing a two week subbing job for a good friend of mine. I started to read aloud the story Matlida to the third grade class. I had them vote on books to choose the read aloud that they wanted to hear. Most of them had never read this book, so it was the popular choice. It has started to become very frustrating while I am reading because most of them have seen the movie. Several times kids have blurted out that the book isn't correct because it isn't like the movie!!! What an opposite way to think of things, but what can you expect! Anyone else had a similar experience?
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I haven't run into that issue before, Marci. However, that would drive me a little batty. BUT! Take it as an opportunity to explain which came first and the idea of artistic license. :)
ReplyDeleteI like what you said about kids liking this genre cuz not all of them have good home lives (although some just like to escape!:)) But that is an excellent point and makes a lot of sense.
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