Queer representation in middle grade and young adult books
I'm a teacher, and two years ago I had a student come out to me as trans. He recommended the book The Other Boy by M.G. Hennessey to me, saying that it was the first book he'd read that was about someone like himself. The same goes for another student with John Green & David Levithan's Will Grayson, Will Grayson. Another student this year shared a similar sentiment about Ivy Aberdeen's Letter to the World by Ashley Herring Blake.
I don't know how well-known this is outside of educators, but there has been a recent explosion of books for middle grade and young adult audiences that have openly queer characters and themes. When I was growing up we pretty much had only Annie on My Mind, and even then there was a good chance it wasn't stocked in the library. Now there are hundreds of books published each year and available in school libraries across the country.
This is great for two reasons:
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I've had many students who have been able to read about characters that they can directly identify with.
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I've had many students who do not identify as queer (to the best of my knowledge) read and empathize with these characters.
I can't say whether it's because of the books or if the books are simply an indicator of changing social norms, but I've watched acceptance of queer individuals of all types increase over my years in the profession.
Last week was Banned Books Week, and our librarian gave a small presentation to the students about why books get challenged or banned and gave some prominent examples. When she brought up Drama by Raina Telgemeier and mentioned that one of the reasons it was challenged was for "including LGBT characters," my class's response was audible shock. Ten years ago, the response would have been laughter or derision.
Students self-select books from the library for free reading, and I'm always checking in with them to see what they've picked. Right now, I have a student reading Alex Gino's George, one reading the aforementioned The Other Boy, and another reading The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater. I have no idea how these students identify, but honestly, it doesn't matter. The fact that they were able to check those books out and read them is pretty powerful to me. The fact that they chose them on their own is also pretty awesome. Nobody is making students read books about queer characters. They're choosing to!
In fact, one of my favorite things to hear from students about books like those is that they were "boring." Why? Well, because that's pretty much the default adolescent response to any book these days (let's be honest: it's hard for reading to compete with Fortnite), but mostly because it means the student is reading the story free from any prejudice. The book is not seen as inflammatory or controversial or even brave. It's just a story about any regular person--the kind that many kids often find, in this day and age, boring.
And, for someone who's spent a lot of his life having his identity made by others to be A Significant Issue, it turns out boring is a pretty cool thing to be.
I hear you. I'm an avid reader and gamer myself and definitely can appreciate the differences. However, when it comes to my students, it's a different story. In fact, my flippant tone with that comment actually overshadowed a much more serious issue.
A majority of my students do not habitually read. I am not exaggerating for effect--I literally mean more than half. Many of my students are flat out non-readers, meaning that their skills are low enough that they are unable to read what they're supposed to. At this point they are several grade levels behind and will only fall further as they age. As such, most of them hate reading and do not do it even when it is incentivized or mandated, whether through family or school. By middle school, the books they can read are infantilizing, and the ones they want to read are too difficult for them. This gap only grows.
When I meet with parents they are often distressed and powerless against the idea that their kids, no matter what they do, will. not. read. At best they get an apathetic compliance to meet minimum requirements, but rarely more. No delight in finding an interesting book, compelling wonder about how something might play out, or fascination with a new world and ideas. If my non-readers ever do read, it is almost always a purely functional task for them: moving their eyes over some words on the page because they were told that they should and that it's good for them. And let me assure you that these kids are not necessarily products of laissez-faire parents. I've worked with teachers who love and support their own children deeply and have the skills to help them with reading, yet their kids just plain do. not. read.
A couple of years ago I did a novel study with The Things They Carried with my high school classes. We broke the book up story by story, doing a different activity with each one. We spent a lot of class time reading (since nearly all of the students wouldn't read at home if assigned to) and even read much of the book out loud. At the end of the novel, we got into a class discussion about it, and many students admitted it was the first book they had actually finished in years. Some said it was the only novel they could remember reading all the way through. This was not one or two students in the class, mind you. This was several. In every class.
Teachers and parents do a lot to get kids able to and motivated to read, but the reality is that it is an uphill battle these days. Not that it's ever been easy, but our students' attentions have a lot of competition now. Plus, they're being shaped from birth by visual input and short, high-interest, high-reward content. Books aren't flashy or interactive. They're long. There's no social component. They're not immediately gratifying. They're not competitive or collaborative. You don't get rewards for finishing a chapter. Reading is a fundamentally isolating, mundane, dated activity by the standards of today's youth. Downright monk-like, from their perspective.
It's also wonderful, as you and I well know, but the problem is that to experience the richness of reading you have to wade through the swamp first. You have to learn to read, which is the first hurdle many students fail to clear. Following that, you then you have to read enough that you can get yourself into a flow state and escape into your books. This is the groundwork for loving reading. Finally, you have to learn enough about narrative and authorship that you can start to appreciate books for their style, resonance, craft, or thematic depth.
That's a high mountain to climb, and many students simply opt out of the hike. They are still in the stages where reading is boring and frustrating. Compared to the engaging intensity of Fortnite, it's downright torturous for them. And I don't blame them! I played games when I was a child, but they have come a long way since then, and companies have figured out much better how to grab and maintain kids' attentions. Granted, it's not just videogames, but I definitely think they play a large part. If I were a child today, it is highly likely that I would not be a reader because videogames, YouTube, and social media would have shaped and ultimately usurped my habits long before I developed the skills that helped me love reading.
I almost wonder if a more mature version of choose-your-own-adventure, text adventures, MUDs or even visual novel games would help in this case. I grew up on CYOAs, PC text adventures and MUDs, which instilled in me my love of reading (and computer games). Traditional books may be non-interactive and lack collaboration/competition, but maybe that needs to change and students need to be met half-way... at least to start them off and get them interested in reading, anyways.
Being in a position to do this is one of my dreams as a teacher. I think there's room for all kinds of narrative media in the English classroom, but introducing IF is probably the most realistic sell I'd have, and I feel like such a cool little oddity could be used to great effect.
Getting away from the paper things with scary blocks of ink that constantly reinforce just how much you have to go through could have a big impact. I also think only relying on novels is doing a disservice to students in terms of time management. Like, in reality the points of discussion we really want to get to don't require such longform storytelling. If anything, novels are an art form which praise being unfocused and wide, which makes it fucking hard to talk about with people who aren't all dead set on tackling them in the same way. IF, if you avoid the puzzly Zork-y things, really lets you blast through ideas and get to the core of what you want to work with.
I don't think IF will scratch the itch that games do for kids, but it could certainly be weird and different enough to catch em off guard while not being any less suited to their learning goals.