Back to YA Lit...Again

I hope so too, Melanie...those are fun books...but ya know what? the reason that I think they're fun is not because I'm a guy but because of how they were taught to me...this is what makes me mad about this whole YA vs. Classics convo (as if to suggest that anything that is not YA is a classic...which it's not...anyway) I reject the idea that all kids will automatically like YA, as if it's some magical candy store that parents and teachers don't want kids to know exists because once they go inside they'll be corrupted and never enjoy anything of any real intellectual merrit (whatever that means)...no, reading YA is still reading! the kids who hate to read probably won't enjoy reading YA...sure, there may be some YA they take to, but who's to say there aren't some classics they'd take to as well...for me, it all goes back to teaching, and frankly, The Scarlet Letter is one of the most poorly taught books we have...teachers who teach it don't know what it's about! I get so sick and tired of people teaching that book during the early American unit because it has to do with the Puritans...Guess what teachers: it has just as much to do with modern society as it does with the Puritans...or heck, the society in which was written, the nineteenth century...teachers always bastardize their teaching of it which does two things in my mind: it perpetuates this debate over classics and YA because we think the kids have to find something to read, but at the same time it gets kids turned off reading...Melanie, I'm not talking to you at all, I just think it was a great topic to go back to because as teachers I want to caution us all against this idea that our students will enjoy YA, necessarily...there isn't anything necessary about it...some kids will and some kids won't...some kids like classics, some kids won't...but at least with classics (for now, anyway) we have the opportunity to teach them to see them in a different light...personally, this is a challenge to which I will gladly rise instead of throwing Harry Potter at 'em and saying to myself, oh well, at least it's reading....(i like harry potter, by the way...)