Brave New Word

We must deepen our commitment to promoting media literacy with a focus on strategies that improve critical-reading skills. Linear to Hypertext Brave New Word Thoughts on the new digital age and the old problem of cultural bias -- or what could more precisely be called: Enviro-centrism It is enviro-centrism, a kind of willful ignorance, that leads many, otherwise rational, thinking adults to insist that reading means reading a book. I define enviro-centrism as a refusal to acknowledge multiple perspectives and world-views. Beyond ethnocentric beliefs about the superiority of one's culture and cultural norms, enviro-centrism is the narrow-minded unwillingness to shake off one’s own mind-set and experience the world-view...

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Beyond the Page

"Aside from engagement, comic books also help to develop much needed analytical and critical thinking skills . . . A common goal, regardless of the level we teach is to help students reach beyond the page in order to ask and answer deeper questions that the given work suggests about art, life, and the intersection of the two." -- Rocco Versaci, How Comic Books Can Change the Way Our Students See Literature Beyond the Page Charting Radical Change We are still in the awkward, early adolescence -- the teens -- of the digital age. Remarkably, the radical changes to literature in the 21st century's cyber paradigm shift are also analogous to the development markers of adolescence.  This can all be demonstrated through a Radical Technological...

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Light Reading

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." -- Plato Forced Perspective Meghan Cox Gurdon’s recent attention-getting Wall St. Journal piece which complains of a "darkness too visible" in today’s YAL and bemoans that teen shelves have become saturated with books centered on "pathologies" is a near duplicate of Sara Mosle's New York Times article about "bleak books." Both articles are suspect. Often times, when those in the intractably mono-cultural worlds of education, publishing and literary criticism speak of "children" – they are speaking only about White, middle class children. That’s not terribly surprising considering the lack of diversity in the publishing...

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Keepin' It Real

Keepin' It Real In his forward to Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case, author Chris Crowe reveals that, for decades, he had never heard of Emmett Till. That’s more than a little strange. You don’t have to look very deeply into civil rights history to find the name, Emmett Till.  Crowe, a Brigham Young University English professor, goes on to document the enormous amount of national and international attention Till’s case garnered. Incorporated into his text are several primary sources which prove that the events surrounding the 14-year old Black child’s murder were so hotly discussed and debated in the media that the case -- as Crowe himself concludes -- "galvanized Blacks all over the United States...

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Each One of Us is Multicultural

 America is a multicultural society. Our diversity has long been recognized as our greatest strength. The concepts of "From Many, One," "Freedom and Justice for All" -- and the idea that we are all created equally -- reach down to the very roots of who we are. Nobody thought it would be easy. Our lofty ideals have clearly been at odds with some of our actions. But we have always been a pluralistic society. There are Two Sides to Every Story The word multicultural means different things in different contexts. That's appropriate. Context and multiple perspectives is fundamentally what multiculturalism is all about. Definitions can limit and control as much as they explain and liberate, but we must strive for clarity about what...

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Count Me In!

"America is woven of many strands. I would recognize them and let it so remain. Our fate is to become one, and yet many. This is not prophecy, but description." -- Ralph Ellison   I. Multicultural awards are vital because we must be direct and explicit in recognizing, rewarding and encouraging voices of the historically marginalized ethnic and cultural groups within society. That is not a mandate for political correctness -- it is a survival tactic.There is an anti-intellectual streak running through America as deep and wide as the Mississippi. As a nation, we don't trust book learnin'. We never have. I call it page discrimination. The attitude is summed up in a sentence: "They can put anything in a book -- doesn't make it...

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Good Horror? Or Horrible Book?

Good Teen Horror? Or Horrible Book for Teens? The Meaning of Horror Dictionary.com defines horror as . . . 1. an overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting; a shuddering fear 2. anything that causes such a feeling 3. such a feeling as a quality or condition Technically, horror is a feeling – a feeling of fear -- or that feeling as a quality, which is dread, for example "the horrors of war." Horror literature then, is not limited to monster stories, vampire romance novels, or books that go bump in the night. It can be anything from the blasé to the beastly. However, one could argue that three-headed monsters, vampires and werewolves are fantasy figures – dark and eerie perhaps...

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Lego Ergo Sum

     Cogito Ergo Sum      I Think, Therefore I Am "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." --Shakespeare’s Tempest       Consciousness of self, social role orientation and the search for personal identity are the hallmarks of the adolescent stage. Researchers have noted that prior to this period, development largely depends on what is done to us. At adolescence, development depends mainly on what we do.      Lego Ergo Sum       I Read, Therefore I Am We grapple with social issues in seeking to find our own identity, but we’re also confronted with profound philosophical and moral questions. Adolescence is a period of accelerated...

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