Young Adult Novels with Multiple Narrative Perspectives: The Changing Nature of YA Literature (original) (raw)
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We all live in a world of stories. We tell and listen to narratives in order to give body to our experience and make ourselves more visible to ourselves and others. This ability to make up stories and recount our experience appears very early in life since children realize at a young age that storytelling can be a powerful tool for understanding the world, patterning the chaos of experience, becoming part of their culture, making and keeping friends, constructing a self. The ability of making up stories, however, seems to decline by the time a child reaches the age of 8 or 9. So, when she reaches adolescence it may well have been completely lost even though the need of an adolescent to familiarize herself with what is contingent, to come to terms with the unexpected as well as to explore herself and others, define and redefine who she is, who she might become and how the world might be, is more imperative than ever. This need which a young child satisfies through fiction-making, an adolescent can satisfy through literature, particularly when reading fiction becomes a social process and the reader becomes a member of a community such as a book club. Fiction offers a reader alternative worlds and permits her to explore possibilities and consider options for herself and the world which are not suggested when she takes things as they are. By reading, she enters the thoughts of another person, lets her own self briefly disappear and see the world through the eyes of the imagined self thus gaining different perspectives on what is real. It should not be assumed though that this kind of interaction between reader and text takes place instinctively but it takes some effort and experience from the part of the reader to reach such a reading position. The transition to becoming a skilled reader and adopting an interactive position can be facilitated when the reader is called to discuss, to narrate her reading experience, to pay attention to aspects that she might have overlooked and most important of all to verify the validity of her interpretation. A book club provides the context where such discussions can take place and offers the space for a more expanded reading experience. The participants, by discussing the books they have read, they also talk about themselves and their lives while at the same time they order their experience. This way they reflect both on their lives and on the books along with learning that interpretations are always tentative and that possibilities can be explored from multiple perspectives. The paper is based on a study which is part of my PhD. The survey takes place in the public libraries of Thessaloniki, where book clubs for adolescents between the ages of 11-16 years old have been organized in order to observe their response to fiction and their reading practices. The ‘texts’ produced by the teenagers during the book club meetings constitute the material that is studied and this paper will report some research findings.
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Adolescent Literature as a Vehicle for Developing Comprehension and Composition Skills
1980
C. Smith's "read a book in 'an hou4." procedure for the development of listeing and reading comprehension and B. Beyer's. "hamburger writing" procedure for the development of composition, skills formed the basis of a teaching technique that provided. 'EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION. CENTER (ERIC) rThis document has been reproduced as received from the. parson or organization originating it. Ill Minor changes havb been made to improve reproduc' On quality. Points of view or opinions st.t-ekin-thiszloc. mont do not necessarily repreei-m position or policy.
The AATE/Interface series comprises a range of books for teachers who are committed to researching their own teaching -teachers who work at the interface between theory and practice. Interface titles all have a practical edge, in that they include ideas developed in the classrooms, for use in the classrooms. Yet they are far more than a set of resources.
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