There has been a lot of conversation over the past year or so about what students should and should not be reading.
Schools have also been getting pushback about the ways they’re teaching — and in some cases, the fact that they’re teaching at all — about differences between people, be it race, gender, disability or anything else.
At the same time, there are more and more books dealing with more and more kinds of characters and situations, both for middle grade, generally 8-12 year olds, and young adult readers, generally between the ages of 12-18.
The Show will be talking to the authors of some of these books as part of a new series called Lit Squad.
The series kicks off with Tom Leveen and Jewell Parker Rhodes. Leveen is the award-winning author of nine books, while Rhodes is a New York Times best-selling author and professor at Arizona State University.
The Show spoke with them and started the conversation by asking Leveen what he sees as the role of young adult and middle grade literature in teaching kids not just about their worlds, but about the worlds around them, especially compared to all the other media kids have access to.
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A 13-year-old girl is preparing for her bat mitzvah, even though her family rarely goes to synagogue. At the same time, Zippy believes she’s a witch. That is the premise of the latest children’s novel from Laurel Snyder, called "The Witch of Woodland." -
Thousands of Japanese-Americans were held in internment camps in Arizona during World War II. MichiNishiura Weglyn was one of them — along with her family. Ken Mochizuki tells her story. -
Maria Ingrande Mora is a writer and content designer who lives in Florida. She talked about how she writes about something like anxiety — which some number of her readers likely also deal with — while keeping it authentic. -
The Show spoke with author Celia Pérez about her book "Tumble" and how the main character's story is someone many other children can relate to. -
Over the past year, The Show has heard from authors of books for middle-grade and young adult readers dealing with issues of race, gender, disability and socioeconomic differences, among other things. It’s a series called Lit Squad — and in this episode, The Show spoke with author Mónica Mancillas.
