Linda Williams
(February 2002, 416 - 421.)
As teens in Connecticut studiously dissected their assigned reading during the first summer of the new century, this librarian was just as studiously researching bibliographic information for the very titles they were slogging through. Well, some were slogging. A small percentage had interesting and well-considered titles on their schools' 2000 summer reading lists.
As Children's Services Librarian for the Connecticut State Library, I had posted a request for summer reading information on our listserv for librarians who work with youth. Although it did not produce statistics about how many schools in our state's 169 towns assign mandatory summer reading, I did receive summer reading lists from 57 Connecticut high schools. After entering 2,215 different titles from all these lists into a giant spreadsheet, I was analyzing the data.
The project began because of two recurring frustrations. First, as a reader of many young adult (YA) and adult books recommended for teens, I think that YA literature is the best thing out there for both teens and me. I believe that my two sons despise reading at ages fourteen and seventeen because of their dull and difficult required reading. Their school makes sure that's all they read in the summer, too. It keeps them from reading anything else.
Second, as a public librarian for ten years in children's and young adult services, I joined fellow librarians on the endless quest to get schools to include us in the committees that prepare summer reading lists—or at least give libraries a copy of the list before the first student appears in search of the books. Many school listmakers seem clueless about what public libraries go through to get these books into their students' hands during the summer when those very teachers are unavailable.
In a long letter, one reference librarian vented: "Despite annual phone calls and offers of help, the schools in [our town] have not . . . been interested in any input from the libraries. [The children's librarian] went to several meetings with folks at the middle school and they wound up deciding not to change anything after all because it was too hard. We have to beg and plead to get copies of the lists . . . so we can be forewarned if not forearmed. I don't have a clue where they think the kids are going to get these books over the summer if we don't have them [at the public library], but that is apparently not their problem. [Our town] is fairly affluent, so perhaps they figure [the parents] will simply go to Barnes and Noble and buy them all."
The letter continues with further frustrations. Public librarians are not on teacher radar. One list gave three local bookstore addresses, but nary a mention of a library. Another advised, "Give your children twelve to fifteen dollars each and turn them loose in Borders or Barnes & Noble to select their two summer reading books. . . . Nothing we can suggest here will be as successful as this approach!"
So what gives teachers and librarians such different ideas of what and how teens should read? To find out, I signed on to teacher listservs, joined the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and talked (sometimes argued) with teachers. I searched for research to prove that the sacred literary canon would make teens better readers, better students, or better people. What I found almost exclusively supports the use of YA literature in high schools—and most of it appears in NCTE's own English Journal for secondary English teachers! Why do schools seem to persist in forcing dead white male's tomes down teens' throats? The following anecdotal study provides some observations.
Dead White Males
High school tradition (and not much else, I discovered) dictates the reading of canonical literature during the school year. In an increasingly multicultural world, is the literary canon broadening to include nonwhite cultures? Surely, at least, multicultural literature is being added to summer reading choices.
My study contradicts that assumption. I determined the ethnic background of 983 of the 1,427 different authors on Connecticut high school summer reading lists. The table below reveals the number of authors identified in each of the four main ethnic groups, with the percentage of all list titles that their work represents, compared to the percentage of the Connecticut population that reported membership in those groups in the 2000 census. These multicultural books comprise 12.5% of all listed titles, a little more than half of the total state population within those cultures. Should assigned reading material mirror the makeup of the population? And shouldn't multicultural literature ideally be enjoyed by both mainstream and ethnic readers who share our American culture?
The number of listed titles by dead white male authors alone is just short of double (24.2%) the number of titles by nonwhite authors, alive or dead. Living authors wrote 65% of summer reading titles, and female authors wrote 35.6%. These figures vary greatly from school to school. The most frequently listed titles by nonwhite authors (see list below) lead one to believe that listmakers are killing two birds with one stone, since most of these titles were also written by women. Many recent multicultural YA titles would be strong additions to high school summer reading lists. It's time to revise the lists to speak to the population that uses them. Almost any public library would be glad to help schools find appropriate new titles.
African American
The Color of Water by James McBride (14 lists)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (14 lists)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (14 lists)
Asian
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (16 lists)
Farewell to Manzanar by James D. Houston (9 lists)
The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan (7 lists)
Hispanic
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (9 lists)
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez (8 lists)
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya (7 lists)
Native American
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris (11 lists)
The Broken Cord by Michael Dorris (4 lists)
Lakota Woman by Mary Crow Dog, et. al. (3 lists)
Ceremony by Leslie Silko (3 lists)
Find the few women among the white males in this list of Top White Authors who are ranked by the number of times they appear on Connecticut schools’ summer reading lists. Would you have predicted these women’s names? Calculate your own total of dead white males—and dead white females. Then find the two authors—both male—who are the only writers of young adult fiction. Both wrote for many years before achieving credibility on school reading lists—and sadly, both have recently died.
Charles Dickens (7 titles, 43 listings)
William Shakespeare (13 titles, 39 listings)
John Steinbeck (8 titles, 38 listings)
Michael Crichton (11 titles, 35 listings)
Mary Higgins Clark (12 titles, 34 listings)
James Herriot (3 titles, 34 listings)
Barbara Kingsolver (4 titles, 33 listings)
Jon Krakauer (2 titles, 28 listings)
Willa Cather (4 titles, 27 listings)
Robert Cormier (10 titles, 26 listings)
Ernest Hemingway (7 titles, 26 listings)
Stephen King (17 titles, 26 listings)
Ray Bradbury (4 titles, 25 listings)
J. R. R. Tolkien (3 titles, 25 listings)
Anne Tyler (8 titles, 24 listings)
Jane Austen (5 titles, 23 listings)
Chaim Potok (3 titles, 22 listings)
This text and these lists are excerpted from the article by Linda Williams that was published in the February 2002 issue of VOYA on pages 416-421. See the complete article in the magazine for:
• Analysis of classic, contemporary adult, and YA titles on summer reading lists
• A look at reading lists from the students’ perspective
• Errors on printed reading lists that make titles difficult for students to find
• Suggestions for improving summer reading lists
Are you interested in working with a group of librarians and teachers who wish to improve both the content of and communications about summer reading lists? Contact VOYA editor Stacy L. Creel to volunteer.
Linda Williams is Children's Services Librarian for the Connecticut State Library Division of Library Development. She is co-chair of the Young Adult Services Roundtable of the Connecticut Library Association, and Chair of the Nutmeg Children's Book Award Selection Committee. Before finding her calling as parent and librarian, she was a graphic designer. Comments on the subject of high school summer reading are welcome at lwilliams@cslib.org.