Jennifer Buehler Ya Literature Summary

The overall main idea of Teaching Reading with YA Literature by Jennifer Buehler is that students will likely be more motivated to learn if they are able to read texts that interest them. Traditionally, there are multiple texts that have been taught in schools for decades (such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Catcher in the Rye, etc.). Students do enjoy these texts, but they are often chosen for them and are likely not too motivated to read them. In fact, Buehler gives a description of herself in high school, “I had a different reading life at school. In English classes, I dutifully slogged through almost all of the novels assigned to me…but I read far more widely on my own” (Buehler 2). Buehler’s situation could be compared to almost every student in the classroom. Essentially, Buehler wants to find a middle ground between leisure reading and academic reading and feels that this connection could be made through the use of YA literature. Another interesting concept covered within this text is teachers acting as matchmakers between students and literature. Buehler says that students need knowledge of books along with a commitment to expanding that knowledge (Buehler 73). Essentially, this is saying that if a teacher is aware of their students’ interests, they
Therefore, in conjunction with what Buehler says about teaching YA literature, choices should always be made available when it comes to what students are reading in the classroom. Sure, there are times where it is important for the whole class to be reading the same material, but even then, students could collaboratively decide what the class should be reading. It would be difficult for a middle school teacher to teach five or six books at the same time, but students could be given the opportunity to select from an array of 3 or 4 texts that the teacher is familiar