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What is a "classic" -Reply
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From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 16:37:04 -0500
Betty Ihlenfeldt's fine commentary and samples of her dialogue via e-mail with Jane Kurtz have brought us to a critical aspect of our July discussion. I hope some of you will respond to Betty's thoughts. What, indeed, is a classic? Who says so? Why? I spent most of this morning with several 9th grade teachers who are wrestling with the same question. At departmental meetings these teachers hear that if their students don't read, for example, Huck Finn, later the students will "be at a deficit." I know about the traditional canon, I am familiar with that type of remark, and I really don't want to get into the continuing Huck Finn debate. Rather, I wonder about the "deficit" students have now as well as later if they've never sampled Virginia Hamilton under the guidance of a skilled literature teacher. Will they enjoy Toni Morrison's novels even more as adults if they've had the opportunity to read Hamilton? The teachers were thinking about which Hamilton novel to teach (Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush? Planet of Junior Brown?). They looked at anthologies such as American Dragons edited by Laurence Yep and American Eyes edited by Lori Carlson; they exmanined novels by Uri Orlev; they looked at One Bird by Kyoko Mori and The Friends by Kazumi Yumoto; they thought about A Way Out of No Way: Writings about Growing Up Black in America edited by Jacqueline Woodson; they marveled at This Same Sky, Naomi Shihab Nye's anthology of world poetry; they considered Judith Cofer's collection of short fiction An Island Like Me and Frances Temple's novels Taste of Salt and Tonight, By Sea - and much more. The literature they looked at is contemporary, the books are not in the canon, and yet - in my opinion - these works can be respected as literature worth reading either outside or inside a classroom. These books are not classics, but there is valuable literature published for young adults that is, in fact, literature. In your mind, what does it take to bring these and other books you admire to classic status? What does it take to give them status? Maybe that's the real question... Sincerely, Ginny
***************************** Ginny Moore Kruse (gmkruse at ccbc.soemadison.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) A Library of the School of Education University of Wisconsin - Madison www.soemadison.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Fri 25 Jul 1997 04:37:04 PM CDT
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 16:37:04 -0500
Betty Ihlenfeldt's fine commentary and samples of her dialogue via e-mail with Jane Kurtz have brought us to a critical aspect of our July discussion. I hope some of you will respond to Betty's thoughts. What, indeed, is a classic? Who says so? Why? I spent most of this morning with several 9th grade teachers who are wrestling with the same question. At departmental meetings these teachers hear that if their students don't read, for example, Huck Finn, later the students will "be at a deficit." I know about the traditional canon, I am familiar with that type of remark, and I really don't want to get into the continuing Huck Finn debate. Rather, I wonder about the "deficit" students have now as well as later if they've never sampled Virginia Hamilton under the guidance of a skilled literature teacher. Will they enjoy Toni Morrison's novels even more as adults if they've had the opportunity to read Hamilton? The teachers were thinking about which Hamilton novel to teach (Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush? Planet of Junior Brown?). They looked at anthologies such as American Dragons edited by Laurence Yep and American Eyes edited by Lori Carlson; they exmanined novels by Uri Orlev; they looked at One Bird by Kyoko Mori and The Friends by Kazumi Yumoto; they thought about A Way Out of No Way: Writings about Growing Up Black in America edited by Jacqueline Woodson; they marveled at This Same Sky, Naomi Shihab Nye's anthology of world poetry; they considered Judith Cofer's collection of short fiction An Island Like Me and Frances Temple's novels Taste of Salt and Tonight, By Sea - and much more. The literature they looked at is contemporary, the books are not in the canon, and yet - in my opinion - these works can be respected as literature worth reading either outside or inside a classroom. These books are not classics, but there is valuable literature published for young adults that is, in fact, literature. In your mind, what does it take to bring these and other books you admire to classic status? What does it take to give them status? Maybe that's the real question... Sincerely, Ginny
***************************** Ginny Moore Kruse (gmkruse at ccbc.soemadison.wisc.edu) Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) A Library of the School of Education University of Wisconsin - Madison www.soemadison.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Fri 25 Jul 1997 04:37:04 PM CDT
