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Holden's Legacy
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From: Megan Schliesman <schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu>
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:43:53 -0500
It's time to begin our discussion for the first part of April. The recent death of J.D. Salinger has us thinking about "The Catcher in the Rye" and its place in, and influence on, literature for young adults. Reading "Catcher"/ /today, it’s hard not to compare it to more recent titles that often seem fresher and perhaps far more relevant to today’s teens. At the same time, one could argue that many of today’s young adult books, with their honest, angsty, scathing, and sometimes scathingly funny first-person narrators are all descendants of Holden and his discontent.
What are your thoughts about "Catcher" as it relates to today's young adult literature? Are there teens today still reading and connecting to "Catcher" or do kids read it only if they "have" to?
Tom Henderson, the narrator of Frank Portman's "King Dork" (Delacorte, 2006), hilariously laments his fate at the hand of teachers who fell in love with "Catcher" in their own youth and “solemnly resolved that, when they grew up, they would dedicate their lives to spreading The Word." Tom's distinctive and funny voice, and his riff on adolescence today, clearly owes something to Holden, whether or not readers of Portman's novel have ever picked up Salinger's.
Megan
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-- Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison 600 N. Park Street, Room 4290 Madison, WI 53706
608/262-9503 schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu
www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Tue 06 Apr 2010 09:43:53 AM CDT
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:43:53 -0500
It's time to begin our discussion for the first part of April. The recent death of J.D. Salinger has us thinking about "The Catcher in the Rye" and its place in, and influence on, literature for young adults. Reading "Catcher"/ /today, it’s hard not to compare it to more recent titles that often seem fresher and perhaps far more relevant to today’s teens. At the same time, one could argue that many of today’s young adult books, with their honest, angsty, scathing, and sometimes scathingly funny first-person narrators are all descendants of Holden and his discontent.
What are your thoughts about "Catcher" as it relates to today's young adult literature? Are there teens today still reading and connecting to "Catcher" or do kids read it only if they "have" to?
Tom Henderson, the narrator of Frank Portman's "King Dork" (Delacorte, 2006), hilariously laments his fate at the hand of teachers who fell in love with "Catcher" in their own youth and “solemnly resolved that, when they grew up, they would dedicate their lives to spreading The Word." Tom's distinctive and funny voice, and his riff on adolescence today, clearly owes something to Holden, whether or not readers of Portman's novel have ever picked up Salinger's.
Megan
/
/
-- Megan Schliesman, Librarian Cooperative Children's Book Center School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison 600 N. Park Street, Room 4290 Madison, WI 53706
608/262-9503 schliesman_at_education.wisc.edu
www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Tue 06 Apr 2010 09:43:53 AM CDT
