Category: children’s literature

Week 14: Defense of Contract

April 30, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird#/media/File:To_Kill_a_Mockingbird.JPG — Wikimedia Commons

We are presenting our project on Wednesday and I am so ready. Karina and I found a really interesting case that we investigated and we have worked really hard to create this site this past semester. As in terms of our contract, I believe that we followed through on almost all of the goals we lined up in our contract back in March.

We have all the main pages that we wanted on our site with a few tweaks here and there. The main thing that we did not do was talk about the case from the late 1960s in Hanover County, Virginia. We decided that it would be easier and more conducive to talk about more recent cases because the reasons why it is banned/challenged have changed so much. From that idea we created the page, “Other Recent Challenges” with the StoryMap labeling the other challenges in recent years.

The Timeline and StoryMap is set up just like we wanted them to be. I think that the Timeline looks great on the first page and it ties the whole site together. We found some great images from Wikimedia Commons and tried to have at least one on each page. Our theme worked out really well and with a lot of tweaking, we created a clean looking, but colorful site. For a ton of little things, like how to adjust the font color on the top menu bar, I went to our Digital Knowledge Center for help. With their expertise, I was about to create the beautiful site we have now.

We used a ton of digital tools. I myself used both JS Timeline, iMovie, GarageBand, Canva, and Youtube to display our media. I also found images on Wikimedia Commons. I wish that we had been able to take images from the Accomack County site or some more materials that were primary resources, but I think it ended up working out well with the images that were created using Canva and the ones I found on Wikimedia Commons.

As for our timeline in which we wanted to get certain work done by, we met all of our time goals. Sometimes we even got them done sooner. We also added some information after we created the contract, like the interview with Dr. Gary Richards, so I had to fit that in. There were a couple pieces of materials that we were not able to get. We thought we were going to get a response from Charles Knitter when we sent him out interview questions, but never did. That was going to be a part of the protest page, but because we did not hear back from him we combined the two pages we initially created “Petition” and “Protest,” into one page. Because we did hear back from Sadye Saunders and she was a part of the protest anyways, we thought that it was fitting that the pages be meshed together. That was the very last thing that we revised on our site. The other thing that I tried for a couple weeks to get was the complaint form, but was unfortunately shut down by someone at the School Board office they could never give it to us because it displays personal information and told that they don’t even know where the document went.

Overall, we did really well meeting our goals that we laid out in this contract. The interview with Charles Knitter and the not being able to get the complaint form was out of our control. I am really proud of this site and excited to get the chance to present it on Wednesday for everyone.

Thank you for such an awesome course Dr. Dierking and Dr. Hajo! It was a wonderful experience.

Week 13: Reading Reflection

April 23, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

via GIPHY

We are at the end of this project/course and I am really excited about all the work we have done. The sites look amazing and this class has made me think critically about how censorship works currently and throughout history.

I returned to the text, The Reader Speaks Out: Adolescent Reflections about Controversial Young Adult Literature by Grace Enriquez and thought about how the ideas in this essay intertwined with the case that Karina and I investigated. In the article, Enriquez talks about how there is a lack of young adult voices in the arguments about these texts that are highly debated. She explains how there is a ton of educator and parental arguments, but no one really asks what the students or young adults think about the text. She went to students and asked them about what their definitions of controversy were. What makes a book controversial and what makes a book worth reading? She found that they think a book is worth reading if the plot seems interesting despite the use of profanity, violence, sexual content, and/or discriminatory remarks. She found that students “appreciated the importance of context.” It made a big difference if they had to read the book.

In our case, we were lucky to get in touch with a student who did speak up against the removal of the novels To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from Accomack County, VA schools. I think her perspective about the books and whether or not they should be removed really added so much context about what happened in late 2016. She created a petition and joined the protest that was created by Charles Knitter. Because of her voice and the voices of other students through the petition they were able to give their thoughts to the committee that the school board created to decide if the books should be officially removed or not. Even though this started out as an argument made by a parent, the students were the ones that the committee listened to. I think that is a huge step for students voices to be heard when censorship of reading materials pops up in different places.

Students voices need to be included in the discussion about removal of texts from classrooms and libraries. A lot of students like to talk about the controversy in the novel and by doing so in a safe academic environment I think that students can learn a lot about the reasons why something, such as derogatory language, in a controversial scene is used. I think communication and discussion can always help students push past just what are the themes in this text, but also how it can relate to students lives and the community of the school or library.

Enriquez, Grace. “The Reader Speaks Out:
Adolescent Reflections about Controversial Young Adult Literature.” The ALAN Review. Winter, 2006. pp 16-23. Print.

Week 12: Progress Report

April 14, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

I think this is the last blog post before the final one where we defend our contract. This week I have to say has been quiet, especially since we turned in the first draft of our project sites this past Monday. Next week we will be talking about ways to revise and I am eager to see what ideas our classmates have. After that we are just editing and then preparing for our presentation! I can’t believe the end of the semester is here already.

We are currently peer-reviewing, which I think is going to be useful. I peer-reviewed Max and Robert’s USAO site about the case they found in the 80s involving Catcher in the Rye. They have a ton of great information and I can tell they worked really hard collecting it and interviewing people. I made so many notes. (I am really sorry guys). I took this as an opportunity to make a lot of suggestions about how to share the content and I hope they were helpful. (Please do not feel obligated to do every single one of them.) Annotating another team’s site reminded me of how you would workshop and essay or any piece of writing. I live in a constant state of workshop with all the creative writing and english classes I am taking (seriously we are workshopping or being workshopped every single day in my poetry seminar this past semester) and this was really different because I got to look at it not just at word and piece level, but how the website functioned. I had to critically think about how the site was set up and how appealing it is to the reader. Is it too cluttered or should there be more information here? Does this page belong here or there? What would make this easier to access? It was a refreshing way to workshop another student’s work. I wish I had the opportunity to do other workshops like it in other classes.

The only thing that is lingering that I wish we could have as part of our site is the interview with Charles Knitter. He was the one who I was able to get in contact with first and seemed really eager to revisit the issue and join our conversation, but he has never gotten back to us with answers to the questions we sent him. I sent him an email letting him know that we were finishing up the project this past Monday, but it is Saturday and I still haven’t heard back. Maybe we will hear back last minute, but I am not holding my breath. We are most likely going to have to beef up that page or see about combining it with the page about the petition.

I am looking forward to revising next week and making this website ready for the world to see and explore.

Week 11: Another Post Interview and Update

April 9, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

This past week was a busy one with finishing up collecting information for our project and the first draft of the site. Almost all the information up is at this point and we are working on copy editing the site.

I had the chance to talk with Dr. Gary Richards this past week to talk about the book, To Kill a Mockingbird. He was recommend to me by Pete Kelly and is the head of the English, Linguistics and Communication Department here at Mary Washington. He also teaches Southern Literature and Modern American Literature courses. He graciously sat down with me to record an interview and answered a lot of my questions about the book and how language functions in the novel.

The whole interview was really fascinating and Dr. Richards pointed out a lot of things that I hadn’t considered before. He didn’t know too much about the challenges to the book, but he did talk about the reasons why it is probably so frequently challenged. I asked about his experience and he had read it when he was in middle school and then again in high school. He studied Southern literature at Vanderbilt and said that at the graduate level there was some debate about whether or not the book should be even considered because it is looked at as young adult literature. He eventually included analysis of the book in his thesis and agrees that because the book has been so widely read that it is productive to talk about it. Now he teaches it in his many of his classes and talks about how it is structured and how some of the themes are so heavy handed.

We talked about the n-word and if it was necessary for this book, and if it should continue to be taught in middle and high schools or if it was too problematic. He spoke of how the language was probably used by Harper Lee to draw attention to the racism of the time and that she probably did think it was necessary. In his classes he has students try to decide if the word is allowable and some think that because it packs such a punch that it is important to talk about. It shows just how much derogatory language can hurt. Dr. Richards also talked about how he likes to teach problematic texts because he thinks it is important to talk about why they are problematic or why they make people uncomfortable. He does think that teachers need to carefully handle the novel, but if it gets students to read and talk about the book then it is worthwhile to teach.

I set up a page and wrote a write up about the interview with him, kind of summarizing what we talked about. The interview ended up being almost eighteen minutes long and the transcription five pages long. I made a video with the recording of the interview and included it on the page and below, so if anyone wants to listen to the whole thing they can. I am also going to include a PDF link to the transcription for anyone who is interested.

I think this interview added a lot of in depth information about the book and how it impacts society. There is a lot to unpack in it and I am really glad we were able to connect with Dr. Richards and create this interview.

Week 10: Post Interview

April 2, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

Good news times two!

We got a response from one of the people we reached out to interview, so we now have the full interview up on the petition page of our website!

I am also speaking with an English professor here at UMW, who also happens to be the head of our department, Dr. Richards about To Kill a Mockingbird this coming week. He was the one recommended to me by Pete Kelly, the head of our education department here. (Pete Kelly says “Hi!” to Dr. Dierking!)

Sadye Saunders, the student who started the petition to get the book back on her school’s shelves, got back to us with answers to the interview questions we had for her and they are awesome! I am super excited about it and she gave us a lot more insight, from a student’s perspective, which really showed a lot about what actually happened. I think the struggle we had before the interview with her was hearing about what happened through news sources and they confused some of the details. One of the details we were unsure about, was if the petition was taken away from Sadye or if she was just asked to take it off of school property. According to her answers, the principal did take it away for the day, but gave it back to her at the end of the day, telling her she needed to collect signatures off of school property. He was actually the one who informed her about the protest and suggested that she go there for more signatures.

She also talked to us about how the novel was taught in the classroom. The main way it was taught was reading at home and discussion during class period. One of her biggest points in the interview was that her teacher made it clear that the language used in the novel was historically accurate and “used to portray the ignorance of the past.” I thought this was really interesting because even though there seems to have been a serious discussion about the language and a student was still uncomfortable enough with it to have it brought to the attention of the School Board. I am going to bring this up with my interview with Dr. Richards this week and see what he has to say about it. As a professor of Modern American Literature, I am really interested to see what his perspective is and whether or not the language is necessary.

We also asked us about the protest, since she ended up participating in it and collecting over 300 total signatures there. I was most surprised by how she thought the atmosphere was more “aggressive” than she had hoped. Sadye claims that she was never really angry, rather disappointed, but at the protest there were a lot more angry people than she expected. I am really hoping that Charles Knitter, the man who led the protest will get back to us with answers to our questions soon, because I really want to know what his perspective of the event was.

I think this interview turned out really well. I wish we had been able to get one done with sooner than we did, because we are having the interviews all happen at once. We are going to have at least one more with a To Kill a Mockingbird expert this week, and the hope is to have a second come through with Charles Knitter. Overall, I think these are going to be great pieces to have in our project.

Week 7: Progress Report

March 12, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

I can’t believe we are already halfway done with the class! And I have a feeling the rest of the semester is going to go by faster than the first half did.

We have emailed questions to Charles Knitter this week and will hopefully get his response soon. As of last night, I have been in contact with the student who created the petition at the school. She is interested in providing us with a statement on what happened and gave me some further contact information beyond Facebook. We are going to be sending her more information today and requesting a formal interview that we can use in our site. I find it really awesome that we were able to reach people through Facebook and excited to see what information comes of these two interviews.

I called the school last week asking about the materials we would like to see about the parent’s learning resource complaint, but they insisted that I send a written request in. We emailed them, but have yet to get a response. I think I am going to call again today or tomorrow and see if I can talk to the Accomack County School Board member in charge of those types of complaints. We are hoping they will be willing to give us information about the complaint, but I am afraid we probably won’t. From all the information we have gathered so far I think that this was really bad press for the school system. I would love to go bug the school board in person, but unfortunately Accomack is almost four hours away, so it would have to be an entire day trip which my schedule doesn’t provide.

We pretty much have the skeleton for our site completed. This week is the week where we really start adding content to the pages. I am researching Harper Lee and creating the page where users can find out about the author and why she wrote the book. I am interested to see what I find. I know I have just skimmed the surface so far.

Besides emailing people and creating the skeleton for our site, we did not manage to do very much because we were on spring break. It was definitely one of our slower weeks. This week will be really busy with research and content creating.

So because we don’t have any new content yet, here is pictures from my Spring Break in New Orleans. I went and checked out the Carousel Bar and Lounge where a bunch of famous authors who’ve had challenges and complaints about their novels and plays hung out. I hope everyone else also has a great break in the next few weeks!

picture of Carousel bar and lounge — Carousel Bar and Lounge, where Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Tennessee Williams used to hang out.

picture of art in the French Quarter Streets. — Art in the French Quarter Streets.

picture of bagels — Breakfast at St. Roch Market

Week 4: Update, Progress, and Reflection

February 18, 2018 / geron / 0 Comments

This past week, Karina and I met with a research librarian, Elizabeth Heitsch, at Simpson Library and talked about how to get in touch with people who was a part of the case from late 2016 in Accomack County. She remembers the case when it happened and how it was a big deal, so she already had an idea of what case we were investigating.

We asked her about her experience with censorship and because she works in an academic library she has not had anything challenged. Of course, their are patron complaints, but they never consider taking anything off the shelves. She pointed out that sometimes they have things like soft pornography because it is being used by a professor for academic research, which I found interesting. Usually there are access restrictions on those kinds of items, but the library will still provide and pay for it if being used for an academic purpose. Because it is an academic setting you can get away with a lot more than you could if it were a secondary high school or middle school. She pointed out that most of the time censorship happens because there are children and young adults under the age of eighteen reading the books that come into question.

After our conversation on her experience with censorship we asked how we should contact the school, because I was concerned we were going to be met with some pushback. This case kind of blew up in our area, and I am afraid they will not want to revisit it. Her main

Map of Virginia, Highlighting Accomack County — Accomack County is in red. Taken from Wikimedia Commons

suggestion for us was to send an email to the school librarian because usually they want to help as much as they are allowed. By emailing we could present ourselves as students and get across everything that we want to because usually over the phone it is difficult to convey why we are asking for this information and we tend to forget everything we wanted to talk about. Following our meeting and class on Wednesday, Karina and I composed a message to the contact page we found on the Accomack County Schools page with the template that Max sent us (thank you Max and Robert!). I haven’t received a reply yet, but hopefully I will before the end of Monday. If we don’t hear anything by then we are going to try to find another way to contact the school library.

Newpaper Clipping Discussing the Accomack County's School Policy regarding learning resource complaints. — Clipping from the Chincoteague Beacon on Dec. 22, 2016 discussing the policy on complaints against learning resources. From Newspapers.com

We are looking into trying to contact the parent who complained about the case and we listened to her complaint in the School Board Meeting we found a recording of on the Accomack County School’s webpage. She makes a strong case for why they shouldn’t include To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the high school curriculum. The really interesting part about this case is we are finding that the school did not follow their own policy on how to handle learning resource complaints. It is a little confusing, but they took the books off the shelves and from the classroom when the complaint was made instead of waiting until they made their final decision. As it was, their final decision was to reinstate the two books and by mid-December they were back on the school’s library shelves. I would love it if we could interview the parent or the student, (with the parent’s permission of course), especially since the school decided against removing the books.

This coming week our focus is contacting more people involved in the case and researching the author a bit more. We started this past Wednesday putting our project site together and we are trying to figure out how exactly we want the layout to be. We are also starting to meet on Wednesdays from 12pm-2pm on campus and working on our project together in person. This way, if we get stuck with any digital technology thing we will have that time to get help and to put our site together. With the in person meetings, I think we can accomplish a lot over the next few weeks.

Week One: Update and Reflection

January 29, 2018 / geron

The first week of classes is over and I am ready to get to work!

The theme for this class is A Burning Idea and dives into researching the censorship of books. Another UMW student, Karina Schumm, and I are already researching cases in our area and exploring what makes a book “bad.”

We also have decided to look into the book Maurice, by E.M. Forster and to take a historical approach to the censorship and history of the novel. I am currently trying to read the novel itself and work through what ideas in it make it a book which has been challenged.

The next step we need to take is talking to our school’s research librarian or archivist. We made an appointment for this coming week to meet with Carolyn Parsons, the special collections librarian at UMW. I think with her help, we learn a lot of information about how to look into our topic. We need to find sources about banned books in our community and I think the library and Special Collections is going to be one of our biggest resources this upcoming semester.

Our next class tomorrow, we are discussing an essay by Belinda Louie on Politics in Children’s Literature. After reading this essay today, it sparked conversation about what books kids go for and why they pick it up to read. This essay talks about the people who interact with children’s literature such as the authors, teachers, children, parents, administration, the public, and publishing. Each of these categories have different ideas and personal history that gives them all biases of some kind. The most interesting thing I had not considered before reading this particular essay is that children “choose books that are pleasant” and “reject books with concepts they do not understand” (6). In my personal experience, I find this to be really true. The first book I remember disliking was Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, and it was because I did not like the unpleasant scene where the main character has to see the dead pilot’s body floating in the water where they had crashed. It was in fifth grade and we had to read it as a class. I also remember we had to watch the movie together, which I found to be even more unpleasant.

I have been discussing with my roommates and friends all afternoon what was the first book that made them uncomfortable? And usually it is because of something that was frightening to them, they were stressed, or the book that had a sad ending. Children look for books that are going to make them happiest. They want stories with good endings and do not want to have to deal with uncomfortable ideas. I think this is because, at least for me when I was a kid, reading was a form of escape. I could go on an adventure, solve a mystery, or be a princess, and hide away from the ugliness reality often was.

I also think this is why books are probably challenged in schools, because parents want to protect their children from being uncomfortable. I think there is some validity in age appropriate reading materials, but I also think that in order for children to expand beyond their world viewpoint sometimes they have to be a little uncomfortable exploring an unfamiliar concept or different life view point.

I found this article very interesting. I spent a lot of time reading as a child and when thinking back about the books I read, they were happy ones where I did not worry about being uncomfortable. I took a lot of notes to discuss in class tomorrow, but I wanted to share some of my reflection here. I cannot wait to read more and learn different reasons for censorship.

Louie, Belinda. “Politics in Children’s Literature: Colliding Forces to Shape Young Minds.” Ed. Susan S. Lehr. Shattering the Looking Glass: Challenge, Risk, and Controversy in Children’s Literature. Norwood, Mass: Christopher-Gordon, 2008. Print.