Young Adult Literature and Spirituality

How to Unlock Deeper Understanding with Class Discussion

William Boerman-Cornell, Deborah Vriend Van Duinen, Kristine Alatheia Mensonides Gritter, Xu Bian

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9798765183052
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Arts & Humanities

This book offers revolutionary approaches to in-class discussions about young adult literature. It shows teachers how to think more widely than the themes of a book to consider how they might operate as prayers of lament, yearning, anger, confession, thankfulness, reconciliation, joy, obedience, pilgrimage, contemplation, and equanimity. It also offers a variety of ways for classroom discussion to consider a representative sentence or two from a young adult novel, and from that allow students to connect to linked passages in the rest of the novel. These approaches for classroom discussion are drawn from a variety of contemplative traditions, including Jewish and Christian faith traditions and include florilegium, lectio divina, PaRDeS, Ignatian Imagination, havruta, and marginalia. Drawing from a range of in-class experiences, the authors explain each approach in the context of twelve popular and critically interesting young adult novels including The Hate U Give, Long Way Down, Speak, The Poet X, The Fault in our Stars, Brown Girl Dreaming, and others. This book will transform discussions that are disconnected from the book, lacking in relevance, or missing the energy that drives good conversation into meaningful and energetic class discussions that students and teachers alike will value.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Prayers of Lament in Internment
• Yearning in The Hate U Give
• S‌‌‌‌‌‌peak and Long Way Down
• Confession in Goodbye Days
• Seeing Equanimity in brown girl dreaming
• Thankfulness in The War That Saved My Life
• Louisiana’s Way Home and The Poet X as Prayers of Reconciliation
• Using Havruta to Consider Orbiting Jupiter and The Beast Player‌‌‌‌ as Prayers of Obedience
• Prayers of Contemplation in Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
• Finding Joy in The Fault in Our Stars through Florilegium
• The Inquisitor’s Tale
• Conclusion
• References
• Index
• About the Authors