Identity, Criticality, and Advocacy in Young Adult Literature: Training Teachers to Empower Students in the ELA Classroom

Identity, Criticality, and Advocacy in Young Adult Literature explores teaching strategies for incorporating young adult literature (YAL) as a tool for developing identity, criticality, and advocacy both inside and outside English language arts (ELA) classrooms. Censors are stripping young people of the power to read and learn about the world in ways relevant to them. To combat this, we share how teachers engage adolescents with young adult literature and address issues of identity, criticality, and advocacy. With teaching ideas and contributions from top scholars in young adult literature, each chapter of this book provides before-, during-, and after-reading strategies to teach in middle and secondary classrooms with specific young adult novels. The chapters focus on topics such as race and identity, technology and artificial intelligence, environmental and ecological issues, LGBTQIA+ history, mental health literacy, and more. This is an essential resource for preservice teachers in teaching methods, young adult literature, reading and writing, and social justice education courses and is relevant to all teachers of middle and high school students.