Joe's Journal

 When selecting books for my classroom library, I feel they should be judged on a case by case basis. Some people make mistakes in life and they are one time occurrences. Some people make mistakes and then spend years working to apologize for the mistake and make things right. Others are repeat offenders, or do nothing to fix the situation they have created. I feel that these are things to look for when evaluating authors on a case by case basis. If an author has a negative past, but its was limited and the person has put forth a strong effort to resolve the situation and work to make things right, I would be more willing to include their works into my classroom library. There are also times where the art can be separated from the artist. There are some books that are so great and can provide so much value that they should be included in the class room. That may be a situation where maybe only one specific book by an author makes it in to the classroom, and nothing else by that aut...

  In Sherman Alexie’s “The Best Books are Written in Blood” he discusses how dark and graphic topics are ok to be included in young adult stories. He makes that case that there is no point in hiding dark subject matter, such as rape or murder, from readers who have experienced those topics in their own lives. As Alexie points out, leaving dark topics out of literature does not shield the reader from those topics when they are experiencing them themselves.  Meghan Cox Gurdon has a different viewpoint from Sherman Alexie in her article “Darkness Too Visible”.  She makes the case that young readers do not need to be exposed to dark and graphic subject matter at a young age. One statement that Gurdon made that stuck out to me was, “Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it.” I find this statement to be very accurate. Teens are very impressionable and develop many of their tastes based on the music, movies, and literature they are exposed to. ...