The Outsiders

The final class novel of the school year is S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. My 7th graders anticipate this novel all year because they hear from the current 8th graders that it is an amazing book. My students get a kick out of knowing that their parents either read this book in school or saw the movie. I really enjoy reading this novel with my students because they find so much relevance to their own lives and the peer relationships that they are building. Although the story takes place in the sixties, the students are not put off by it and in fact, they gain interest in the decade. Because the students enjoy reading the book, they are very keen on picking up the various themes, characterization, and conflicts that exist within the plot. I wonder if this classic will ever be considered as outdated or unimportant to the American Canon of Literature... Or is it already outdated and we should be looking for new titles that focus on similar themes, but in more recent times? What do you think?

What are you reading?

I just finished these two novels :) 

Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony & Rodrigo Corral
Razorbill, 2012

  Chopsticks is a story told through a flashback of 

  pictures, letters, photographs, and other obscure 

  clues.Young love, a boy falls in love with a female 

  piano prodigy who mysteriously disappears. The 

  reader pieces the mystery together by becoming 

  engrossed in the uber-creative way in which 

  Anthony and Corral tell the story.

The Downside Of Being Up by Alan Lawrence Sitomer,
Putnam Juvenile, 2011

Sitomer's young adult novel is absolutely hilarious! I was in stitches the entire way through. Bobby Connor is to navigate his way through the trials and tribulations of adolescence and middle school, but it seems there is always someone or something standing in his way. I often caught myself laughing out loud and wondering what life would have been like as a teenage boy trying to deal with... well, you should just read the book.

Currently, I am reading Will Grayson, Will Grayson
by John Green & David Levithan 

I am only on page 19, but the characters who have already been 

introduced seem to be worth reading about, and the conversations 

between them are classic John Green.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan,
Dutton Juvenile, 2010