An Introduction

Greetings and welcome to my little slice of cyberspace! My name is Liam Cassidy and I am a student of Metropolitan State College of Denver in Colorado. This blog was started to serve as my final project for Dr. Jill Adam's Young Adult Literature course, but it has grown and now serves as a guide for those out there who would like to analyze works of young adult literature. It is small, but all things must start so. You will forgive me if some of these sections focus on the class, but that was the inspiration for the blog and the catalyst for its creation, so I feel that I should give proper respect to the final project format while I work.

Over the course of the semester my class has covered quite a lot of ground and we have read through what feels like a lot of books, at least until you realize that each of them was one of several options on a list for that given week (averaging about three or four options each) and that they are just the smallest slice of the available works that could have been selected for our readings. In fact, that may have been one of the most important things that I learned over the course of the semester: The sheer size of the field and a respect for it works that it contains.

As some of you may be well aware of, young adult literature is not always the most well regarded field; when entering this class, I assumed it was the sort of writing meant only for kids who hadn't graduated high school yet. Over the course of the semester I have discovered some new favorite texts (The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Looking for Alaska, but more on those later.) that were surprisingly deep for what I assumed were books for kids. It also made me realize that I am slowly turning into the sort of adult I hated as a kid: The kind that underestimates what kids know and can comprehend.

So with that in mind, I thought I would try to discuss what it was I liked about the books and assignments that I have contended with over the semester. Seeing as there was not a bad book in the lot, I have tried to focus on the use of the books in the classroom rather than if they were good or not. Besides, notions of good and bad literature are highly subjective, especially for those of us who have long been exposed to the sorts of reading that is only common in college.

While you are going through the blog, you will be starting with a rundown of the books that I read over the course of the semester and then proceed to a discussion of the various major projects (and how you might adapt them for your own classes!) before finally touching on our textbooks and what was good about them. Feel free to peruse the blog and snatch up anything that you like, as that is part of the purpose. I have learned a lot through the course of the semester and I would like to have a place for that knowledge to be picked up by others. One quick note: don't bother paying attention to the dates for those things posted on December 12, 2011. These were arranged in order by manipulating the times that they were posted to keep the intended order of the table of contents intact.

I invite all readers to go through the blog and read what I have written and, if they find something they feel they need to add, then to make a comment on the section; why else make use of the blog format if it is not going to be used to the fullest, am I right?

The Books

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

Looking for Alaska by John Green

If I Grow Up by Todd Strasser

Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and Dave Mckean

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Sold by Patricia McCormick

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Maus by Art Spiegelman

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick