Introduced DEAR MARTIN by @getnicced with a Teaser for LOVE by @mattdelapena & @LorenLong

I love working with new books because everything is fresh, alive, new, and exciting. This Friday, I will be hosting 80 middle school youth in another Writing Our Lives conference, but I wanted to test out a couple of activities with my graduate students in a Developmental Reading in Secondary Schools course (a mix of in-practice and pre-service teachers). They are reading Nic Stone's Dear Martin and last night I modeled one way to get students excited about the books selected for class.

I made a front/back collection of Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes (with photos) and handed them out to the students. I asked them to read over them all and to choose one that spoke to them right here and right now. I knew they'd gravitate towards the variety I shared and that each response, collectively, would give us beginning material to address why a young adult novel like Dear Martin is so important to this time in history. I told the students they could draw, list, free write, etc. a response to the quote and they did a turn-and-talk, followed by a whole class dry-erase dialogue. I asked one of my graduate students to be the recorder of the conversation and to listen to his classmates discuss the quote they chose and what connection they had to it. I also modeled my thinking on the board for them.

My next question was simple (or was it complex). Why would a writer choose to have her character write letters to Martin Luther King, Jr.? Together, we bulleted about 15 to 20 reasons why.

Great. Next week I'll read Love by Matt de la Péna, with illustrations by Loren Long, and we'll analyze Dear Martin for the ways love works, and doesn't work, in the young adult novel.

At the same time he class and I discussed Kelly Gallagher's Readicide and I promoted the fact that young adult literature is one way to hook young people into being lifetime readers, especially when the topics are timely, relevant, and connected to their lived experiences. I discussed why I chose Dear Martin and made the case that the perspectives offered by Nic Stone's novel are multidimensional and, although the story will invoke emotions, outrage, defense, and questions, I appreciated the choice she made to include multiple voices e and to create characters that are more complex than those told too often in 'a single story' motif. (#WeNeedDiverseBooks)

From there, I asked the students to help me recall the characters from the first half of Dear Martin and their relevancy to the story thus far. 

Wola! Magically, the graduate students recalled the characters and their relationships with each other and, as if by magic, connected the relationships to the Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes.

We filled up four white boards with new thinking, connections, comprehension, understanding, curiosities, frustrations, and action-oriented talk. 

(I'm hoping this will work with the 80 8th graders on Friday).

For this morning, however, I'm simply thanking the Great Whatever that Dear Martin and Love are in this universe and are a beautiful pairing to promote historical conversations about Martin Luther King, Jr. and what he's contributed to our nation.

At the end of class I asked, "What did we just do? Were you engaged? Why?" I then pointed out the actions taken in the class that are named by Kelly Gallagher as ways to counter Readicide. 

It takes the great writers of our time, however, who are writing books we desperately need. I'm thankful. I'm entering today with grace, gratitude, and tremendous respect for my students, these writers, the publishers, and MLK's wisdom. I'm ready for more. I can't wait for Friday with middle schoolers and to meet with my Graduate Students next week.