Nancy Milliken's Page

The article, Multicultural Literature and Young Adolecsents: A Kaleidoscope of Opportunity, by Susan M. Landt, was really thought provoking! She really brought up the need for multicultural representation in literature in two areas: for all students to be able to see themselves in the characters and situations in the story about a person of another race/ethnic group, but also for minority group students to be able to relate to a character that is of their own race. I would think that both are… Continue

Wow. I really like the idea of teaching peace. Maybe if peace could be taught in combination with studies about war, a more balanced view would be presented to students. For example, a study of the Vietnam War could include a study of the resistance to the war and other possible resolutions and outcomes.

I love the idea of teaching about historical figures who worked toward peaceful resolution of conflict.

But I am not sure we can teach peace…..

We all have the sets of military… Continue

I really enjoyed reading this article. I wanted to curl up and read Dragon's Milk by Susan Fletcher or one of Anne McCaffrey's great books. My preferences in fantasy are different than the author's (a dragon is a necessity!) but I could really relate to his writing about how fantasy can take us away from the "troubles" of everyday life (and the heavy, not so everyday stuff, too).

I do think that fantasy reaches our young adult readers in much the same way. They have so much that they deal… Continue

Reading chapter 3, A Door Half Open: Young People's Access to Fiction Related to Homosexuality, was interesting and thought provoking. When I looked up the books shown in this chapter in our district OPAC (28 schools), I found very little. Daddy's Roommate was not in any of our schools. One MS and one HS had Annie On My Mind. Three HSs had Rainbow Boys.

Because I found so little, I decided to try a few other titles that I know of. None of our schools have Heather Has Two Mommies. Three of… Continue

I cannot help but notice that so many of the sports books mentioned in our text have a theme of the main character trying to stand up against the more negative aspects of organized sports. Is this part of the game of life? Is what we see in organized sports a representation of life.... business, the anything goes for success mentality? And it seems that the football players really take the worst of it...being depicted as young men who get away with horrible things because of their elevated… Continue

http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/

This is the blog for YALSA. It was fun to look through but I really think that I would rather just look at the website. It would be fun to see what kind of response a person would get with posting a question.



http://www.aasl.ala.org/aaslblog/

American Association of School Libraries blog. There were a few postings that were worth reading. There is a good post right now titled Webquests, Pathfinders and Information… Continue

Where do we start in discussing adolescent literacies?? We have read about 21st Century literacies; information literacy, media literacy, multicultural literacy and visual literacy. Then we read about critical literacy, visual literacy, religious & ethnic literacy and global literacy in our text. It appears that these literacies must be taught/presented to our students in ways that they are able to understand them and in ways that overlap and are part of our everyday… Continue