Young Adult literature – The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

With regard to the 1960s at Malcolm Campbell High School, each person has her or his own memories. It’s great to have opportunities to engage in conversations about what those memories are.

What middle school and high school students are now reading

My main interest in those years, among others, was learning about how words are put together to make sentences and build stories. Among other things, the predictability of narrative arcs in specified genres of literature was a source of passing interest for me.

I don’t know if there was a thing called Young Adult literature – in novels, for example – in the 1960s. I know there is such a thing – Young Adult literature – now.

The Fault in Our Stars (2012) & The Baby Experiment (2012)

Caption from illustration (above) for June 9, 2014 New Yorker profile of the writer John Green (see link at the end of this blog post) reads: "Green wanted to write 'an unsentimental cancer novel' that offered 'some basis for hope.' Illustration by Bartosz Kosowski."

Among the most popular novels for students currently in high school are books such as The Fault in Our Stars (2012). I’ve also enjoyed The Baby Experiment (2012), which was recently recommended to me by a Grade 8 student, and which I read with interest.

With regard to these topics, here are some links that may be of interest to you:

The Teen Appeal of The Fault in Our Stars: Author John Green

The Teen Whisperer: How the author of “The Fault in Our Stars” built an ardent army of fans

Software, social media, and smartphones

I much enjoy learning about Young Adult literature – from the experts, the young adults themselves. Similarly, if I want to know something about how a computer works, I used to ask somebody who was 30 years younger than I was. Now I ask somebody who is 50 years younger than I am. It’s like learning a language. The children who are growing up with smartphones and the like are learning a language. That’s a great age to learn any language.

They know the language well. They can help me to get up to speed as well, with changes in a language that I’ve been learning for some time.

I’m also pleased to say that, occasionally, I know something about how some software programs work. For that reason, the information exchange sometimes flows in two directions. That’s a great feature of communications. We can all learn things from each other, whatever the era may have been when we attended high school.

Saving for School (2013)

Saving for School (2013) is another book – nonfiction, this time – that comes to mind. I came across David Bach’s term “The Latte Factor” in the latter book by Gail Vaz-Oxlade. It’s based on an interesting concept:

“A latte spurned is a fortune earned.”
– People Magazine

The phrase, as Gail Vaz-Oxlade notes (p. 9 of the above-noted book), refers to “how much money we waste that we could be saving.” The concept is of interest – including in the context of my recent study of research related to Fair Trade Coffee.

With regard to saving for school, still another topic comes to mind: Which kinds of school experiences will help young people find employment, in a vastly altered economic landscape?

Movie adaptation

As can be expected, the publicity effort on behalf of the movie adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars is making effective use of social media.