Extra Credit Blog: What Are Teenagers Reading?

I just attended the "What Are Teenagers Reading?" Women's Studies Research Forum presented by Kathy Headley, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Naturally, I always loved to read while I was growing up.  At my elementary and middle school, we had Accelerated Reading points, and I always made it my priority to have the most points in our class.  Headley focused on middle school reading, and we talked about some of the reading we did at this age.  Of course, most people chimed in with some Harry Potter talk, though I myself was never a huge fan.  A few of the series mentioned I remembered reading at that age, such as The Princess Diaries.  She also mentioned that many middle schoolers are reading The Twilight Saga  and The Vampire Diaries, which was surprising to me, since I figured these were targeted to the high school age group.  She said that the classics would always be the classics, such as Where the Red Fern Grows and The Giver, but teachers should try to implement pleasurable reading with these assignments.  Research done by her creative inquiry class showed that most students this age do not like the assigned reading.  Around 44% said that they did not like the assigned readings because they weren't relevant to their lives, and 34% said they didn't like the assignments because they were boring.  I agree with Headley's remark that the classics will never be replaced, but perhaps the teachers should try to employ more interesting activities to encourage better participation, and thus better understanding of the readings.  She also discussed the books she read in a group over the summer, which included After Ever After, I Will Save You, and If I Stay.  She said that all of these books dealt with very sad and serious situations, like battling cancer, dealing with a mental disorder, and encountering a car accident.  All of these books were chosen by the readers, showing that middle school readers are not just reading fantasy books, but are also interested in literature about real life situations.  Along with this, she made the point that adolescent students are reading less than ever before, since there are so many other options of spending time.  This is a major problem, and research has shown that teachers and media specialists aren't even encouraging and recommending certain books to students nearly as much as you would think.  Reading helps learning in all aspects, and it is important for students to read in order to build their vocabulary and improve complex reasoning.  Without gathering these skills, students will have a harder time adapting to collegiate teaching styles.  This was a very insightful presentation that really put our youth's reading habits into perspective.

Anne Moore's Life

This short story about the life of Anne Moore practically turned it’s own pages.  I can barely fathom the life she led and experiences she had.   From the beginning, the author had us hooked with the story of Fred, the teenage boyfriend of Anne’s sister, Susan.  The revelation that Fred had killed both of his parents, and quite possibly thought about killing Susan and Anne after driving them over to his house, was the start to a series of shocking and disturbing events in Anne’s life.  The first serious relationship Anne was involved in was with Paul, a painter.  This may have been the beginning of her struggles, in my opinion, for their sporadic behavior seemed to spark even more from Anne as the story progressed.  They just up and decided to travel to Mexico where they met Ruben.  The Frog in Mazatlan that was “frequented by tourists” sounded very similar to the Senor Frogs in Nassau that we visited while on spring break during my senior year of high school.   Returning to Mexico with Paul a couple of years later, Anne found herself having an affair with Ruben, and staying with him in Mexico long after Paul had left.  At this point, Anne had a long succession of men come and go in her life.  From Charles, whose “fondest dream was to have a whore,” who pushed her into selling her body for money for one night, to Tony, whom she married and left only to find that he had killed himself soon after, I began to wonder how she carried on the way she did.  The author wrote, “One day Anne’s love for Tony ran out and she left Seattle.”  This was very interesting to me, since it seemed like her love for whichever partner she was with at the time eventually “ran out.”  While I know this happens all the time, I don’t believe that a person can really fall in and out of love quite as much as Anne did in this story.  I feel like she was just lonely, albeit independent, and used each of these men mentioned, and the other ones following until she was ready for the next one.  I also got the feeling that the narrator had cared deeply and fallen pretty hard for Anne, though it seemed that he was only another one of her victims.  Don’t get me wrong; I know she fought some pretty rough battles.  I assume the disease she developed was cancer, which would be terrifying, but it shouldn’t have made her run away from someone (Bill) who told her that “she could count on his support.”  Perhaps she was scared that she was running out of time and wanted to see the world by fleeing to Europe, but she seemed, in my eyes, to be a very selfish person, never once caring how her decisions might impact others.

Vocabulary Words

-Insufferable:  intolerable

-Imperceptibly: so subtle, slight, or gradual as to be barely perceptible 

-Barbiturates:  any of a class of sedative and sleep-inducing drugs derived from barbituric acid