My second activity was a review of “Detention” by Tristan Bancks. I chose this activity to cover the topic “Young people’s book awards.” The reason I chose this book is because it had been was nominated for the 2020 CBCA Book of the Year Younger Readers Notable Book (children’s book council of Australia, n.d.). There were several reasons why I chose to do this activity. Firstly, I wanted to be able to analyse the language and story structure as well as characters’ perspectives and motivations. I was able to see a practical example of the writing and use of language that would appeal to tweens and teenagers. This is relevant to my professional practice as it would be a good example of the language and story complexity that teenagers and tweens could engage with.
This activity surprised and challenged some of my assumptions. Firstly, the story was much more nuanced and grounded in reality than I would have expected, especially regarding the characters and their motivations. I had always seen YA literature as more simplistic with a good vs evil plot with not much room for characters that are morally grey or uncertain. There is often an authority figure such as a teacher who makes a rash decision but then thinks things through and seeks help with his/her decision making. One way that I can rectify this gap in my knowledge would be to increases the amount of YA I read. The other thing that I only lightly touched on in my review is that even though the book did not run on a good versus evil dichotomy, most of the characters, even the flawed ones, could be seen as positive role models or becoming positive role models. This is important because one of the roles that YA plays is to help young people develop critical interpretation skills as well as beginning to engage with complex ideas (Gruner, 2019 p.4). The more complex ideas in this book also made clear that YA does serve a role in helping people develop their identity as well as how they view stereotypes of the people around them (Kokesh & Sternadori, 2015, p.142). I also found it interesting that “Detention” challenged these stereotypes by having characters from marginalised communities that are often depicted negatively in the media. The tactics that were used to challenge stereotypes I could use in creating stories and events for a library to help challenge prejudices. Reading and analysing the book used skills that could be of use in a library setting if I ever ran a children’s book club as I would have to have an understanding of books and good notes so that when the children reference different things I could follow and understand their points. It is also important when running a children’s book club that it does not feel like class and that you also run some games and activities to help bring the children in (Heard, 2015, p.66). In future I would like to fill these gaps by either reading up on activities that librarians have run with their book clubs or read some more YA in order to come up with different games and activities.
Reference
Bancks, T. (2019). Detention. Penguin Australia Pty Ltd Children’s Book Council of Australia. (n.d.). Notables – 2020. https://cbca.org.au/notables-2020
Gruner, E. R. (2019). Constructing the adolescent reader in contemporary young adult fiction. Palgrave Macmillan
Heard, J. (2015). Engaging teens in recreational reading through book clubs. American Library Association, 43 (5), 64-68. https://ezproxy.csu.edu.au/login?url=https://www-proquest-com.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/scholarly-journals/engaging-teens-recreational-reading-through-book/docview/1720062567/se-2?accountid=10344
Kokesh, J., & Sternadori, M. (2015). The Good, the bad, and the gly: A qualitative study of how young adult fiction affects identity construction. Atlantic journal of communication, 23(3), 139-158. https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2015.1013104