I spent last week filling in for a middle school teacher who left four weeks before the end of the school year. I got a heads-up that the 6th graders were just starting When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead, and the 7th graders were four chapters into The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton, so I quickly re-read the first book (It was buried way down on my kindle), and skimmed the first four chapters of the second, which I’d last read when I was in high school. Another teacher had put together work packets for both books, including blackout poetry assignments to fill class time, and otherwise left me to my own devices.
I’m a very different teacher now than the one I was right after I graduated from college, just as I’m a very different parent now than I was when my children were small. When I was younger, I would have expected the middle school kids to read quietly on their own and arrive at the answers for the worksheets themselves, because it’s what I had done when I was in school. But I had time with these classes, and I could read chapters out loud and talk through all the possible answers as a group. Sure, that might be giving some kids answers when they hadn’t done the work, but honestly, just listening to the discussion closely enough to hear the answers was doing the work too.
By the way, for any writers, teachers, or parents of middle-schoolers among us, When You Reach Me is an excellent book to teach. Rebecca Stead has done remarkable things with it – most of which were, I’m sure, intentional, though she might be surprised at what some of my 6th graders came up with. The story is a first-person narrative, told from Miranda’s perspective, and alternates between past and present tense, sometimes even within chapters (allowing for LOTS of teachable grammatical device moments). The story is loosely connected to Miranda’s favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time, and specifically structured around the $20,000 Pyramid game show as it was in 1979 when the book is set.
That structure gave me a starting point for decoding everything about it. I pulled up an old episode of the $20,000 Pyramid and showed the classes a speed round, in which celebrities give clues to words that contestants have to guess, in categories like “Things that can tangle” or “Things that burn.” Rebecca Stead used those kinds of “Things that” categories as chapter titles for most of the book, and within each chapter is at least one clue directly related to that chapter heading.
Where it got interesting in class was during our discussions about each chapter heading, regardless of whether I’d read it out loud or they’d read it silently to themselves. For example, in “Things that burn,” the only obvious clue that could relate to the title was the mustard that burned Miranda’s lips, but other things that the kids came up with included a blush that burned a girl’s cheeks, and the possibility that Miranda might be jealous of her friend’s nicer apartment and work-from-home dad, since envy burned too. In “Things that bounce,” it wasn’t only the basketball her friend, Sal, was bouncing outside her window, it was also what that bouncing ball meant – that Sal would rather spend time alone than hang out with Miranda, and the other girls whose friendships bounced from one to the other.
Rather than write down the most important event of each chapter, like the packet worksheet required, I had the kids write down all the clues that could possibly relate to that chapter, and then when they finish the book, I asked them to go back through that page and underline every clue that turned out to be important to solving the question of who wrote such mysteriously prophetic notes to Miranda and why. They’re learning to read mysteries as interactive participants in the solution, and they’re examining structure as a device for storytelling. The first week’s reading was set to conclude on chapter 17, which happens to be the end of the first act, with a pivot into a whole new direction, so we also talked about the three-act structure of movies, plays, and books, and things that an audience can expect from that structure. A person can read and thoroughly enjoy When You Reach Me without giving a thought to all of the detail the author wove into her story, but the more you examine the storytelling devices, and the masterful way she weaves clues throughout the chapters, the more you appreciate just how brilliant her writing is.
The Outsiders is considered a classic on school curriculums, and nearly every person I know who went through the U.S. school system in the last forty years has read it. S.E. Hinton was 16 when she wrote it, and after flopping with the adults it was first marketed toward, the book found its audience with teachers. It’s rated at 950 on the Lexile level, which places it between 9th and 10th grade for reading skill, but most often finds its way into 7th grade curriculums for its themes of class, identity, and loyalty, especially when paired with the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola movie. From a language arts teaching perspective, it’s not a particularly well-written novel, however. Major, life-changing events for several of the characters happened off-page and were talked about by Ponyboy as a sort of “this happened to that guy” description, but were never experienced by the reader through a character’s eyes. The two female characters we meet (the third is only discussed) are paper doll cutouts of teenaged girls, and only one of the guys might be some other ethnicity than white, though it’s incidental and unspecified (Johnny’s skin is too brown to look good with bleached hair). A VOX article from the 50th anniversary of The Outsiders’ publication calls the prose “clunky” and said it sounds exactly like a 14-year-old trying to be profound. It was number 38 on the 1999 top 100 banned books of all time (for violence), and yet schools somehow still prefer it to books about race, gender, and sexuality like these 9 Works to Rival The Outsiders, compiled by School Library Journal.
Clearly, I have an opinion about the amount of class time being devoted to The Outsiders when there are so many other better-written, more relevant, more interesting books out there to entice middle-schoolers to read, think, and learn. Four weeks spent on a 57-year-old book written by a 16 year old girl about a couple of gangs of white boys may not seem like a big deal, but it’s time spent not reading well-crafted books that intrigue and engage kids with timely plots and diverse characters. For example, after working to make The Outsiders interesting, I can tell you I’ll never add eye color to every character description I write in my own books like S.E. Hinton did in hers. Also, I discovered that I already own The Serpent King (from the above School Library Journal article), and have just put The Marrow Thieves on hold at the library, just in case I ever encounter a 7th grade language arts teacher looking for fresh curriculum ideas.
*Edited to add: I just finished The Serpent King. It’s an excellent replacement option for The Outsiders, though possibly better for high schools due to the kissing which eventually happens, at least for those people who think kissing books are inappropriate for teens to read. The themes of The Serpent King that echo the ones in The Outsiders include friendship and the power of found family, abuse and finding strength in the face of it, and wanting something more or bigger for your life than what seems pre-ordained. Additionally, The Serpent King includes themes that explore and address mental health concerns, loss, depression and grief, internet life vs. real life, friendship that grows into romantic love, choosing a life of possibility, and it also includes a strong female main character, well-drawn supporting characters, negative and positive parental role models, conversations about faith, and positive references inclusion. This reading guide was created by a library director at a Jesuit high school in Portland, Oregon and is a good resource for any parents or teachers considering The Serpent King for their kids.
I read More Happy Than Not from the SLJ list. It is a beautiful and book that explores community, grief, and identity. They have it listed at 16 yrs and above, and given some of the subject matter, that's probably about right. Definitely a worthwhile read.