While the authors had good intentions, I was thoroughly disappointed in this book. The whole premise of this book is so that educators can use YA as a teaching aide. However, the authors have only thinly disguised their preference for classics. The tone I found while reading is that “Oh this YA book is good… but classics are still better.” and “teenagers won’t change their views/perspectives based off books!”. Both these statement are total bullshit for me so I highly disagreed with their opinions and I was mainly just pissed with this book.
In addition, they didn’t proof this edition very well. I found a multitude of mistakes including incorrect titles, incorrect author names and just plain false assumptions without any evidence! One thing that really pissed me off was that they incorrectly assumed that Ruta Sepetys dedicated her book Between Shades of Gray to her father. If they had done five minutes of research they would known that it is dedicated to her grandfather, a Lithuanian military officer, who had to flee Lithuanian because Stalin was executing officers.
Overall, I really didn’t like this book and I was very tempted to burn it or throw it out a window. Alas I could not because it’s a rental. If you want a book to instruct you on using YA in the class, pick a different one, because this one sucks.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.