The introduction of the 19th century novel as a compulsory aspect of GCSE English Literature has changed the choices a lot of us make when teaching years seven, eight and nine. There is a temptation to prepare Key Stage 3 students for the challenges of Key Stage 4 by putting nothing but 19th (and pre-19th) century literature in front of them for three years. It's a strategy that definitely has its benefits, helping kids to get to grips with unfamiliar language and phrasing, making them aware of contextual information that will be useful to them in the future, and allowing them to access a part of the canon that they may never have chosen from the library themselves. We have lots of classic texts in our departmental bookstore that I'm encouraging teachers of years seven and eight to pick up for our upcoming novel units, but I've controversially chosen to leave Treasure Island, Oliver Twist and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn on the shelf in favour of R.J. Palacio's wonderful YA novel Wonder. 

I say controversial because there are undoubtedly teachers out there who will argue that YA novels are for children's personal reading, and don't provide enough stretch and challenge in the classroom. I recently listened to a talk by a teacher who referenced using Bram Stoker's Dracula as a class reader, explaining that it forcibly moved kids away from books about wimpy kids and underpants, but for me, this strategy is a bit limiting. As much as I have no plans to take The World of Norm into my classroom, classifying everything that's not a classic as something we should be actively working to move our kids away from (or by taking the Govian line that the only texts worthy of analysis are pre-19th century) we are failing to recognise the worth of so much of the contemporary fiction that has been purposefully crafted to introduce young students to the skills they will need in the near future.  

In Doug Lemov's Reading Reconsidered, books like Wonder are referred to as 'Pre-Complex Texts', as they can introduce kids to a range of language, narrative, and structural techniques that we have a responsibility to help them get to grips with before they tackle novels like Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, and The Sign of Four at GCSE. Reading Reconsidered suggests that teachers shouldn't dismiss YA novels because older, classic texts seem to (or are marked out to) have higher lexical values. Instead, we should view a book like Wonder as "more than the sum of its lexiles." There is more to consider than whether or not the words seem hard enough- we need to also think about the complexity of the narrative, whether or not the book could help us introduce students to structural techniques, and how we could use the novel to help our kids to start identifying methods such as foreshadowing, dramatic irony and literary motifs. 

As a novel about a boy with Treacher Collins syndrome, Wonder is an obvious choice for developing empathy and understanding (as well as offering teachers the opportunity to cover a multitude of SMSC topics). More importantly in this context however, is the fact that it has the capacity to help children to start thinking about texts as more than just great stories with interesting characters. Described by Lemov as "A starter kit for understanding books whose narration is complex and potentially confusing", what really had me hooked when I first read Wonder was the potential for using the novel's six narrators to teach my year sevens not only about the ways in which  multi-narratives can enlighten us as readers and create dramatic irony, but also to help them understand how distinctive different character voices can be, and how a writer might start to craft those voices. It also definitely provides the opportunity for the study of: 

• Conventional and unconventional use of grammar
• Use of foreshadowing 
• The concept of bildungsroman 
• Protagonists and antagonists 
• Literary motifs 

So why teach a 'Pre-Complex Text'? If Wonder sets our kids up for reading Great Expectations in five years, why not just read Great Expectations now? For me, it comes down to the complexity of ideas piled on top of the complexity of language piled on top of the complexity of structure. I have decided that I want my kids to really get to grips with some important methods and techniques, and to be able to write with confidence about narrative voice and structure without being utterly bamboozled by Victorian language and phrasing at the same time. I'm teaching a low-ability year ten group at the moment, struggling to lay the foundations that should have been put down years ago, while at the same time trying to get them to understand the language of Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Shelley. I know that Wonder will deeply engage year seven, that they will enjoy coming to the lessons and writing about the text, that it will make English a favourite subject for some of them, and, most importantly, that it will give me the space to embed some core literature skills without the constant concern that a proportion of the class are struggling to understand the basic plot. When we've got the basics of studying a novel down through the use of a 'Pre-Complex Text', we'll take a deep dive into something Victorian and tackle it with confidence. 

When I first began teaching at my current inner London secondary school in 2012, I was extremely lucky. The kids were too. We had the luxury of two full-time librarians whose own passion for reading teen and young adult fiction meant that we were always stocked up with the newest and the best books for kids. My own (rather shoddy) knowledge of teenage fiction didn't seem to matter too much (although with hindsight, it should have done). Despite seeing over four hundred kids a week for library lessons, the librarians knew what each pupil liked to read. They kept new stuff on hold for individual children, possessing a knowledge of what each of them would enjoy before most of them even knew it themselves. As an English teacher, my time in the library was spent hearing kids read, and wandering around talking to my classes about what they were checking out this week, and whether they had like the books that they were returning. 

Fast forward five years. That's all gone. Both librarians progressed their careers in non-state secondary environments, and the squeeze on education funding led to us not replacing them. We stopped being able to fund trainee librarians doing their MA. We stopped being able to pay librarians for work out of term time. We stopped being able to employ more than one person. I know it's a fix a lot of schools have found themselves in, but it has undoubtedly had a negative impact on the attitudes that the pupils I teach have towards reading. 

The two lessons a week that I am lucky enough to spend in the library each week now consist of me having to engage in much more behaviour management than intellectual discussion. Kids moan constantly that there's nothing to read, and whilst I'm tempted to turn them to face the full book stacks and tell them not to be ridiculous, I've recently come to the conclusion that there's some truth in their wingeing. A quick survey during a free period revealed that there is only one John Greene novel (The Fault In Our Stars, obviously), no more copies of R.J Palacio's Wonder (all pinched, or "finessed" as my kids have taken to saying), none of the recently-published LGBTQ novels that have helped a lot of young people to see themselves in the books that they read, and absolutely nothing that you'd find in any of the top ten YA fiction lists. 

"What should I read?" is also a question that has regularly stumped me. When I was a teenager, I didn't actually read much YA, preferring to pilfer things from my Dad's bookshelf that I was probably a bit young for, but blew my mind never the less. Even if I had been a YA addict, I'm not sure any of the kids would be particularly enthusiastic about novels from a couple of decades ago (apart from the classics, obviously). I feel that, as someone who is supposed to inspire children to read books and to love the process, I'm a bit inadequate. So my resolution in January was to make myself more aware of what is out there for kids to read, to read more YA fiction myself, and to engage more with research about what kids should be reading and what helps them to read. 

No one might ever read this blog, but it will be a helpful space for me to write about my own progress with this goal. If anybody does stumble across it, maybe there'll be a summary of research that will be helpful, or a review that will illuminate a bookshop or library choice. 

I've got a laminated quotation on the wall of my classroom (teacher cliche, I know...) taken from a Guardian interview with my kids' favourite person Stormzy. It says “I read so many books when I was a kid that I didn’t even know were shaping me up." Maybe in my mission to ensure that my kids are shaped by the literature they read, I'll pick up a few things too.