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By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
Sit in on a high school English classes these days, and you'll find kids as likely to be discussing The Red Tent as The Red Badge of Courage. Wally Lamb vies for shelf space with William Faulkner, and Cold Mountain sometimes freezes out War and Peace.
Faced with declining reading scores on national tests and the steady buzz of movies, TV and video games, teachers trying to entice students are increasingly turning to contemporary literary fiction and non-fiction, often picked fresh from best-seller lists. "Times have changed — high school has changed," says Niki Locklear, English department chair at Simon Kenton High School in Independence, Ky. Her seniors just started reading Tuesdays With Morrie, the best-selling memoir by sports columnist Mitch Albom. Teens can learn as much from contemporary literature as from classics, English teachers Amy Crawford and Rick Ayers say in their new guide, Great Books for High School Kids (Beacon Press, $15). ) "Things that are designed as adult literature are being gobbled up by young people," says Ayers, who calls the guide a "quirky" look at books that he and colleagues have found successful, including book club favorites such as Lamb's first two novels and The Red Tent, Anita Diamant's 1997 retelling of the biblical tale of Dinah, daughter of Jacob. Crawford and Ayers caution that their list of nearly 400 books isn't meant to displace the classics. "This is a war not worth waging, since we would all be diminished if either side won a decisive victory." Ayers writes about Greek dramatist Aeschylus' play Agamemnon, in which King Atreus brings a curse on his house by serving his brother a dinner of his own children, boiled in a stew. His students "were captivated," Ayers says. "This was no longer obscure Greek literature but an over-the-top horror story." There are a few classics, however, "that never worked for us." Louann Reid, a former high school English teacher who now teaches at Colorado State University, says teachers are constantly debating new vs. old, but a few books are simply harder sells. "There's a lot more competition for people's attention than there was in the '70s," she says. "Whereas we might have taught Great Expectations because it was a classic, because you could talk about plot and setting and stylistic details, it is not a book that contemporary teenagers ... can relate to. So it loses its value." Lamb, who came to prominence in 1997 through Oprah Winfrey's book club, says he's "always interested in writing characters who are in search of themselves, and I think that a lot of high school kids are on the same type of quest." Reflecting the increasing diversity of U.S. classrooms, Crawford and Ayers' list devotes considerable space to young, non-white writers like Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian. They recommend his book of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which delights Alexie, 37, who says he gets letters from kids who have read it. He wrote them at age 21 and says, "I think my youth shines through the stories, so I think it appeals to them generationally." Albom says he also gets letters from teens who have read Tuesdays, a slim 1997 memoir about the weeks he spent with college professor and mentor Morrie Schwartz before he died of Lou Gehrig's disease. "I've been astounded but delighted," Albom says. "What could be better for Morrie? He's still teaching." Crag Hill, an English teacher in Moscow, Idaho, says many of the old classics endure, but that individual stocks rise and fall. Many teachers are rediscovering Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, for instance, but ditching Julius Caesar. And while it hasn't supplanted The Scarlet Letter, Hill says, teachers are assigning books like Dan Brown's 2003 religious-themed thriller The Da Vinci Code. "No one is going to read The Scarlet Letter until they're reading something they're enjoying," he says. "You can't hit a home run until you're swinging the bat." A book list with teen appeal In their new Great Books for High School Kids, high school teachers Amy Crawford and Rick Ayers of Berkeley, Calif., offer a look at what books work with teens today. USA TODAY asked them to come up with a personal list of books they consider "in" with high-schoolers, as well as a few that are "out." Here's a partial list, along with their comments. (Related list: See more than 100 books from Ayers and Crawford's Great Books for High School Kids)
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