Selecting YAL

How to select YAL? How can we take into consideration about which book should we use and which we shouldn’t? In that case, I prefer to refer to Brown & Stephen model for selecting YAL. There are 3 major parts that need to be considered to select a YAL; the text, which refers to the quality of the book, the audience, which refers to the students’ need and interest and the context, which refers to curriculum specification. Based on these 3 major criteria the decision can be made. Other minor criteria that also need to be considered would be the language use, characters, coherent, significant themes, appropriate settings and reasonable conflict and issues.

‘Beethoven in Paradise’ would be suitable to fulfill these criteria. It shows what is really happening in the real-life where usually a father sometimes choose to push their children doing something they don’t like at all. The Chocolate War (1974) is also meets these criteria where in this story adolescents are drawn to a group such as football team, a clique or a gang at school that terrorizes, dominates or excludes others. There are many conflicts involved and of course the fast-paced action and suspense will attract the young adult.

Even though I’m a fan of Christopher Pike I would not suggest his book to be selected as the young adult literature, especially the ‘Last Vampires’,’Creatures of Forverer’ and ‘Whisper of Death’. I admit that all those stories are very interesting and full of horror and suspense but it might be not suitable to be used as the formal literature book. But I won’t forbid any of my students to read it if they want to read a different genre books.