Green, whose novel about teens with cancer, The Fault in Our Stars, hit No. 4 on USA TODAY's Best-selling Books list in January, is looking forward to discussing Bradbury's themes — "the ways context and sustained engagement add meaning to human life in a place (the Internet) that is not exactly known for sustained intellectual engagement."
Social networks "are often home to precisely the kinds of factoids and half-truths that Bradbury worries about," he says. But while the Internet "contains a lot of videos of squirrels riding skateboards, it can also be a place that facilitates big conversations about books."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/story/2012-07-02/john-green-book-club/55989684/1
Side note: I highly recommend incorporating any and all of John Green's books into your current/future classroom libraries. Be sure to purchase them in hardcover; they will not stay on your shelves long, and students will devour them.
If you teach The Great Gatsby or Catcher in the Rye-- he has videos on YouTube that teach teens literary critical analysis skills using both texts. I have included one of the Gatsby videos.
Thanks for sharing this Kirsten!
ReplyDeleteI was only slightly aware of John Green before today, but after watching a few dozen of his vlogs in one sitting, I can't get enough of the guy. I know for a fact I'm going to be using Gatsby and Catcher during my student teaching this coming school year, and I love the way he tried to boil them down into a digestible form for teenagers. I only hope that I can be half as enthusiastic as Green is as a teacher! Haha.
In regard to the USA Today article, this just goes to show the importance of using online resources like blogs/vlogs or social networking sites to establish a community that promotes learning. The Internet could be a wonderful way for teachers to reach out to their students during the long summer break (during which students tend forget a lot of the skills they learned from the previous school year). For example, English teachers could use blogs to post discussion questions/activities for summer reading assignments. This would help create learning communities even before the end of August, which would allow the class to hit the ground running on the first day of school.
Robert,
DeleteSTOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING and find a way to read John Green's The Fault in our Stars and Looking for Alaska. You'll thank me later when you're a bona fide NerdFighter!
Tim
I agree! John Green is amazingly adept at conveying the modern teen experience. He's a favorite among my students and one of the first authors I recommend to students (and also friends and colleagues) who are interested in exploring YA literature.
ReplyDeleteHis recent comments on Fahrenheit 451, by the way, are highly relevant the the issues we've been exploring throughout the session. I suggest taking a few minutes to hear this thoughts (video linked below). Hopefully, I'll have the time to re-read the book with the NerdFighter community and contribute to the discussion. Bradbury is one of my favorite authors, and I'm thrilled that tons of teens are energized to read and discuss his fiction online.
http://youtu.be/kjCk8J6L_SI