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When the Book Is Worth the Risk

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ENGLISHJOURNAL 108.3 (2019): 17–19
When the Book Is Worth the Risk
MARC NACHOWITZ
Miami University
nachowm@miamioh.edu
During the first weeks of my first teaching job, the
force of my neophyte enthusiasm for books that
spoke the truth about adolescent angst met the
unmovable wall of seniors who hated to read. Two
decades ago, schools were open about tracking and
students knew exactly where they fit; my “level-
three” seniors were happy to stay in classes with min-
imal academic challenges. Fresh out of an exhilarat-
ing teacher preparation program and loaded with
ammunition to motivate, challenge, and shift the
dominant paradigm, I believed that J. D. Salinger,
Richard Wright, and Kurt Vonnegut would sweep
my students up in narratives that challenged the
status quo. We read Catcher in the Rye. They hated
it. They called Holden Caulfield a whiner. What?!
I was stunned and appalled. How could they hate a
book beloved by so many? How did I miss that it was
dated and that the shenanigans of prep- school boys
wouldn’t speak to my mostly working- class kids?
Refusing to give up, I scoured The ALAN Review
for ideas, haunted the young adult section in the
library, and read the NCTE discussion boards for rec-
ommendations, where I heard about Russell Banks’s
Rule of the Bone. It was new. It was loaded with liter-
ary merit— a bildungsroman with a modern antihero
written in a contemporary, vernacular voice. It was
about a fourteen- year- old
headbanger dealing with all
the insanity life can throw
at a teenager, and, holy of
holies, rather than ending
up like Holden Caulfield,
the narrator separates him-
self from his abusive past,
reorders his present, and
sails off to an aspirational
future. There were some
problems, though. That insanity that life threw at the
narrator— drug use, child abuse, criminal and sexual
behavior— was outside the scope of acceptable class-
room topics in 1997. My gut, however, told me this
was the right book for my kids who admitted they
hadn’t read a book since elementary school.
I needed forty copies of the novel and applied for
a grant administered by the school librarian specif-
ically for the purchase of books for “reluctant read-
ers.” My proposal included a rationale for teaching
the novel with seventeen- year- olds, beefing up my
argument with clips from The New York Times Book
Review that called the novel a major work of litera-
ture. I included teacher testimonials from the NCTE
discussion boards. I also included signed approval to
teach the book from my department chair. The grant
was approved, buoyed by my enthusiasm and the
understanding of my colleagues that it was time to
try something new with the toughest students.
My forty reluctant readers read the entire book,
but controversy erupted. Some students felt the book
described things that should not be discussed or read
about in school, specifically referring to child abuse,
drug use, and sexual activity. Other students loved
it and told me they talked about the novel chapter
by chapter with their friends in the lunchroom. The
debates between students about the book’s appropri-
ateness became, at times, heated. Eventually some-
one, a parent or student, complained to the principal,
and I was called to the office to explain and defend
my rationale for the book. If I had not received an
approval from my department chair, I would, in all
likelihood, have been fired. I imagine she took most
of the heat for the controversy, chalking up my fail-
ure as a rookie mistake.
I now know it was a mistake to rely solely on
the support of my department chair. I should have
SPEAKING MY MIND
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Copyright © 2019 by the National Council of Teachers of English. All rights reserved.
18 JANUARY 2019
WHEN THE BOOK IS WORTH THE RISK
worth it. Who would steal a book from high school?
Kids who wanted to read it.
Allow me to share a few lessons I learned from
this experience. Over the next dozen years, I was
told by department chairs that I couldn’t teach The
Color Purple (explicit discussion of female genitalia),
Slaughterhouse- Five (pornographic), or The Perks
of Being a Wallflower (homosexual kissing scene).
Sometimes parents complained when students were
engaged in independent reading rather than being
taught “The Canon.” I’ve learned that, at the least,
teachers should consider when the risk may be worth
taking. We need all students, not just high achiev-
ers, to read. Students have the right to be exposed to
a variety of texts they might come to love. We can’t
be irresponsible; we have to do our research and,
when appropriate, get written consent from parents
and administrators to teach books that might cause
controversy. For the sake of our students, though,
I believe in risk- taking with texts. It’s important to
explore, experiment, and challenge ourselves to read
stories beyond the limits of our experience. There
have never been more books of exceptional quality
for engaging adolescent readers. Novels that address
subjects that were taboo during my teaching career,
such as homosexuality, depression, and cultural con-
flict, now cram our library and bookstore sections
for young adult readers. But it’s also important for
teachers not to put their careers in danger— as I did.
NCTE provides helpful policy briefs on censorship
and controversial books.
Even after the initial incident with Rule of the
Bone, I still believed that students should be immersed
in a language- rich environment, so I used controver-
sial books as read- alouds. It was simple enough to
censor swear words and skip over one or two scenes
that might make some students uncomfortable. Every
other day, for my bell- ringer activity, I would alter-
nate daily language exercises with read- aloud time. I
would begin by piquing students’ interest in Bone by
retelling the tale of the parking- lot confrontation and
the stolen books, and I would then read the first chap-
ter aloud. I would stop after ten minutes and ask, “Do
you want me to read more?”
written to parents, sharing with them my explana-
tions and justifications and asking for their approval
before starting the unit. Potentially fatal mistake: I did
not check the school’s policy on censorship. I only
learned afterward that the district did not have an
official policy on controversial texts; this may have
been my saving grace. Surprisingly, I was allowed
to finish teaching the unit but forbidden to teach
the book ever again. The forty copies of the novel
were relegated to the book room/copy room/ad hoc
teacher lounge.
Several months later, still a bit fragile from the
career- ending bullet I dodged, I was met at the end
of the day by a rather large student leaning against
my car.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Um . . . are you Mr. Nachowitz?”
“Yes.”
“That book you taught . . . Rule of something?”
Rule of the Bone?” I offered.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“What about it?” I was still paranoid whenever
the book was mentioned and waited for the next shoe
to drop. Why did this young man choose to find me
in a mostly empty parking lot? Was this a brother of
one of my students come to confront me about my
taste in literature?
“Can I borrow a copy?”
Floored, I replied, “Uh . . . sure! Come by my
classroom tomorrow morning and I’ll lend you my
personal copy.”
He did. I discovered he was a member of the
football team, and I heard, over the next few months,
that the book was making its way through the entire
team. Cool, I thought. I’ve started an underground lit-
erary movement. What could be better? Still smarting
from my earlier troubles, I worried and waited for
the next call to the principal’s office, perhaps accus-
ing me of subverting the town’s youth.
At year’s end, while returning books and com-
pleting our annual inventory, I noticed a completely
empty shelf. All forty copies of Rule of the Bone were
missing. A department- wide investigation resulted
in an indisputable conclusion: all of the copies had
been stolen. Praise and hallelujah; maybe the risk was
EJ_Jan_2019_A.indd 18 1/28/19 8:28 PM
19
ENGLISHJOURNAL
MARC NACHOWITZ/SPEAKING MY MIND
Using controversial books in the classroom does
not have to be a career- ending decision— or even a
risk. A plethora of resources to help teachers exists.
The NCTE Standing Committee Against Censor-
ship, the American Library Association, the National
Coalition Against Censorship, and the NCTE Office
of Intellectual Freedom all offer rationales for read-
ing young adult literature and books that have been
censored in the classroom. These resources provide
valuable tools for teachers to demonstrate the literary
merit of challenged books for all stakeholders.
I have one more chapter of my story to share. Last
summer, a former student in my ELA methods class,
now a teacher, sent me this message: “Dr. Nachowitz,
I am emailing you to inform you that to my pleasure
my copy of Rule of the Bone was officially stolen from
my classroom today. Cheers!”
WORKS CITED
Asher, Jay. Thirteen Reasons Why. Random House, 2007.
Banks, Russell. Rule of the Bone. HarperCollins, 1995.
Green, John. Looking for Alaska. Random House, 2006.
Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- Time.
Vintage Books, 2004.
Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. Balzer + Bray, 2017.
“Heck, yeah!” they’d respond.
Somedays, my students begged me to read Bone
instead of the planned lesson, and I learned to use
this as a bargaining chip: “OK, I’ll read a bit more,
but only if you promise to complete your essay revi-
sions.” Over the next decade, with each reading and
each retelling of the ongoing legend around Bone, I
reached hundreds of students who loved that novel.
Now, I teach methods courses for preservice
English teachers. Each semester I assign them a
novel to read as I model instructional techniques for
teaching reading and literary thinking. Some semes-
ters we read Rule of the Bone. Before starting the
book, I share the tale that you’ve just read. When we
finish the novel, I ask them if they would consider
using this book in their future classrooms. Almost
universally, they say it’s too controversial. This wor-
ries me. There are many books worth the risk that
will increase student engagement in reading: John
Greens Looking for Alaska, Jay Asher’s Thirteen Rea-
sons Why, Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give, and
Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night- Time are all high- quality texts with exten-
sive teenage fan bases.
MARC NACHOWITZ is an assistant professor of literacy/language arts at Miami University.
He hasbeen a member of NCTE since 1993.
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS:
CEL LEADERSHIP AWARDS
The Conference on English Leadership (CEL) oers three awards annually
recognizing contributions to leadership within the English language arts.
Nomination information for each award can be found on the CEL website at
http://www.ncte.org/cel/awards and must be submitted by February 1, 2019.
The awards will be presented during the 2019 CEL Convention in Baltimore,
Maryland.
EJ_Jan_2019_A.indd 19 1/28/19 8:28 PM
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