Using Literature to Help Troubled Teenagers Cope with Identity Issues

The search for one's identity is an ancient quest reflected throughout history in stories where human glory and conquest are often layered with great pain and self doubt, meant to help people discover themselves and who they are. Today, this quest is found prevalently in young adult novels, where characters wrestle with modern dilemmas in order to find themselves. This reference resource provides a link for teachers, media specialists, parents, and other adults to those novels and how to use them effectively. Educators and therapists explore the literature where common identity issues are addressed in ways intriguing to teens. Using fictional characters, these experts provide guidance on how to encourage adolescents to cope while improving their reading and writing skills.

Twelve novels are examined from both a literary and psychological perspective, allowing the readers to meet the central figures as if they were living human beings. Each chapter is written by a literature specialist who has teamed up with a therapist and confronts a different identity issue, examining such dilemmas as body image, the father/son relationship, bigotry, and peer relations. This pair of experts tries to define the central character's struggle in each novel to discover who they are and to become self-actualized individuals. Each chapter also provides an annotated bibliography of other works, both fiction and nonfiction, that explore these same issues to give readers not only the insight into helping teenagers with similar problems, but also the tools with which to get teenagers reading and addressing these problems. This innovative approach is meant to provide the opportunity for adults and adolescents to better understand each other.

Educators and therapists are paired in this unique exploration of using young adult literature to help adolescents cope with identity issues.

VOYA

Is it possible to take young adult literature too seriously? By encouraging therapists to analyze the main characters in young adult novels, the Using Literature series hopes to give educators a better understanding of teen trauma while providing ideas for interventions within the mock analyses. In supporting this theory of the relevance of YA literature, Kaplan writes, "teenagers always turn to art... to find approximations of their own lives." Each chapter is devoted to a single work, presumably selected for the clarity with which it addresses a particular issue. Included are Chris Crutcher's Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (Greenwillow, 1993/VOYA August 1993), in which the theme of identity through body image is considered. M. E. Kerr's Deliver Us from Evie (HarperCollins, 1994/VOYA October 1994) offers a literary reference on the issue of sexual identity. Jenny Davis's Sex Education (Orchard, 1988) covers the topic of identity through intimacy. The analysis of the Crutcher novel presents a cleverly penned chapter that includes an imaginary dialogue between a therapist and Coach Lemry, a central adult figure in the story. The investigation of Kerr's Deliver Us is less successful, providing detailed character analyses so rigidly styled to address Kerr's fictional scenario that they become inextrapolative. Concluding each chapter are annotated bibliographies of related fiction and nonfiction, some classics and some out of print. An exciting volume in theory, Using Literature to Help suffers from "adult"eration. If, as Kaplan writes, teens turn to art for empathy, a heavy, adult voice directing the young reader might discourage individual interpretation. Although the literaryanalysesincluded are interesting and even entertaining, there is little room for realworld application. Index. Source Notes. Biblio. 1999, Greenwood, Ages Adult, 248p. PLB $39.95. Reviewer: Amy S. Pattee

JEFFREY S. KAPLAN is Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Central Florida and Area Education Coordinator for the UCF Daytona Beach Campus.