1. They’re pitched at the right level to develop literary understanding
It’s our responsibility at KS3 to induct students into the disciplinary practices of literature study. They are best able to do this when working on texts that are challenging but accessible. If the texts are too hard and need lots of teacher intervention to aid understanding, then students will have precious little time – or cognitive capacity – to develop their own understanding of how literature works and how they can respond to it, be that critically or creatively.
2. They encourage deep thinking
This point is very much linked to the one above. Literature pitched at the right level develops patterns of deep thinking in young readers. This is more likely to occur when the texts themselves aren’t excessively difficult (so, again, they need to be challenging but accessible). Good children’s and YA novels are written to make young people think – by giving them the space and time to think. This thinking might be in keeping with the disciplinary practices of English, but it might go in different directions too, providing them with important ways of thinking that they can use beyond the English classroom. So in reading challenging but accessible literature, students can think deeply about, for example, the issues explored in books, different ways of representing people and the world, alternative perspectives, and so on.
3. They’re age appropriate
Novels and other literary works written for adults tends to include adult themes. Just because some of these are canonical doesn’t make them appropriate for younger secondary students. As one teacher said to me recently, about having to teach Othello to Year 9, against his better judgement: ‘We seem to spend an awful lot of time talking about adultery.’
Difficult, ‘adult’ themes do crop up in children’s and YA novels, but written with the sensitivity required for their audience.
4. They reflect contemporary realities
While the publishing industry has a lot of catching up to do in order to get catalogues up-to-speed with the contemporary landscape, recent children’s and YA fiction contains plenty of examples of work that reflects the realities of life for young people today. Whether you’re looking to increase the diversity of representation on your curriculum, or engage with particular issues, there are children’s and YA novels that can give you and your students what's needed. Rudine Sims Bishop’s ‘mirrors, windows and sliding doors’ analogy is really useful to draw on in this context.
5. They’re a useful foil for older canonical texts
Part of the process of becoming skilled at literary reading involves developing a bank of reading experiences to draw on – with exposure to different genres, styles, structures, narrative voices, and so on. If young readers have a decent chunk of accessible yet challenging reading behind them, then they will be better prepared to deal with difficult canonical texts when the time is right.
6. They’re fun
Fun might not be exactly the right word, because plenty of novels for younger readers deal with some pretty weighty themes. But even then, these novels tend to offer more opportunities for young people to play around with them on their own terms, to have fun with them in that sense. Because they can access the texts, they can, for example, more readily engage in role-play activities, come up with alternative scenarios, or write back to the texts. I’d say that all of those things are fun!