Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Literature in Style
When teachers tell students to read a book, many of the students groan. When teachers ask students to read young adult literature the groans are less loud. This genre opens up a lot for students and contains a wide variety of diversity in both format and content. What if, however, students were given a YA text that taught them to do something? This idea was taken on by one young adult lit. librarian in the Fayetteville Public Library, located in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She gathered together some new do-it-yourself (DIY) fashion books for teens and featured one in her library. From there, these young adult DIY books got students together to do something pretty amazing with them.
This book [Generation T] proved to be inspiring to young artists in Fayetteville and in August, we formed a Teen Alternative Fashion Show Planning Team, setting our sights on National Teen Read Week in October. After many months of hard work, generous donations of time and supplies, and unfettered creativity and dedication of the Planning Team, we created an artistic experience.
The teens designed and created their own outfits using altered tee shirts, vintage clothing, knitting, plastics, costuming, packing materials, marking tape, office supplies, duct tape, paint, ties, bubble wrap, and fabrics. [I MC’d the event and wore an alt. fashion piece that I’d made (a “skirt”) out of slides and paper clips. It was a cool day to be a librarian.]
I worked with the University of Arkansas’ Apparel Studies Program/Fashion Merchandising Club to stage the show and tutor us on how to walk on the catwalk. And, the UofA’s radio station DJ (whom I work with a lot with my Teen Anime Club) to have specific outfit element-themed tunes for the event. I arranged for the local beauty college to send students to do hair for models, booked three teen photographers, and I also partnered with a popular local resale shop to raffle gift certificates and library volunteers served food and drinks at the short break. It was an incredibly powerful event for the teens of this community—we made something unique and beautiful and teen-powered, unlike anything that has ever been done before.
Now at first one my be thinking “Do-it-yourself books, is that really considered literature appropriate for the classroom?” I would like to say that yes it is. Many novels that are read in secondary education have ties to clothing and fashion. For instance, The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice, and some of the vignettes in House on Mango Street are just a few examples of texts that either clothing or fashion play a role in the text.
By combining these literary works with do-it-yourself books marketed toward teens, teachers can take on a new way of dramatizing texts. By having a unit, or even a semester, of texts that include clothing or fashion as a significant theme or object, or even just texts that describe unique fashions, a final project could be to get students to make and model their own.
For adolescents, clothes are important. By showing them that things that are important to them are also important to texts help them to make connections. Taking it one step further into the creative realm, as described in the blog post above, students get to make more connections than just literary ones, but artistic and community connections as well. Amanda, the librarian, was on to something here I think.
Article from:
Lillian, Jenine. “Teen Alternative Fashion Show.” Online posting. 4 Dec. 2006. Alternative Teens Services. 9 Dec. 2006 <http://www.yalibrarian.com/wordpress/2006/12/teen-alternative-fashion-show/>.
This book [Generation T] proved to be inspiring to young artists in Fayetteville and in August, we formed a Teen Alternative Fashion Show Planning Team, setting our sights on National Teen Read Week in October. After many months of hard work, generous donations of time and supplies, and unfettered creativity and dedication of the Planning Team, we created an artistic experience.
The teens designed and created their own outfits using altered tee shirts, vintage clothing, knitting, plastics, costuming, packing materials, marking tape, office supplies, duct tape, paint, ties, bubble wrap, and fabrics. [I MC’d the event and wore an alt. fashion piece that I’d made (a “skirt”) out of slides and paper clips. It was a cool day to be a librarian.]
I worked with the University of Arkansas’ Apparel Studies Program/Fashion Merchandising Club to stage the show and tutor us on how to walk on the catwalk. And, the UofA’s radio station DJ (whom I work with a lot with my Teen Anime Club) to have specific outfit element-themed tunes for the event. I arranged for the local beauty college to send students to do hair for models, booked three teen photographers, and I also partnered with a popular local resale shop to raffle gift certificates and library volunteers served food and drinks at the short break. It was an incredibly powerful event for the teens of this community—we made something unique and beautiful and teen-powered, unlike anything that has ever been done before.
Now at first one my be thinking “Do-it-yourself books, is that really considered literature appropriate for the classroom?” I would like to say that yes it is. Many novels that are read in secondary education have ties to clothing and fashion. For instance, The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice, and some of the vignettes in House on Mango Street are just a few examples of texts that either clothing or fashion play a role in the text.
By combining these literary works with do-it-yourself books marketed toward teens, teachers can take on a new way of dramatizing texts. By having a unit, or even a semester, of texts that include clothing or fashion as a significant theme or object, or even just texts that describe unique fashions, a final project could be to get students to make and model their own.
For adolescents, clothes are important. By showing them that things that are important to them are also important to texts help them to make connections. Taking it one step further into the creative realm, as described in the blog post above, students get to make more connections than just literary ones, but artistic and community connections as well. Amanda, the librarian, was on to something here I think.
Article from:
Lillian, Jenine. “Teen Alternative Fashion Show.” Online posting. 4 Dec. 2006. Alternative Teens Services. 9 Dec. 2006 <http://www.yalibrarian.com/wordpress/2006/12/teen-alternative-fashion-show/>.
// posted by Julie L. Lenhart @ 11:47 PM 
