Manuscript submitted January, 1998.
Revision accepted January, 1999.
We’ve all laughed and cried as our favorite characters succeeded and failed, because good literature is built on life itself – and life’s not always easy!
Cornett & Cornett, (1980, p. 7)
The school year begins with a summer-refreshed high school English teacher greeting a group of gifted students enrolled in an advanced literature class. Excited about exploring the worlds of Hemingway, Steinbeck, and other literary giants with intelligent, energetic young adults during the upcoming year, she is exhilarated by her students’ eagerness and intellectual vitality. As the weeks go by, she spends hours preparing lessons she is certain will enthrall her young literary protégés. Challenging assignments are tackled and high quality work is produced. Her students become prolific young writers and critical consumers of literature.
As the school year progresses, this dedicated teacher continues to enjoy her work with these gifted students yet realizes that not all is well with their world. It occurs to her that she has assumed that these gifted young people are free of worries, forgetting that although gifted students often appear to have so much going for them, and seem capable of handling life’s difficulties, they actually may need the emotional support of a caring individual. While enjoying their written reflections, she becomes aware that these gifted teenagers are often troubled by personal issues and often overwhelmed by the daily pressures facing young adults. Reading their journals, she understands that they are often unable to release building tensions and stresses. She wonders how she can help.
Gifted young adults are often highly sensitive and very aware of their feelings. They can also be intense in their depth of feeling (Silverman, 1993). Gifted teenagers who exhibit a heightened level of sensitivity, an intensity, or emotional overexcitability (Piechowski, 1997) need supportive adults who view these characteristics positively and have a clear understanding of their frustrations and anxiety. Teachers who work with gifted youngsters also need practical classroom strategies to address these students’ feelings and to create supportive environments where students feel comfortable expressing how they feel.
Young Adult Literature as a Therapeutic Tool
As adult literature reflects society and culture (Ouzts, 1994) so does young adult literature reflect adolescent society and issues facing teenagers. Although secondary English literature teachers have recognized the positive impact of young adult literature in their regular classrooms, this genre has not been given the same importance in honors level English classes. Although gifted teenagers are often voracious consumers of literature, it is their ability to respond emotionally to the literature that is critical. Incorporating young adult literature, which addresses the moral and emotional concerns of young adults, in honors level and advanced English literature classes, provides gifted teenagers the same experience as their peers to benefit from the young adult literature in helping them understand their adolescent experiences.
Along with being asked to read classic literature, gifted students should be provided age-appropriate novels written by respected authors in young adult literature. Young adult literature offers gifted students many well-written, carefully crafted and emotionally powerful novels which can be used to effectively teach all aspects of literary analysis as well as provide students opportunities to develop an understanding of themselves. Because authors often write about what they know best, many authors are gifted and were gifted adolescents, and characters in young adult literature are often characterized as gifted — a recognition gifted teenagers may see in themselves.
When teenagers see something of themselves in a novel, identify with a character from the story, reflect on that identification, and undergo some emotional growth as a result of that reading experience, a teacher should be delighted. Such an authentic interaction with a novel that results in affective growth is referred to as bibliotherapy. Bibliotherapy is defined as the use of reading to produce affective change and promote personality growth and development. Bibliotherapy is an attempt to help young people understand themselves and cope with problems by providing literature relevant to their personal situations and developmental needs at appropriate times. Middle and high school teachers using this approach believe that reading can influence a student’s thinking and behavior. Moreover, through guided discussions, selected readings can focus on specific needs of gifted students.
To clarify the appropriate use of bibliotherapy with students in school, a distinction is made between clinical bibliotherapy and developmental bibliotherapy. Clinical bibliotherapy involves psychotherapeutic methods used by skilled practitioners with individuals experiencing serious emotional problems. Developmental bibliotherapy is helping students in their normal health and development. One of the advantages of this approach is that teachers can identify the concerns of their students and address the issues before they become problems, helping students to move through predictable stages of adolescence with knowledge of what to expect and examples of how other teenagers have dealt with the same concerns.
Halsted (1994) proposes that young adult literature can hook teenagers emotionally; hence, the bibliotherapy process using young adult novels is easy to understand. The therapeutic experience begins when gifted teenagers identify themselves with one or more characters in a novel. Teenage readers may feel relief that they are not the only ones facing a specific problem. The reader learns vicariously how to solve some of the problems upon reflecting how the characters in the book solved their problem. As young people enjoy reading a novel, they learn vicariously through the characters in the book.
Adolescents are usually able to deal with common emotional concerns. However, emotional upheavals experienced by sensitive teenagers are sometimes overwhelming and using appropriate literature may serve as a catalyst in getting young people through their hurt, to find some answers. In addition to the reader’s initial response, the therapeutic effect also depends on the group discussion facilitated by the teacher who provides follow-up techniques such as reflective writing, role-playing, creative problem solving, music and art activities, or self-selected options for students to pursue individually. When presented in this way, bibliotherapy can be enjoyable while providing a time for solid introspection for young people.
Why is bibliotherapy important for gifted students?
The trials and tribulations of adolescence are difficult for all young people in this developmental period filled with many new stresses. When gifted students arrive at adolescence, their experience may be different because of their high level of emotionality and sensitivity which often accompanies high intelligence and may exacerbate stressful experiences of daily living. Meeting their social and emotional needs is critical for gifted middle and high school students. Like all teenagers, they want to fit in with their social group while maintaining their own identity, including their intellectual ability. It is important that middle and high school teachers help them recognize that their sensitivity and awareness of other people’s feelings may differ from their peers. Discussions in bibliotherapy provide a wonderful opportunity for young people to listen to their peers and realize they are not alone with their feelings. Through these discussions, gifted teenagers may reach an understanding that their emotionality and sensitivity are important dimensions of their personalities that are valued by others.
Understanding that others have similar feelings may help gifted teenagers form friendships, an important concern during adolescent development. Topics involving friendship can become the focus of bibliotherapy sessions and may serve as a non-intimidating topic for secondary teachers who would like to begin using this approach with gifted students.
Middle and high school teachers using bibliotherapy can become successful in nurturing healthy social and emotional development in their students. Discovering literature that reflects the emotional essence of intellectually curious young adults requires knowledge of the affective development of gifted teenagers and knowledge of novels that depict that essence, both obtained through training in gifted education. Since few secondary schools can afford the luxury of having a full-time counselor assigned to the gifted population within a school, teachers with a repertoire of bibliotherapy may be appreciated. Classroom teachers who use bibliotherapy effectively are a real asset to a middle or high school community.
The Mosquito Test
The Mosquito Test (Kent, 1994) is a young adult novel about two teenagers’ valiant efforts to overcome the physical and emotional setbacks of cancer and cystic fibrosis through friendship. The novel is seen through the eyes of the narrator and protagonist, Scott Cinander, who would have been the first sophomore in six years to make the varsity squad at St. John’s High School. However, just before basketball season, Scott is diagnosed with cancer and is told that he cannot play contact sports. His doctor informs him he has a 70 percent chance of recovery. Scott’s uncertain future would be even more traumatic were it not for his parents and a friend named Kevin, who always knows the right thing to say and carefully watches over him as they become best friends. When Scott loses his hair to chemotherapy, Kevin shaves his head, too. They had passed “The Mosquito Test.”
*Publisher: Windswept House Publishers. Mount Desert, Maine 04660-0519. ISBN: 1883650038. Profits from the sale of this book are donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and to the Jimmy Fund of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.
In dealing with his illness, Scott is not so overcome with self-pity that he is unable to think of others. He discovers a love of tennis and forms another close friendship with Eric Burke, a star tennis player who is afflicted with cystic fibrosis. As they struggle with their illnesses, together the two young men discover the meaning of courage and the legacy of friendship.
One Teacher’s Use of Bibliotherapy
The hair clippers came out and in eight or nine swipes; each boy’s hairless head gleamed. Nathan and Rob had planned it. Brent joined in at the last moment. The novel prompted it. When I quizzed Nathan in front of the class about his book project, he explained, “When Kevin shaved his head for his friend Scott, I was proud of him. I needed to do something like that. I wanted to give something up.” Nathan’s thoughtful words moved our class into a discussion about friendship and created a memorable classroom moment.
A bright, sensitive young man, Nathan reads voraciously and creates stunning art projects in response to his reading. In Room 109, he is known as a “project master.” The portfolio pedagogy encouraged student choice and produced rich responses in a variety of media. Though the reading level of The Mosquito Test did not challenge Nathan, the trials of the characters sensitized and moved him. Reading the novel and reacting in such a passionate manner helped Nathan examine friendships in his life and created opportunities for mentorship and dialogue with his teacher.
The novel opened conversation doors for students, from frank talks about death to grounded conversations concerning friendships. The book inspired art projects and independent research, and it strengthened teacher-student relationships that supported effective use of bibliotherapy. Students expressed responses through projects, essays, and community activities, often deepening their understanding of themselves and others.
Summary
The use of developmental bibliotherapy in a classroom has the power to enrich gifted students’ understanding of themselves and of their adolescent experiences. Such an approach may help create a classroom that is responsive both to individual needs and to the needs of a classroom society as a whole. Clearly, bibliotherapy has the potential to affect meaningful change.
Each book listed in the annotated bibliography offers teachers opportunities to look deeply at a variety of issues with their students. In the hands of competent and caring teachers, engaging stories can usher teenage readers to greater understanding. In Shadowlands, the movie biography of C. S. Lewis, we hear Lewis profess, “We read to discover that we are not alone.” With awareness of and emphasis on bibliotherapy in middle and high school classrooms, gifted students will grow to understand that they, too, are “not alone.”
Bibliography of Recommended Young Adult Novels about Friendship*
Binchy, Maeve. (1991). A Circle of Friends. New York: Dell.
Crutcher, Chris. (1993). Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes. New York: Greenwillow Books.
Guy, Rosa. (1973). The Friends. New York: Dell.
Jenkins, A. M. (1997). Breaking Boxes. New York: Delacorte.
Knowles, John. (1959). A Separate Peace. New York: Macmillan.
Peck, Richard. (1985). Remembering the Good Times. New York: Dell.
Voight, Cynthia. (1982). Tell Me if the Lovers are Losers. New York: Ballantine.
Werlin, Nancy. (1994). Are You Alone on Purpose? New York: Ballantine.
*Due to the sensitive content and provocative language included in some young adult literature, teachers should preview a novel to determine if the book is an appropriate selection for their students.
