LIT UP: ONE REPORTER THREE SCHOOLS
Nonfiction To challenge but not bewilder LIT UP: ONE REPORTER THREE SCHOOLS. TWENTY-FOUR BOOKS THAT CAN CHANGE LIVES. By David Denby 257 pp. Henry Holt & Company Reviewed by David Daniel Journalist David Denby ( Great Books ; Do the Movies Have a Future? ) approaches this project by posing the question: Can hormone-driven, Facebook and Instagram-addicted teens, perched between childhood and adulthood—which is to say, the mass of American high school students!—get excited about reading serious literature? Embedding himself in the classrooms of several public schools, much the way a war correspondent might dig in with combat troops, he sets out on a year-long mission to find out. It’s not a new inquiry. This and ancillary questions about what books “reach” students, how best to teach them, how to measure outcomes, etc., are examined daily in classrooms and staff rooms, in faculty lounges and in after school pubs. These discussions—like discussions about many vital issues—r...