Contributed By Ellen Anne

Personal identity and developing a sense of self are quintessential aspects of being a teenager. But how do you navigate the complex experiences of adolescence if you can’t even remember the names of the people you love? And is it even possible to cultivate a sense of self and plan for the future with no past? Does memory and experience ultimately shape identity or is it something deeper?
A few recent books have questioned the importance of memory in relation to coming-of-age and identity, exploring the dilemma of figuring out who you are when you don’t know—or remember—who you were.

Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson (2008)

Jenna Fox knows that she was once someone. She watches that someone as a little girl dancing in home movies, scrutinizing her movements on the television screen. But Jenna Fox has just woken up from a coma and she’s not sure she knows anything about herself anymore.

As she recuperates Jenna becomes aware that her body seems different and that there are abnormal gaps in her memory. She can’t remember simple words. She doesn’t recognize her family. Stranger still are the things she does without thinking, like recalling detailed historical facts and the urge to obey her mother, even when she doesn’t want to. Is Jenna really the person her parents tell her she is?

To unravel the truth about her own identity, Jenna has to push herself to the edge, to try and remember things she has forgotten, to uncover the secrets that seems to surround her—the strange isolated house her family moved to after the accident, the odd liquid she that is her only food, her parents’ unnatural fear of her doing anything normal like returning to school. But as Jenna pieces together the fragments of her past, she begins to realize it’s not what happened before the accident that changed Jenna Fox, it’s what happen after.

Kat Got Your Tongue by Lee Weatherly (2007)

All Kat remembers is a massive bang then she’s on her way to the hospital. After being examined by the doctor a confused Kat is told her name is Kathy and that she’s been in a terrible car accident. But Kat has no memory of the accident—or anything before it. In fact, she has no idea who she even is—she doesn’t recognize her mother, and when she sees herself in the mirror she’s certain it’s a stranger staring back.
As if adjusting to life after an accident with no memory weren’t hard enough, Kat’s return to school is mixed with the realization that the girls she’s told are her friends want nothing to do with her. Worse, they seem to be angry, fixated on something that Kat did before the accident, something Kat can’t remember.

Kat’s struggle to untangle the secrets of her former life unfold in alternating chapters, between entries in her journal from before the accident and her efforts after the accident to traverse the tricky world of someone who has no memory of who she can trust and what she can believe.
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin (2008)
Naomi’s life is changed forever with a simple coin toss. When she wakes up in a hospital, four years of her life suddenly erased from her memory, she’s shocked to discover that she can’t remember her parents are divorced, she doesn’t recall her best friend’s name or why he calls her “Chief,” and she has no idea what happened on the night of the accident.

How can Naomi possibly recover and get her life back on track if she’s forgotten the simplest things about herself? Can she trust other people telling her what she was really like? It’s as if Naomi is living someone else’s life, someone she doesn’t quite understand, someone who kept a diary of all the food she ate, was incredibly organized, and would pick annoying, preppy Ace as a boyfriend.

As Naomi uncovers clues about the person she was, she’s surprised to discover that she might not be the old Naomi anymore, that perhaps her amnesia has a silver lining. Could she be a new, different person, a person trying to figure out what she wants—a person with one lucky chance to start over?

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About Ellen Anne

Ellen Anne is a teen librarian in Ohio who has also worked in childrens/YA book publishing. Here’s what Ellen has to say about being a librarian:

“I think one of the best parts of being a librarian is the moment when a patron asks for help finding a book and all they remember is that the cover is black and each chapter is written by a different author and you actually know what book it is! I also have a weakness for D.I.Y. craft books, graphic novels, book characters with mettle, and providing reader’s advisory to teens, especially the ornery one.”

A middle school teacher wants Leo Lionni books to teach her students how to make inferences. A historical preservationist is reinvigorated by Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House. Two teenagers flirt and read Wee Little Chick to one another. Picture books are not just for children anymore.

The graphic novel naissance—comics renaissance—has provided entry for a new way of seeing and engaging with picture books. The marriage of picture with text or picture with wordless narrative is no longer just the first step of the serious American reader. Illustrated books with and without words are accepted for all ages, thanks to the successes of the graphic novel. This brings us to the humble picture book and the ways in which graphic novels and picture books have been colliding and expanding and exploding conventions. When American Born Chinese, The Red Book, Zen Shorts, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and The Wall are award winners, we know there must be a sea-change.

I rediscovered picture books as a children’s librarian—no better way, perhaps. While I loved them as a child, I never thought of them as I traveled the typical reader’s trajectory: reading books for children, books for young adults and books for adults. I love children’s and young adult books because of my work. Most likely I would not have discovered their joys elsewhere. When people think of books—if they think of them at all—they adhere to a linear path linking human development and reading. Surely, reading picture books is regressing! Onward and upward, today Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, tomorrow Moby-Dick.

Like any range of literature, picture books can be gentle or challenging, in the terms of their language, themes, design, and images. Picture books can approach a difficult and complicated subject in a comforting and low-pressure way and they can provoke teen and adult readers to look deeply, intentionally, and closely at content that children might miss.

So what can result from interactions between teens and picture books? Teens can learn about book design in Black and White, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, and The Three Pigs; spirituality in Samsara Dog and The Three Questions; “wolves” in Wolves and The Woolves in the Sitee; animal biology (in rhyme!) in Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones; art elements in Hello, Fruit Face! The Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Nina’s Book of Little Things, and Voices in the Park; war and violence in Patrol:An American Soldier in Vietnam, The Letter Home, The Butter Battle Book, and Rose Blanche; and death in Michael Rosen’s Sad Book and To Hell With Dying.

Librarians must educate patrons that the picture book is a format not always prescribed for very young children. This is a challenge when we are constantly asked for the 4-year old, 6-year old, and 12-year old sections and we dutifully point to picture books, easy readers, and chapter books. But we can inform parents and teachers of the myriad ways picture books can be used with teens. Picture books can be microcosmic in the multitudes contained in their brevity. Jon Muth’s books sometimes seem to teach us all we need to know about Buddhism.

Picture books can be used with reluctant readers and visual learners, they can be paired with novels or nonfiction works in history lessons, they can initiate art and design projects, draw on art historical connections and critical thinking strategies, and rekindle the personal experience with literature. As students begin deciphering textual meaning, they can use picture book connections to learn about character development, language, and theme. While we think of storytime as an essentially preschool activity, collaborative out loud engagement with text and image can be pursued with teens.

For the picture book to fulfill its programming potential, it would be ideal to cultivate a young adult collection of picture books. This may be a cataloging or administrative challenge, but as we see graphic novels collected in up to three locations in a building, a home for young adult picture books seems possible. While many children’s picture books can be used successfully with teens, avoiding redundancy is probably desired. There are many picture books that work more deeply and better with teens than with children and would probably get more love in a YA division. Some resources to check out include: http://readwritethink.org, http://vue.org, http://www.picturebookart.org, and http://www.wiredforyouth.com/books/index.cfm?booklist=picture

Titles mentioned

Brannen, Sarah. Uncle Bobby’s Wedding

Browne, Anthony. Voices From the Park

Burton, Virginia Lee. The Little House

Decker, Tim. The Letter Home

Gravett, Emily. Wolves

Haring, Keith. Nina’s Book of Little Things

Heller, Ruth. Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones

Innocenti, Roberto. Rose Blanche

Lionni, Leo.

Lehman, Barbara. The Red Book

Macaulay, David. Black and White

Manos, Helen and Julie Vivas. Samsara Dog

Muth, Jon. The Three Questions

Myers, Walter Dean. Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam

Richardson, Justin. And Tango Makes Three

Rosen, Michael. Michael Rosen’s Sad Book

Scieska, Jon and Lane Smith. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.

Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Seuss, Dr. The Butter Battle Book

Sís, Peter. The Wall

Strand, Claudia. Hello, Fruit Face! The Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Thompson, Lauren. Wee Little Chick

Walker, Alice. To Hell With Dying

Wiesner, David. Three Little Pigs

Wild, Margaret and Anne Spudvilas. Woolves in the Sitee

Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese