This important collection of essays addresses the reality of the experience of death as an inevitable part of life and literature through rich, concrete, engaging classroom activities responding to a wide range of young adult and canonical novels. Contributors draw on their teaching experiences to describe specific methods along with extensive resources for fostering students’ discussions, writing, and artwork/media about characters’ experiences of grief, loss,

depression, and mental illness associated with death and suicide.

Richard Beach, Professor Emeritus of English Education, University of Minnesota

This book will speak to and guide teachers and teacher educators who strive to be courageous in teaching literature to young people. Falter, Bickmore, and their contributors explore critical, cutting-edge approaches to teaching literature – approaches that humanize students by taking seriously their experiences with and questions about death, loss, and grief. This volume considers how suicide, terminal illness, accidents, and deaths of family members are depicted in both canonical and young adult literature. And, it offers strategies for creating interpretive spaces that foster deep engagement with these texts and the inquiries they evoke.

Amanda Haertling Thein, Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs, University of Iowa

This text is an informative and indispensable guide for educators in creating classroom spaces that allow for the exploration of death and dying. Drawing from highly engaging young adult and commonly taught literature, these authors offer instructional methods that introduce, teach, and challenge students to consider a book’s emotional core. Through the use of these strategies and approaches, the creation of classroom climates where students can feel comfortable exploring and discussing death and dying can be achieved.

Paula Greathouse

Whether readers are teachers of English at the secondary or college level, or work in teacher preparation programs, they will discover that When Loss Gets Personal: Discussing Death through Literature in the Secondary ELA Classroom offers a multitude ofpractical strategies to help students reflect on personal and cultural beliefs related to grief, loss, and death. What I find energizing about this edited collection from Michelle Falter and Steven Bickmore is the variety of genres and forms of literature examined (e.g., verse novels, graphic novels, memoirs, mystery, and bildungsroman) and the diverse theoretical perspectives employed by each of the chapter’s authors (e.g., reader-response theory, existentialism, cultural theory, and humanistic theory). This book fills a gap in the field of English Language Arts and gives instructors a valuable set of questions, assignments, and techniques that will make hosting authentic discussions of difficult topics such as suicide, terminal illness, death, and grief more manageable and meaningful.

Kia Jane Richmond, PhD, Professor and Director of English Education, Northern Michigan University