Want to Reach Reluctant Readers (at Long Last)? Teach This Young Adult Best Seller!.. 'On the Come Up'

BOOK REVIEW by Dr. Rose Reissman

Want to Reach Reluctant Readers (at Long Last)? Teach This Young Adult Best Seller!

On the Come Up

Angie  Thomas

New York: Harper Collins, 2019

Grades 9 to 12

Here’s a book that’s the author’s second teen bestseller.  The author, by the way, who is also a well-known performer (to teens), has been all over the media promoting the book.  Still, English teachers and librarians will shy away from teaching it, assuming it has already been read or is known to students.


“On the Come Up” is filled with expletives and slang which lends to the genuine connection the work makes with its intended readers.  Ironically, though, this language, requiring use of the Urban Dictionary by teachers to understand the book, further acts as a deterrent, dissuading teachers from teaching this.  

Perhaps none of this matters to teen readers grabbing it at the library, but what about those teens who never read any books, assigned or unassigned, and who give the library a wide berth, treating it like a quarantine zone? Is there a work that can help teachers get those reluctant readers to make a turnaround and discover that there is so much about their lives in the works of literature they never open? 

 Angie Thomas’s ‘On the Come Up’ is a work that will get teens to read!
This book will have them experience common teen emotions, doubts, missteps, perceived betrayals, and the final realization of who they are and what they value.   


The book’s abundant reviews , hype and sales, and the news that it has been optioned for a movie all seem to suggest that everything that could be known about the plot, a common teen fantasy of making it big f in the Hip Hop music scene, seems to have already been told.

On the other hand, educators can use this best seller’s momentum to get impressionable adolescents to comprehend the emotional, financial, neighborhood culture, family dynamics, and emerging adolescent sense of self, which all figure into every teen’s life… and to do so through the act of reading a book!

Here’s a book by a writer who was once a former teen rapper and now holds a BFA.  It tells the story of a young, Black female whose father was shot by a gang member before his fame went national and whose aunt functions as a member of a neighborhood gang selling drugs.  Importantly, his  work is not only comprehensible to urban youth who share issues of racial profiling by police, being suspended for using language deemed inappropriate by non-minority school administration, but by all teens. What 16 year old has not felt unjustly questioned or punished for remarks or actions?

Despite the face they show at school, who knows the reality teens live behind the doors of their homes; what financial situations, family dynamics, and emotional and pressures societal pressures do they cope with?  What unspoken difficulties must they navigate?  Small wonder many share this book’s protagonist’s dream of a quick shortcut to fame and windfall earnings that will “fix” their present issues in a single swoop? 

This book offers an appealing exploration of Bri’s (the sixteen year old heroine’s) version of the dream. And because it is so appealing and universal, the book is an opportunity for teachers to assume the role of guide, helping students navigate and appreciate its very realistic story, which imparts authentic lessons that all teens need to grasp. 

The work gives real insights into how childhood friends are tested and redefined as they grow up, all the more so when fame and success are involved.  The bittersweet emotions this evokes are wonderfully conveyed here as Bri struggles with unreasonable jealousy over her childhood friend Malik’s new girlfriend and her own new,  more than friend feelings for childhood nemesis, Curtis.

 The work is full of national headlines that are relevant no matter where the classroom may be geographically, suburb, rural town or inner city.  These help ground the book in questions that resonate strongly for its young audience: What is the appropriate security level in today’s society for safeguarding of our high schools?  To what extent is any use of police or security guards traumatic for teens entering an academic institution? To what extent do they target minorities?  If these inequities occur what are the way teens can use social media and cell phone documentation to peacefully address them?  This book is filled with possible peaceable responses; something every teen can relate to, whatever their background. 


These issues can be argued in class debates, in argument writing format, in poetry, in rap, and in music video documentary as detailed in the book.  Most importantly, they are not just framed in this book; they are framed online in news and blogs across the country to which teens can add their own voices.  Writers such as Jason Reynolds, Todd Strasser, Walter Dean Myers, Sharon Draper, and Angie Thomas, herself, have dealt with these issues and students can compare and contrast how they have been dealt with in these other works, especially Angie Thomas’s first book ‘The Hate U Give.’

Another pivotal issue raised here is the extent to which inflammatory rap songs incite violence.  This is one which, has long been raised in the media. As this book has emerged and resonated in the age of life lived digitally, there are resources that teachers and students can turn to; for instance a Spotify listing for all the music and raps cited in the book


https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DXbXCZgznpSva

  -
- listed items can be listened to by students and used to query peers and adults about the extent to which such music incites violence.  The book also cites artists whose work is said to have directly caused violence and students can research these and argue the extent to which the allegations are true.  They can also reflect on the text where Bri provides her own arguments in her words and through dialogue with her friends.

Students who are deeply moved by this book might watch the author on You Tube introduce it https://youtu.be/LYww4B7wEPw . They may react to seeing her up close and compare this image with a story that obviously takes something from her life as a teen rapper.

The audio book for this work has a great free sample online that can be used with students to inspire their voicing their own feelings about their last year of high school, or even middle school


Click on image for audio book info.

This is a book which is responsive to how many students feel and “read” life; full of career prospects, family relationships, and more.  It imparts through Bri's works, positive, proactive values to bolster every teen reader, and perhaps adults as well, which are still “on the come up” as the reader faces choices about life that will “tell” who the reader chooses to be:

“I refuse to stand up here and say words that aren’t my own,

Refuse to be a puppet, refuse to be a clone.

I am somebody’s hope. And I am somebody’s mirror.
  .

You’ll never silence me and you’ll never kill my dream.”

These closing last lines said by Bri in her own voice serve to give voice to all “on the come up” to rise to their individuality and personal dreams.  That perhaps is the greatest gift of this work and why teens currently on their own climb need to read it.
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Dr. Rose Reissman is the founder of the Writing Institute, now replicated in 200 schools including PS 205 in The Bronx, New York City.  She is a featured author in New York State Union Teachers Educators Voice 2016 and was filmed discussing ESL student leadership literary strategies developed at Ditmas IS 62, a Brooklyn public intermediate school. Ditmas IS 62 is under the leadership of Marielena Santiago Principal and Michelle Buitrago AP. The Writing Institute Team are: Michael Downes, Angelo Carideo, and Amanda Xavier.

Contact: roshchaya@gmail.com