When I began teaching this age, I kept thinking, "Why don't you like the books I liked!" But then I began reading contemporary junior fic and realized it's totally different. sometimes edgy, sometimes funny, issue-laden and so good. The world's a totally different place now.
For my super strong readers, they'll still gravitate to children's classics, but for most readers, especially kids who live in urban settings and are struggling readers, children's classics are way hard. They have difficulty creating a mental picture of the world necessary to understand those books and to decode as they read.
It just takes a while to build up to those.
I couldn't agree more, Kat. Although I don't often teach children's lit. or young adult fiction in high school, I have had to spend a lot of time building bridges between classic literature and contemporary teen culture. To tell you the truth, it's one of the things I love to do. I especially adore watching my ninth-graders go from hating Catcher in the Rye when they read it over the summer to thinking it's amazing as we study it in class during the first month of school. (And on a personal note, we spend a lot of time discussing the difference between liking books and respecting them since Catcher is not everyone's cup of tea but is a very rich text when examined.)