Have I mentioned how much I adore John Green? He’s a writer of excellent books, a maker of fun videos and a dark avenger to the forces that consistently insult teenage intelligence (see, for example, his video advice to people who want to ban his book, Looking for Alaska).

In short: a high school English teacher’s dream come true.

Today I saw this on his twitter feed:

So I took a peek at the conversation and discovered that Patrick Ness won the Carnegie Medal (again).  He used his win as an opportunity to join the fight against the forces that infantalize, commercialize and otherwise reduce teenagers to cogs in the machine of someone else’s idea of an education.

Among other things, it reminds me of how important it is to keep on teaching as if reading and writing matter, to keep on expecting my students to think critically and creatively about everything.

(And it makes me wonder what my little YA novel might be able to accomplish out there in the world someday…)