I hate jumping into controversial topics because I'm a pacifist and an introvert, but . . . as an educator and an aspiring YA novelists, I have mixed feelings on the "toss the canon! It's sexist/racist/misogynistic/etc." Why do we still teach canonical works? 1/

Well, I can't speak for all schools, but in some, like mine, budgets are an issue. We don't get book-buying budgets in the English department often, and we have a bookroom filled with canonical texts. So when we have to teach a novel, they're there. 2/

When I was in high school, the teacher assigned a novel and we had to go buy it. I still have my Catcher in the Rye and Brave New World - I kept them because I actually enjoyed them. Not so much anything else I had to read in HS. But we can't do that now. 3/

Again, speaking only for my lower-income school. We have to provide books if we want the students to read them. In the past I have used Donors Choose to get a class set of contemporary novels I wanted to share with my students (most of whom are POC). 4/