What criteria should teachers use when selecting adolescent literature?

A balanced diet is one of the key ingredients to a healthy lifestyle. In order to achieve good health, a person must diversify his or her food intake to include an assortment of fruits, vegetables, grains, proteins, and fats. A person cannot simply feed on one food and neglect the others because the human body requires a diverse array of sustenance. But if a literary dietician was to inventory a typical American middle or high school English classroom, that critic would be appalled by its malnutrition. While educators may have splurged on the “Classics” like Shakespeare, Homer, and Steinbeck, it has historically neglected the fruits of many non-Westernized authors. And this has led to the malnourishment of students.