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The authors of Connecting Young Adults and Libraries need your help! They are doing a survey to get teen input for the 4th edition of their book. Please encourage teens to fill out a quick survey that will help the authors with the book. The message below explains how to promote the survey to teens.-Stephanie
Hello everyone,
My name is Beck Buck, and I am an MS-LIS student at Drexel University. I am coordinating the survey on teen reading habits for use in the new, 4th edition of Connecting Young Adults and Libraries by Michele Gorman and Tricia Suellentrop.
I apologize for the delay in getting this survey out, but we hope you will still be able to publish our survey and promote it with your teens for the next three weeks. Results of this original survey are very important; they will be used to update the chapter on developing collections for young adults. Our goal remains to get at least 100 responses from each library system/school. The survey is online, anonymous and does not require any personal information from teens beyond an initial age verification question. The next 12 questions ask about reading habits, preferences, and attitudes.
The URL for the survey is: http://tinyurl.com/12questions
You can advertise the survey on your website, blog, MySpace page, etc., with a line of code as simple as:
<p>Teens! We want to know what <b>YOU</b> think. <a href=”http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=pB7H0k1PptnKfr5W_2bI0E3g_3d_3d“>Take a survey.</a></p>
If you’d rather have a popup survey invitation on your website, Survey Monkey offers the following code, which they suggest you add just before the </body> tag:
<script src=”http://www.surveymonkey.com/jsPop.aspx?sm=LO7LPbl7JVEiq4I6jvJBMw_3d_3d“> </script>
If you are looking for ways to promote the survey, here are some great ideas from other libraries:
- Use this memorable TinyURL to direct teens to the site more quickly:http://tinyurl.com/12questions
- Publish a link on your MySpace blog, or send a bulletin to your friends
- Share the link on Facebook
- Get teens to take the survey at the beginning of programs
If you have any questions about the actual survey (linking to it, collecting responses, data analysis, problems with Survey Monkey, etc.) or any questions about how this data will be used in the 4th edition of Connecting Young Adults and Libraries, please contact us: connecting4@gmail.com.
We appreciate your participation, and we look forward to hearing what the teens in your libraries and school library media centers have to say about reading. If you choose not to participate in this survey due to time constraints or for any other reason, please let us know so that we can remove your library’s name from the acknowledgements in the book.
Thank you,
Beck Buck
What do you do when a teen comes into the library and they’ve read all their favorite author’s books and they’re still hungry for more? Of course there’s book-lists, read-alike lists, as well as staff and teen recommendations, but how about offering up a short story collection that includes a story by a teen’s favorite author?
Short story collections often slip under the radar, but they’re a great way to engage teen readers by providing the hook of a story by a well-loved author, paired with work by other writers they may not have been exposed to.
For the rabid Stephenie Meyer fans, I’ve been sharing Prom Nights From Hell (2007) hoping that that if they haven’t already discovered the other authors in this collection that they’ll return looking for books by Meg Cabot and Lauren Myracle.
Plus, what’s especially fun about short story collections is the element of theme that many collections use to draw the stories together, like the way holidays can alter romantic relationships in Let it Snow: three Holiday Romances (2008) or how just one night can change things in Up All Night (2008).
And short story collections are perfect for teens easily daunted by thick books (Imagine, a whole story in just twenty pages!) as well as busy teens trying to squeeze leisure reading into the time between sports, work, homework, school, and everything else.
Books Mentioned
Let it Snow (2006)
John Green
Maureen Johnson
Lauren Myracle
Up all Night (2008)
Peter Abrahams
Libba Bray
David Levithan
Patricia McCormick
Sarah Weeks
Gene Luen Yang
Prom Nights From Hell (2007)
Meg Cabot
Kim Harrison
Michele Jaffe
Stephenie Meyer
Lauren Myracle
We are going collective!
In December, there will be a virtual meeting for those that want to get involved with shaping the Alternative Teen Services project. We are looking for people that want to be involved with shaping the blog, or want to support it so that this project does not die. All that is needed is some ideas and a desire to keep the blog going, and a willingness to help out in some capacity, whether it be with feedback at a virtual meeting or taking over an aspect of the blog project. If you want to be a part of the project, then please respond to this blog post with your e-mail or contact teenservices@yalibrarian.com. Details about the meeting time/date will be arranged after we know who we are working with and can arrange a convenient time for all involved.
Some technical changes
- WordPress, 2.6.3 is now installed on the blog. As a reader, you will not see much of a difference, but the bloggers will notice the improved functionality when they create new posts.
- intense debate is our new comment system on the Alternative Teen Services blog. Readers are able to use an avatar with comments, rate user comments, and respond directly to other comments.
Intense Debate also supports Open ID, which means you do not need to create a brand new account if you already have an account with blogger, livejournal, flickr, or yahoo. Go ahead, try out the new features by commenting on this post!
Halloween in your libraries!
Below are some photos of Halloween-esque fun for teens in libraries.
 Nightfall Dinner Party @ Alice Baker Library  Gock Puppets @ La Mesa Public Library  Halloween Cosplay Winners @ Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library
This is not a political endorsement, but rather a quick video about YA authors connecting with their readers about the 2008 presidential election.
http://yaforobama.ning.com/
http://yaformccain.ning.com/
Ya nader ? Ya McKinnney. ummm… ya third party?
Post by Sarah Granville
Two weeks ago, one of the teens that uses my library committed suicide. It wasn’t one of the kids who came to programs regularly; he was one the the teens who would just come to hang out. And while I knew he had some troubles with school, such as showing up, he isn’t the type one would typically connect with suicide. He was outgoing, always talking to people, making jokes, and laughing. I found out before school let out through a co-worker who is a close family friend. For two and a half hours, I wondered “What can we do?” I knew we needed to do something for our library kids, but what? What are we, as librarians, qualified to do at a time like this? As I told a large group of high school students, they taught me about books in graduate school, not what to do if I ever lost one of my kids. No matter how hard we try not to get attached, it is difficult when working with youth, especially when working in a smaller community. Here are some things you can do in the wake of tragedy.
Make a memorial in your teen area. One of my girls began to write song lyrics on a paper pumpkin I had out for kids to decorate for Halloween, but it wasn’t quite big enough. I photocopied hearts on brightly colored paper, picking colors that reminded me of our friend. People wrote memories and messages on the hearts and they are taped up in our teen area. When we eventually take them down, we are going to put them in a scrapbook for the young man’s parents.
Communicate with the schools and be visible. I know that we have so much work to do, but I think it is important to take time to acknowledge our kids and what they are going through so they don’t feel alone in their pain. The kids that see you experiencing sadness over such a loss will realize that you care about them the same way adults in other areas of their lives such as school, church, and other community organizations, care. Call the effected schools to find out what is being done so that your library can pick up slack when needed, whether it is after school or weeks later. A colleague and I were fortunate that one of the high school guidance counselors called us to come and sit in the auditorium with the kids the day after the young man’s death. Teens and parents also responded to seeing us at calling hours and the funeral.
Open up your library. The first time the library meeting room was available, I had the kids come down so we could share more stories. A lot of them shared different memories than they had at school. A smaller audience helped ease them. This could also be good if you have home schooled students who might not have had an opportunity to grieve with others. I also called Victim’s Assistance, a local group with staff trained in dealing with these types of situations. The week after the tragedy I had them in the library twice. One afternoon, one counselor came and spent time in the teen area just talking to the kids, getting a feel for how they were dealing with things and what they needed. The next day, two counselors came for a guided crisis intervention.
We are still coping as a library family. Things are getting better and there is definitely more laughter in the teen area than there was two weeks ago. While no child should have to lose a friend at a young age, hopefully we can support them through their difficult time and all come out stronger in the end.
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Post contributed by Sarah Granville
Sarah is the Teen Services Librarian at the Barberton Public Library in Barberton, Ohio. Sarah loves the new perspectives her teen customers bring her. Their enthusiasm helps keep her enthusiastic on rough days!
Blog posted by Kathy
It’s that time of year again. Your summer programs have passed and your kids are back in school. Are you worried about losing most of your teen audience during the school year? You don’t have to if you offer outreach programs at your area middle and high schools.
There are two main reasons for offering these programs: education and marketing. Information literacy skills often get short shrift in schools, both for the teachers and the students. Many of them simply don’t know what a modern library offers, how to access what it has, and what you can and cannot find on the internet. You can advertise your library’s traditional services as well as your fun teen programs during sessions for students.
Programs which have been particularly popular for me are information literacy instruction and help with standardized tests. I give the information literacy instruction programs in context of Google searching to show when you would and would not want to use Google. I also show how to judge a website. Programs like this are really better suited to a school setting. You don’t reach as many people when you demonstrate at the reference desk, and it’s difficult to get kids who spend all day in school to come out for an instructional program at the library during the school year.
Showing what the library has to offer to help with standardized tests is very popular with teachers. If your library subscribes to Learning Express, you have courses and practice tests for many of the different No Child Left Behind tests for several states, as well as AP exams, SATs and ACTs. If you don’t have this database, you can still talk about what your library does have to offer to help with these tests – books, tutoring, etc. There are many possible library programs that a school may want; be creative and listen to your audience. Whatever you do, try to keep it short and simple.
Also remind them that the public library is there for fun! Mention your fun teen programs when you present and ask the school if they will mention your programs during morning announcements. If there is time left over from an educational presentation, bring Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero or a tie-in with whatever program is your library’s strength with you as a reward for students. September is Library Card Sign-Up Month. Ask if you can have a library card sign up drive at the school. I had a very successful drive at one high school where I set up Dance Dance Revolution during the lunch period on the same day I brought the library cards back to the school. Many students who had never considered that there might be programs to interest them at the library started coming to my programs during the school year and the summer. In the previous year, my library saw maybe a maximum of ten attendees for teen programs during the school year. After steady effort with outreach, my teen attendance varied from 20 to 40 attendees per program during the school year. Large events such as poetry slams, tournaments or other special presentations averaged 80 people per program.
Don’t be shy! Go out to those schools and let all those teachers and teens know about all your wonderful services. Please feel free to ask me questions in the comments section.
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Kathy is currently the Electronic Information Services Librarian at Durham County Library in North Carolina. Previously, she was the Young Adult Librarian at the North Regional Library in Broward County, FL where she presented many outreach and gaming programs for teens.
Kati Nofli discusses the fear of streetlit and how absurd it is for classy white people to judge this genre:
Why are so many librarians—advocates of the uncensored right to read anything on all points of view—panic-stricken over teens reading street lit? … As librarians we are never endorsing anything that is on our shelves. We are providing free access to myriad ideas through information. Why would street lit be any different?
Read the entire article at Foreward Magazine.
Contributed By Ellen Anne
Personal identity and developing a sense of self are quintessential aspects of being a teenager. But how do you navigate the complex experiences of adolescence if you can’t even remember the names of the people you love? And is it even possible to cultivate a sense of self and plan for the future with no past? Does memory and experience ultimately shape identity or is it something deeper?
A few recent books have questioned the importance of memory in relation to coming-of-age and identity, exploring the dilemma of figuring out who you are when you don’t know—or remember—who you were.
 Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson (2008)
Jenna Fox knows that she was once someone. She watches that someone as a little girl dancing in home movies, scrutinizing her movements on the television screen. But Jenna Fox has just woken up from a coma and she’s not sure she knows anything about herself anymore.
As she recuperates Jenna becomes aware that her body seems different and that there are abnormal gaps in her memory. She can’t remember simple words. She doesn’t recognize her family. Stranger still are the things she does without thinking, like recalling detailed historical facts and the urge to obey her mother, even when she doesn’t want to. Is Jenna really the person her parents tell her she is?
To unravel the truth about her own identity, Jenna has to push herself to the edge, to try and remember things she has forgotten, to uncover the secrets that seems to surround her—the strange isolated house her family moved to after the accident, the odd liquid she that is her only food, her parents’ unnatural fear of her doing anything normal like returning to school. But as Jenna pieces together the fragments of her past, she begins to realize it’s not what happened before the accident that changed Jenna Fox, it’s what happen after.
 Kat Got Your Tongue by Lee Weatherly (2007)
All Kat remembers is a massive bang then she’s on her way to the hospital. After being examined by the doctor a confused Kat is told her name is Kathy and that she’s been in a terrible car accident. But Kat has no memory of the accident—or anything before it. In fact, she has no idea who she even is—she doesn’t recognize her mother, and when she sees herself in the mirror she’s certain it’s a stranger staring back.
As if adjusting to life after an accident with no memory weren’t hard enough, Kat’s return to school is mixed with the realization that the girls she’s told are her friends want nothing to do with her. Worse, they seem to be angry, fixated on something that Kat did before the accident, something Kat can’t remember.
Kat’s struggle to untangle the secrets of her former life unfold in alternating chapters, between entries in her journal from before the accident and her efforts after the accident to traverse the tricky world of someone who has no memory of who she can trust and what she can believe.
 Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin (2008)
Naomi’s life is changed forever with a simple coin toss. When she wakes up in a hospital, four years of her life suddenly erased from her memory, she’s shocked to discover that she can’t remember her parents are divorced, she doesn’t recall her best friend’s name or why he calls her “Chief,” and she has no idea what happened on the night of the accident.
How can Naomi possibly recover and get her life back on track if she’s forgotten the simplest things about herself? Can she trust other people telling her what she was really like? It’s as if Naomi is living someone else’s life, someone she doesn’t quite understand, someone who kept a diary of all the food she ate, was incredibly organized, and would pick annoying, preppy Ace as a boyfriend.
As Naomi uncovers clues about the person she was, she’s surprised to discover that she might not be the old Naomi anymore, that perhaps her amnesia has a silver lining. Could she be a new, different person, a person trying to figure out what she wants—a person with one lucky chance to start over?
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About Ellen Anne
 Ellen Anne is a teen librarian in Ohio who has also worked in childrens/YA book publishing. Here’s what Ellen has to say about being a librarian:
“I think one of the best parts of being a librarian is the moment when a patron asks for help finding a book and all they remember is that the cover is black and each chapter is written by a different author and you actually know what book it is! I also have a weakness for D.I.Y. craft books, graphic novels, book characters with mettle, and providing reader’s advisory to teens, especially the ornery one.”
 A middle school teacher wants Leo Lionni books to teach her students how to make inferences. A historical preservationist is reinvigorated by Virginia Lee Burton’s The Little House. Two teenagers flirt and read Wee Little Chick to one another. Picture books are not just for children anymore.
The graphic novel naissance—comics renaissance—has provided entry for a new way of seeing and engaging with picture books. The marriage of picture with text or picture with wordless narrative is no longer just the first step of the serious American reader. Illustrated books with and without words are accepted for all ages, thanks to the successes of the graphic novel. This brings us to the humble picture book and the ways in which graphic novels and picture books have been colliding and expanding and exploding conventions. When American Born Chinese, The Red Book, Zen Shorts, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and The Wall are award winners, we know there must be a sea-change.
 I rediscovered picture books as a children’s librarian—no better way, perhaps. While I loved them as a child, I never thought of them as I traveled the typical reader’s trajectory: reading books for children, books for young adults and books for adults. I love children’s and young adult books because of my work. Most likely I would not have discovered their joys elsewhere. When people think of books—if they think of them at all—they adhere to a linear path linking human development and reading. Surely, reading picture books is regressing! Onward and upward, today Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, tomorrow Moby-Dick.
Like any range of literature, picture books can be gentle or challenging, in the terms of their language, themes, design, and images. Picture books can approach a difficult and complicated subject in a comforting and low-pressure way and they can provoke teen and adult readers to look deeply, intentionally, and closely at content that children might miss.
So what can result from interactions between teens and picture books? Teens can learn about book design in Black and White, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, and The Three Pigs; spirituality in Samsara Dog and The Three Questions; “wolves” in Wolves and The Woolves in the Sitee; animal biology (in rhyme!) in Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones; art elements in Hello, Fruit Face! The Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Nina’s Book of Little Things, and Voices in the Park; war and violence in Patrol:An American Soldier in Vietnam, The Letter Home, The Butter Battle Book, and Rose Blanche; and death in Michael Rosen’s Sad Book and To Hell With Dying.
Librarians must educate patrons that the picture book is a format not always prescribed for very young children. This is a challenge when we are constantly asked for the 4-year old, 6-year old, and 12-year old sections and we dutifully point to picture books, easy readers, and chapter books. But we can inform parents and teachers of the myriad ways picture books can be used with teens. Picture books can be microcosmic in the multitudes contained in their brevity. Jon Muth’s books sometimes seem to teach us all we need to know about Buddhism.
Picture books can be used with reluctant readers and visual learners, they can be paired with novels or nonfiction works in history lessons, they can initiate art and design projects, draw on art historical connections and critical thinking strategies, and rekindle the personal experience with literature. As students begin deciphering textual meaning, they can use picture book connections to learn about character development, language, and theme. While we think of storytime as an essentially preschool activity, collaborative out loud engagement with text and image can be pursued with teens.
For the picture book to fulfill its programming potential, it would be ideal to cultivate a young adult collection of picture books. This may be a cataloging or administrative challenge, but as we see graphic novels collected in up to three locations in a building, a home for young adult picture books seems possible. While many children’s picture books can be used successfully with teens, avoiding redundancy is probably desired. There are many picture books that work more deeply and better with teens than with children and would probably get more love in a YA division. Some resources to check out include: http://readwritethink.org, http://vue.org, http://www.picturebookart.org, and http://www.wiredforyouth.com/books/index.cfm?booklist=picture
Titles mentioned
Brannen, Sarah. Uncle Bobby’s Wedding
Browne, Anthony. Voices From the Park
Burton, Virginia Lee. The Little House
Decker, Tim. The Letter Home
Gravett, Emily. Wolves
Haring, Keith. Nina’s Book of Little Things
Heller, Ruth. Chickens Aren’t the Only Ones
Innocenti, Roberto. Rose Blanche
Lionni, Leo.
Lehman, Barbara. The Red Book
Macaulay, David. Black and White
Manos, Helen and Julie Vivas. Samsara Dog
Muth, Jon. The Three Questions
Myers, Walter Dean. Patrol: An American Soldier in Vietnam
Richardson, Justin. And Tango Makes Three
Rosen, Michael. Michael Rosen’s Sad Book
Scieska, Jon and Lane Smith. The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.
Selznick, Brian. The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Seuss, Dr. The Butter Battle Book
Sís, Peter. The Wall
Strand, Claudia. Hello, Fruit Face! The Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Thompson, Lauren. Wee Little Chick
Walker, Alice. To Hell With Dying
Wiesner, David. Three Little Pigs
Wild, Margaret and Anne Spudvilas. Woolves in the Sitee
Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese
 Here’s a contest that you might want to pitch to your 18 and over TAG/teens in your community as a way to encourage discussion about current communication technology issues and their effect on…well..the world and everything therein. Heck, actually it’s a perfect contest for teen librarians to participate in. How does high speed broadband effect our ability to do our jobs, to help teens in our community?
“Entries for the new contest, “President for a Day - How I’d Change the World With Broadband!” will be accepted until the September 30, 2008 deadline. Contestants are invited to share their best ideas for using high speed communications technology to address a wide range of issues and problems. For example, do you want everyone to have access to health care specialists, even if they are located hundreds of miles away? How about telemedicine? Do you want to help solve global warming? How about a virtual conference to connect people and ideas? Do you want all citizens to be able to participate in the political process? Do you want all students to have the educational tools necessary to compete in a global economy? How would you use high-speed communications technology to make the world a better place?”
Public libraries, especially, are a way for a community to utilize high-speed communications technology for free. With it, teens can do research for school, they can participate in the political process (even if they’re not old enough to vote that can still participate in online discussion and express their opinions), they can become involved in volunteer/advocacy opportunities, they can connect with people from all over the world no matter how rural the area they live in, the list goes on…
We read to see ourselves reflected. Cameron’s new book has a great title and two lovely and perfect epigrams that I must quote. The first is Ovid: “Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.”
And Denton Welch (journal, 8 May 1944, 11:15 pm): “When you long with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death.”
And I’d like to brand those on my teenage self. Teens and those who never got over being teens need oils, talismans, quotations—above all, these fragments of literature that tell us “you’re not alone, you’re not crazy, it’s not your fault.” Reading books for or about young people as an adult is a displacing experience. We may wish certain books and characters had been available to us as teens or we may find a heady succor today in being transported to the adolescent past.
Our protagonist, eighteen-year old James Sveck, is infinitely quotatable and somewhat misanthropic, lonely, and sad. Not to mention nostalgic for another time— for Manhattan’s old Penn Station, for Trollope, Eric Rohmer, and Denton Welch. This is a potent nostalgia, a backward ache for a time that is not his own. The book’s references to the present—the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, 9/11—are jarring because James doesn’t comfortably live in the present. He doesn’t belong to his own time or the romanticized past.
Cameron has masterfully created a character who should be unsympathetic—a poor little rich white boy. But James is a supersensitive weirdo, oddball, iconoclast, combination of old man and child who has learned as a teenager, “You cannot always do and go what and where you please.” He is dealing with discoveries of his sexuality and his trauma. He is happily reminiscent though not derivative of Heide and Gorey’s alienated and unloved Treetorn and Melinda from Speak and the book evokes From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and The Squid and the Whale.
James’ experience at the American Classroom was so terrible and specific. I was reminded of my high school marching band horrors— feeling both superior and inferior to people your own age in a group who are having fun in literal lockstep. Dinners and dances are intended as gifts but are unbearable and solitary. Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You will be loved intensely—most likely by adults who remember. The book is also significant for the subtle non-didactic depiction of a gay teenager.
“I think that’s what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. How do you know…I felt that by walking away I was abandoning [them], that I spent my entire life, day after day, abandoning people.”
Now that your summer reading programs are in full swing, we’ve written a few booktalks to assist you in pushing young adult titles during your busy programs.
Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vaught
book talk written by bloodymandy
“A study found that people would rather give up a year of life than be fat. Half of thousands of people asked in a survey agreed they would rather live a shorter amount of time thin than be fat. In fact, 15 percent said they’d give up ten years or more of life to avoid obesity.” Are you a part of this 15 percent? Well, neither is Jamie Carcaterra. Jamie Carcaterra already knows what it’s like to be fat and she’s about to let the world know. From investigating bariatric surgery to infiltrating designer clothing stores, Jamie exposes thin thinking in her newspaper column FAT GIRL. As her column begins to receive national notoriety, Jamie realizes she’ll have to decide which battles are worth the fight. Big Fat Manifesto will have you questioning whether or not size really matters.
You might consider promoting Big Fat Manifesto alongside other teen activist characters. See a review of Big Fat Maniefsto at teensreadtoo. Susan Vaught is also the author of Trigger which received starred reviews and is included on the ALA BBYA 2007 list.
The Joys of Love by Madeline L’Engle
book talk written by Denise Ryan, niseryan(at)hotmail(dot)com
Madeleine L’Engle’s posthumously published novel, The Joys of Love, about a small seasonal theatre in Maine, is the perfect summer book for teenage girls who like to read. And I mean perfect. L’Engle wrote the book in the early 1940’s, but its themes remain relevant today: friendship, first love, war, family expectations, artistic dreams, bohemian lifestyles, and the importance of character. I actually listened to book on CD last weekend and was in heaven. Here is a quick booktalk for the novel. Give it to thoughtful, slightly old-fashioned girls who like wistful romances and melodrama. This includes many Stephanie Meyer groupies!
* * *
Elizabeth Jerrold is a 20-year old college graduate trying to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming an actress. Both her parents are dead, and her guardian — the stern, Southern Aunt Harriet — “doesn’t approve of the theatre.” However, because Elizabeth has completed her Bachelor’s degree at Smith College, as promised, Aunt Harriet agrees to fund her niece’s apprenticeship with a professional company on the New England coast. There, Elizabeth works at the box office, ushers evening performances, takes acting classes, rehearses Chekhov monologues, and feels happier than she ever has in her whole life.
Even though I’m not an actress, I would love to have a summer like Elizabeth’s – living in a cottage with a bunch of zany apprentices, staying out all night on the beach, meeting famous performers, and making lifelong friends. Oh yeah, and there’s a page-turning romantic element to the plot that makes you want to shout at Elizabeth – “What are you doing with this guy, when this one is so much nicer and is clearly head-over-heels in love with you?”
Madeleine L’Engle wrote this novel when she was a young woman in the 1940’s. She died last year before the book was published. I’m so happy her granddaughters decided to bring this novel forward, finally. It’s a terrific treat. If you haven’t yet experienced the dreamy atmosphere and meandering pace of a Madeleine L’Engle romance, what are you waiting for? You have so much to look forward to!
Contributed by Eva the Librarian
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The verse-novel is a modern phenomenon—very modern. Although there are a few earlier examples, this type of literature first reared its genre-blending head in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The vast majority were published after the year 2000, and most are marketed to teenage audiences.
Verse-novels are characterized by the combining of narrative and poetry, but other than that it is a very diverse genre. They are historical (Out of the Dust) and contemporary (Make Lemonade). They can have one narrator (What My Mother Doesn’t Know) or several (Keesha’s House). They are about sports (Jump Ball: A Basketball Season in Poems), drug addiction (Crank), family tragedy (Walking on Glass), mental illness (Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy), racial conflict (Witness), and a variety of other themes.
Verse novels are a source of debate in many areas of library science. First of all, how to catalog them? Should they be classified as poetry, as fiction, or in a completely new genre altogether? Don’t look to the Library of Congress for help; even they are a little baffled as to what to do with these new-fangled hybrids.
There is also some discussion in the literary community about whether or not verse-novels are any good (the critics’ arguments sound suspiciously similar to those of the anti-graphic novel brigade). Personally, I am not a fan, but that is hardly the point. The point is that teens really go for them!
- The short, free-verse passages resemble song lyrics, which strikes a chord with the iPod generation.
- Interesting titles and bold, attractive cover art appeal to young audiences.
- Verse-novels focus more intently on raw emotion than do other novels, which appeals to emotion-exploring young adults.
- Verse-novels often deal with tough issues that teens themselves may be facing.
Verse-novels are also a less intimidating option for reluctant readers, because they typically have fewer pages and more white space than the average novel. These books can also serve to introduce the verse-adverse to the wonderful world of poetry. What better way to transition from A Separate Peace to The Raven than with something in between?
So, all personal feelings on the subject aside, verse-novels are an invaluable asset to libraries. The unique blend of poetry and fiction appeals to and young adults on many levels and simultaneously helps to develop their reading skills. Who can argue with that?
Click to view Novel in Verse resources >>>
Some quick news regarding the Alternative Teen Services Blog and web site:
YA Lit Content Moving to Main Blog
We are in the process of phasing out the Brave & Brass Book Blog, which was a separate blog with content about teen literature. Those of you that read the Brave & Brass Book Blog are familiar with the subject matter that covers book reviews, book talks, literature perspectives, and collection development.
We found that most of the readers of our Main Blog wanted lit-themed topics, and therefore, we decided to move content from the Brave & Brass Blog to our main blog. So please note that the blog is still going to be around, but in a different format. Lit-themed content will come through our main blog instead of being separated.
Readers subscribed to the Brave & Brass Book Blog feed will continue to get content from us when it is book-related. It is hoped that the phase-out process will be finished by June 2nd. For the few of you that didn’t want to see this change, so sorry! I hope that the scroll function works well for you, so that you can get directly to the content you want to read.
Personalize your Comments with Avatars
Would you like a customized avatar to appear next to the lovely comments that you create on our blog? We recently installed a plug-in in cooperation with Gravatar that does just that! By signing-up at the gravatar web site, you can upload an avatar that will be used whenever you make comments on our Blog. The avatar is associated with the e-mail address used when leaving comments. To sign up for your avatar, go to http://www.gravatar.com. Then be sure to come back to our blog and leave a test comment so you can check out the new flair!
Teen Crafts on Flickr
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Happy Summer everyone, and congrats on getting through all those book talks and school visits.
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