Authors are everywhere at ALA. Some are signing books, promoting an upcoming one, or speaking at programs on a variety of topics. Orson Scott Card is one of the authors here who spoke at a luncheon for the Margaret A. Edwards Award. He won this award for his lifetime contribution to young adult literature, and part of  the process is to invite the winner to a luncheon to speak.

Since that luncheon I’ve heard many people say how great a speaker he is. The one thing many have taken is a that he didn’t write Ender’s Game or any of his books for children, but that they found it on their own.

I’ve heard other authors say this as well, including Stephanie Meyers and Scott Westerfeld. What so you think it is that makes a book YA or Teen?

We are more than halfway through the day here at the YALSA Preconference on tweens and teens. In the morning we laughed along with authors Lisa Yee, Lisie Harrison, and Amy Goldman Koss. Lunch was lovely and then the afternoon opened with Jon Scieszka. Bruce Hale was up next and, last but not least, Ingrid Law. More than 75 folks who work with tweens and teens enjoyed the speakers and the camaraderie. If you are here in Anaheim, plan now to come to the first ever Odyssey Reception at the Hilton at 8 pm. Listen to Bruce Coville, Jim Dale (via a recording), Simon Vance, and the winner of the first ever award for excellence in audiobook production, Arnie and Debra Cardillo of Live Oak.

Posted by Teri Lesesne

YALSA wants to know what works best for you and your teens when it comes to the annotated lists on the YALSA web site. Currently, those lists live in the For Members Only section of the site. Librarians can log into the section to access the annotations but teens, since they are not YALSA members, can not.

You can let YALSA know what you think by casting your vote in the poll that you’ll find in the right sidebar of this blog. If you think teen access to the annotated lists online would be beneficial then vote yes. If you don’t think that access would be helpful cast a vote of no.

Thanks for your opinion.

How often are teens criticized for not engaging in “proper reading”? According to a recent study by the UK’s National Year of Reading consortium, 45% of teen readers have been told off for their reading habits.

The researchers, through their “Read Up, Fed Up” report of British 11-14 year olds, also found the following:

• There is an explosion of digital reading, with four out of ten top teen reads being online
• Teens also love reading film scripts and song lyrics
• Traditional literature is by no means lost, with Anne Frank’s Diary ranking just one place below Harry Potter nearly 60 years after it was written
• A massive 80% of teens have actually written their own story, film, play or song

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Teen Read Week is just 6 months away! Don’t wait until the last minute - start nibbling away at the planning process now.

I had the pleasure of presenting at the Vermont Library Association Conference about Teen Read Week and program planning (slides from the session are posted on Slideshare). After the overview, participants broke into small groups to plan a program for Teen Read Week that utilized the Books with Bite theme. The result? TEN programs! These bare bones programs, posted under TRW 08 on the YALSA wiki, still need a bit of fleshing out - I just asked the librarians to consider description, justification (what assets are being built), marketing and evaluation. Please feel free to set up a FREE account, log in, and add content!
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In this short podcast, Lindsey Dunn talks about YALSA’s Teens’ Top 10 Project, including a full-list of this year’s nominations.

You can:

• Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

• Subscribe to YALSA’s podcasts
• Visit YALSA’s podcast page

You can learn more about the the Teens’ Top 10 Project on the YALSA website and you can download a pdf file of the list of this year’s nominations.

Since late January, I’ve served on YALSA’s Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults committee, which means, among other things, that I’ve spent an awful lot of time this year looking for books about ghosts, vampires, zombies, dead classmates, dead relatives, and road trips.

To come up with relevant titles to consider, I’ve used my own knowledge of YA books and gotten suggestions from teens. I’ve also been using reference tools, traditional and non-, to discover new titles or jog my memory.

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Check out the latest YALSA podcasts in honor of last week’s Teen Literature Day. Victoria Vogel,Teen Librarian at the Rocky River Public Library is interviewed by Gerry Vogel, about ways to serve homebound teens. She gives a great list of titles that are going to be hits with many teens-homebound or not.

The other podcast is with Stacy Whitman, Editor for Mirrorstone Books who talks about how the organization contributes to the larger community as well as some great up and coming fantasy titles. She also mentions a contest that teens might be interested in!

Listen in here or subscribe to the podcast feed.

Posted by Kelly Czarnecki

Okaaaaayy….since I’m bored and this is supposed to be a blog for a library and hence a library means books and I’m a teen and I read books why not babble on about new books/old books that I adore?

Right, done with the justification for random BLAH that suddenly is going to pop up on the blog.
the boyfriend list by e. lockhart (LOLZ.), and the sequel

the boy book

These two (and possibly more) books document Ruby “Roo” Oliver’s unfortunate interactions and escapades with boys/guys/boyfriends/possible boyfriends/guys she’d love to have as boyfriends, and one “rebound” boyfriend (you know, the guy-you-go-out-with-for-one-date-because-your-boyfriend-just-broke-up-with-you dude.)

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Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults is probably the most-fun-having committee in all of YALSA. At least, that’s what I think. After serving on the committee in 2005-2007, I was truly sad to see my term end. Luckily, I was asked to serve as the administrative assistant for 2007-2008, and that time convinced me that I wanted to serve another term on PPYA.

So just what makes PPYA such a great committee? First and foremost, it’s the people. I’ve been lucky enough to work with truly outstanding librarians on PPYA, who are passionate about and dedicated to the reading interests of teens. In addition, the feedback from librarians and media specialists across the country, who express thanks for our work and submit field nominations for books, is truly invaluable.

Of course, reading is a huge thrill for us PPYA members. Finding a book that’s popular, will fit on one of our thematic book lists, and is still readily available is a tough task. We feel crushed when a book that would be a perfect fit isn’t available in paperback. Yet when we read a nominated title that’s ideal for a list, there’s such a feeling of excitement–it’s truly a rush.

I’m so happy to be back for another two years on PPYA. If you like the sound of what we do on this committee, why not submit a Committee Volunteer Form? We’d love to have you on board!

Melissa Rabey
Member, Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults