Good Sports

This is an exciting times for sports fans--the NBA and NHL playoffs. MLS soccer, Major League Baseball, golf, tennis, and NASCAR. Here are some books to engage teens who love sports.

Walter Dean Myers' The Game is a good basketball read for middle schoolers (and the Recorded Books audio is an even better listen.) For older readers, Paul Volponi has basketball in nearly all his books, including Rucker Park Setup. Both of these are great "guy" reads.

Pat Hughes' Open Ice is a good sports read with a dishy side plot for the casual reader. After Nicky suffers one concussion too many, he's told he can no longer play hockey, a sport he loves. But life without hockey isn't just life without hockey, it affects his life with his family, friends and girlfriend in serious ways.

Kadir Nelson's We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball is a fabulous look at the African-American forefathers of the present day game. School Library Journal called this "an engaging tribute that should resonate with a wide audience and delight baseball fans of all ages."

Even manga gets into the sports market, with The Prince of Tennis , a 42-volume series about a tennis prodigy that has sold 40 million copies in Japan alone.

When the season ends, perhaps a book can help you hang on to the joy of victory (or the agony of defeat) a little longer.

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Poetry Friday

National Poetry month is winding down, but our love of poetry--and sharing it with tweens and teens--should go on all year round.

Many bloggers are trying to do just that, with their Poetry Friday posts. Each Friday, a selection of children's literature bloggers share a poem or a poetry-related posting to keep the love and interest of poetry going all year long.

While poetry may not elicit excitement in teens, song lyrics often do. And aren't they just another form of poetry? Sneak that poetry in wherever and however you can!

One of the more unique poetry-centered books I've read recently is Catherine Andronik's Wildly Romantic. This biography of the English Romantic poets tells the story of their poetry through their tabloid-worthy behavior. The gossip sites would have a field day with Coleridge's opium addiction, his mistresses, illegitimate children, and even a gruesome funeral!

Happy Poetry Friday!

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Read-alikes

I find the question "Can you find me more books like Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, Twilight, etc." to be the most challenging question there is for a librarian. Often, kids and teens who discover this book will be followed by a parent, saying "they never read anything until they discovered this book. Please help us find some more titles like this."

The truth is that books "like that" are unique, which is why they become so popular. There isn't anything else "like this."

But for once, I've found a read-alike that I can whole-heartedly recommend, and it comes from the most unlikely source. Newbery winner Lois Lowry has a new book, The Willoughbys and it is a total readalike for the Lemony Snicket series! It's a testament to Lowry's writing prowess that the book both succeeds on its own terms, and has strong appeal to a built-in audience.

The book begins as Timothy, twins Barnaby A and Barnaby B, and young Jane find an abandoned baby on their doorstep. What follows is the black humor, fake "definitions," and parody of old-fashioned language familiar to the readers of the Series of Unfortunate Events. There are unlikeable characters, preposterous situations, and eventually a surprising, but satisfying ending.

Even the reviews are surprising: Lemony Snicket himself reviewed the book for Publisher's Weekly!

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Boarding School Redux

I just finished what feels like my umpteenth boarding school-related book, E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks.

Lockhart is a delightful writer, and this novel is her most accomplished yet, but I couldn't help feeling I'd read this before. Boarding school books aren't new—two of the most-read high school classics are A Separate Peace (1959) and Catcher in the Rye (1951). But the last few years have brought both John Green' s Printz Award winner, Looking for Alaska, and the Harry Potter books, which were all set at the boarding school of Hogwarts.

What is it about the boarding school that makes it such a popular setting? Is it the childhood desire for more kids and no parents? A way of making school seem exotic? Is it just a cultural touchstone, just like cats who help solve mysteries, or the wisecracking best friend?

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My Latest Obsession

I have a new obsession, if you can call something I've only been dabbling in for a few weeks an obsession. It's goodreads, and I am becoming a goodreadsaholic.

Goodreads is a social networking tool like Myspace or Facebook, but the criteria for networking is books. Just like Myspace, you collect friends, and friends of friends, but the only topic of discussion is the books you're reading, and anyone can write a review. I'm keeping mine short--just a few sentences to help me remember the tone or what I enjoyed (or didn't); others write lengthy, more traditional reviews. You can comment on others' reviews, and you can be notified when your friends write or comment on your reviews.

I started goodreads because I'm always looking for a way to keep track of what I read, not because I can't remember IN GENERAL, but sometimes I can't remember SPECIFICALLY. In other words, I'm sure I've read many books of historical fiction, or about dysfunctional families, but sometimes I can't recall them. Goodreads allows you to label your "shelves" and pull up those shelves based on your own definitions.

Wouldn't it be fun to use goodreads with a class, instead of more traditional reading logs? The experience would be more lively and interactive, as students could see others' comments. Some teachers are already doing this, as evidenced by the "groups" they've created (groups can be private so only group members can see the comments). I'd love to hear about others' experiences and ideas about how to use goodreads, for yourself, for students, or for coworkers.

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Reaching Reluctant Readers

What most makes a book appealing to a reluctant reader? Is it one that is short, easy to read, or written at a low reading level? Is it a good cover? A fast-paced plot? Interesting subject matter? The answer: all and none of these. For example, Stephanie Meyers' Twilight is phenomenally popular with wide variety of readers -- it does have a great cover and vampires and werewolves, but the book is also quite long. Meanwhile, other short books languish untouched on shelves.

After several years of working with reluctant-to- read students, the best advice I have is that our reluctant readers are very different, and the way to make a connection with your reluctant readers is through a one-on-one relationship. Get to know the teens, find out their interests, remember those interests, and seek out books that reflect those interests.

There are tools out there to help you, prepared by those who are dedicated to the task. Joy Millam is the chair of the Young Adult Services Association's Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers committee. She's put together a wiki that her committee uses to discuss new books for reluctant readers and to give examples of what makes a good Quick Pick. After the committee vets its choices, they work together to make lists of the books that show the most success with reluctant readers. The lists they've created since 1996 are online. Just remember when using these selection lists that they cover a wide age range (from 12-19) AND that reluctant readers can be very sensitive to trends -- older lists may have titles that were very hot in their year, but today may seem as dated as a leisure suit. For those who work with large numbers of reluctant readers, mandatory reading should be Connecting with Reluctant Teen Readers.The authors of this title have years of experience in working successfully with reluctant-to-read teens, and share numerous tools of their trade.

Finally, read books along with your reluctant readers. When you demonstrate that you are interested and you find something good to say about the books they're reading, the students feel validated and will come back to you for future choices.

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A Winner for All?

This year's Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult literature went to The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean. 14-year old Symone gets to take the trip of a lifetime, to Antarctica, following in the footsteps of her (imaginary?) explorer companion. No part of the trip is as it originally seems, and eventually Symone isn't sure she will survive. The writing is exceptional and the award deserving.

The book is also a challenging and unique read, filled with shifts in time, an unreliable narrator, and a daunting length. It would be tough to recommend this to the average reader, let alone a reluctant reader. It is for what librarians call "special readers" those who are looking for things outside the average hot teen read. The Printz does not take into account audience or appeal, just literary merit. it's wonderful when a book has both, but let's be honest, not all do.

So what's a good winter read for the average or reluctant reader? I suggest Roland Smith's Peak, with a 14-year old character, Peak, who is the son of two mountain climbers. After he gets in trouble for scaling a building, he goes to stay with his father, who leads expeditions to Mt. Everest. Peak has a chance to become the youngest person to reach the summit, but there are of course complications. This is an action-packed story that will appeal to adventure lovers, and good and reluctant readers alike. (The title was selected for both Best Books for Young Adults, which focuses on literary quality, and Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, concentrating on appealing books for those who don't like to read.)

There's an art to finding the right book for the right teen at the right time--it's important to look everywhere for suggestions. "Best" doesn't always mean a perfect fit.

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Technology Rocks!

As teachers explore ways to add technology to their lessons, and librarians struggle with new technologies from MySpace to music downloading, there's another area where technology can enhance the reading experience. The web has made it increasingly easy to make connections not just with books, but with actual authors.

A wonderful website that facilitates the author/reader connection is Readergirlz. The Readergirlz manifesta states their purpose:

• having serious fun while talking about books with authors and your friends!
• getting the inside scoop about why a novel was written, the tears and joys and real-world angst that the author has lived and layered into her story.

Each month, the Readergirlz focus on a book, include a playlist for listening while you read, hold a live chat with the author, suggest other books with a similar theme, and greatly enhance the reading experience. (This month, the book is Nikki Grimes' Bronx Masquerade.)

Before the Web, getting to meet and talk to an author happened only at occasional author visits, and only if you lived in a metropolitan area. Now, sites like Readergirlz make this interaction available to anyone with internet access.

Readergirlz also has a MySpace page, and linking to their MySpace page unearths a treasure trove of Young Adult authors that teens can have as friends.

Readergirlz is just one website that teens (and those who work with them) can use to immerse themselves in a book they love--most authors and publishers have some kind of web presence, and Simon & Schuster is sponsoring a blogfest this spring, featuring 100 of their authors. What a wonderful event to get teens excited about their authors and books!

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Books for Budding Artists

For budding artists, a series of books by cartoonist/designer Mark Gonyea does a great of explaining complex design principles. In the first, A Book about Design: Complicated Doesn't Make it Good, he uses just a sentence or two per page, as well as simple shapes (squares, circles, triangles) to explain concepts such as ratio, contrast, and balance. In the second, Another Book about Design: Complicated Doesn't Make it Bad, the concepts are more complicated, including foreground and background, positive and negative space and design unity.

For reluctant readers, books that are more task-oriented allow them to feel as if they are reading for a real purpose. Here, the "lessons" are simple and easily practiced and repeated. For those with real artistic talent, these books could be ones that they keep through art school!

When getting books for those who "hate" them, always remember to get practical books like these that help them with their own interests. This is a great way to develop fond feelings for books.

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I was wrong! Or, Happy Birthday to Avi!

Have you ever had an author that you've never read, but you were sure you wouldn't like? Or a television show you've never seen, and just know it must be bad? Or even a food you've never eaten (coffee ice cream! brussels sprouts!) because you are convinced it must taste terrible?

I had always assumed I would not like Avi. First off, he wrote books in many genres, but mainly in the two I like the least: fantasy and historical fiction -- his Newbery winner, Crispin, the Cross of Lead, is historical fiction. He had been well-reviewed and enjoyed by many, but wehn a new Avi book came out, I just added it to others in my pile.

Until this summer. I found myself with a group who was reading his latest book, the historical fiction title Traitor's Gate. The book was fat (another drawback to me!) but it did have short chapters -- which are great because they tend to be too short to satisfy so you just keep reading one more and one more and before you know it you are all through!

It's not exaggerating to say that I read the book in just a few sittings. It's a Dickensian story, set in 19th century London, of John, whose father has been sent to debtors prison for unpaid gambling debts. The rest of John's family isn't much better, and they send him to his Aunt Euphemia to help out the family. Aunt Euphemia is more than meets the eye, as are nearly all of the other peripheral characters. Several line-drawn illustrations dot the chapters to add even more eye appeal.

I enjoyed this story so much I read another of his recent titles, The Book with No Words. This fantasy "fable of medieval magic" is set in 11th century England. When old Thorston dies, he gives his servant girl Sybil and his sidekick, a talking crow, orders to find someone with green eyes, the only people who can read the book without words and determine the alchemical secrets inside. But just when they think they have Thorston buried, he comes back to life. Again and again. The fantastic theme is well done, but the humor sets this book apart. Read the first chapter and find discussion questions here.

The good news is, now I have all of Avi's older books to read! In the coming year, let's all make a resolution to try to read something new that others love but you are sure you will dislike. (This means a lot to teens you work with too -- read something they like that you think looks "bad," -- you just might be surprised and if nothing else you have a conversation starter!)

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Best of the Year

It's the end of the year, when list-making becomes the national pastime! Most major book review sites have announced their favorites of the year. From School Library Journal to Publisher's Weekly to the The Washington Post and more, everyone is rushing to chime in with their favorites.

In early January, the American Library Association will give out their annual literary awards. The Newbery Award is given to the most outstanding written work for children up to age 14, by an American author, and the Printz Award is given to the most outstanding written work for teenagers, regardless of nationality.

Predicting these awards is another popular pastime in children's literature circles. (If I had to guess, I'd choose Gary Schmidt's wonderful The Wednesday Wars for Newbery and Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, which also won the Young People's National Book Award, for Printz.)And I'll weigh in on these and some other contenders in the weeks leading up to the announcement.

There are some interesting titles in contention this year —- Shaun Tan's The Arrival is a wordless picture book about the life of an immigrant. Can a wordless book be a great book of literature? Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a fascinating book in which the pictures are nearly as important as the words. Yet the Newbery only considers the words.

As children's literature continues to evolve and change, how will the awards committees deal with these changes?

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Comics in the Classroom

I recently attended the National Council of Teachers of English annual convention in New York City. The two-day event gave me lots of ideas for getting teachers and teens excited about new offerings in young adult books.

One panel focused on graphic novels, a genre that has soared in popularity recently. Ten years ago, a panel dedicated to the use of comics in the classroom would have been shocking, but thanks to sites like Comics in the Classroom.net, and initiatives like Maryland's to get comics included in the curriculum. Comics have gone mainstream.

Manga (Japanese serial comics) are the most popular with teens and tweens. But American publishers, including stalwart DC Comics, have broadened their offerings in an effort to capture the teen audience. DC Comics' Minx line, which debuted this year, aims to attract pre-teen and teen girls with its chick lit-meets-comics approach. The most successful of the initial offerings is Plain Janes by Cecil Castelluci and illustrated by Jim Rugg, in which a group of bohemian outcasts plan "art attacks." Others include the martial arts story Re-Gifters and the British-set Clubbing. All of these titles feature strong female characters.

Minx/DC has gotten some backlash, both for their questionable choice of name, and for the fact that Castelluci is the only female creator in a line promoting girl power. There's also some cynicism about targeting this market. As one friend of mine said, "I've been reading comics since I was a teenage girl, little did I know they weren't for me."

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The Golden Age of Young Adult Literature?

A recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer article called this the "golden age of young adult literature." Teens are buying 25% more books today than in 1999.

However, it's only recently that a significant segment of these young adult books has targeted the older end of the age group--readers ages 16 through 19. The appeal of these new books is not controversial content, but simply protaganists and situations that are relatable to teens facing adulthood.

In 2005, Mary E. Pearson wrote a moving and literary book, A Room on Lorelei Street. It features 17-year old Zoe, who tires of caring for her alcoholic mother and gets a job so that she can have her own apartment. The story of Zoe brings to mind the heyday of the Oprah book years, with a strong female character rising above her dysfunctional upbringing.

This year brings us National Book Award nominee Deb Caletti's The Nature of Jade. Jade is also 17 and a senior in high school, and while she suffers from an anxiety disorder, this isn't a "disease of the week" book, the anxiety is simply one part of her life and world. Jade's parents seem superficially happy, but there's a quite a bit of discontent under the surface. When she meets Sebastian, after seeing him on the webcam based at the local zoo, she finds true love but also a bigger mess than she bargained for.

Again, romance, dysfunction, and a healthy dose of subplots allow older teens to read books much like those their parents are reading, but about characters their own age. Kudos to Simon & Schuster, which put Deb Caletti's picture on the back cover of The Nature of Jade , so that the book even looks like an "adult" book.

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Parent-Child Relationships

In the 1980s, lots of attention was paid to the baby boomers, children of the 1960s, becoming parents, and the generation gap. The TV series Family Ties explored this gap with care and humor—the liberal, activist parents vs. the more conservative, traditional children. Once again a counterculture gap exists, this time between punks of the 1980s and their children of the 21st century. Two great recent books have dealt with these "punk rock parents."

Gordon Korman's Born to Rock features Leo, an uptight Young Republican who finds out that his "father" isn't his father after all, but actually punk rock singer King Maggot of the band Purge. Through some fun but far-fetched plot devices, Leo ends up accompanying Purge on their reunion tour, and comes to discover lots more about himself, his real dad, and punk than he bargained for. Though the book includes some sex, drugs and rock and roll, it takes place off the page, and has serious consequences, making this book suitable for middle schoolers.

Cecil Castellucci's Beige has a similar premise, if for an older audience and with a plot more grounded (somewhat anyway!) in reality. Here, Katy has always known her father was "The Rat" of the original punk rock band Suck. But her parents are estranged—her mother making a new life in Montreal, while The Rat continues his rocker ways in LA. When work takes her mother out of the country, Katy is forced to stay with her father and his edgy friends. Katy feels "beige" amid a sea of more colorful folks, but soon finds her own color. Since Katy is just 14, her transformation seems very believable, and the realism in this book extends to some sex and profanity, but high schoolers will find this adds texture and is to be expected of the characters.

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Picky Readers

Recently at an event at the American Library Association annual conference in Washington, DC, the conversation turned to One Book and The Big Read programs. These reading events bring libraries, schools and community groups together to plan programming around one book, uniting communities in a massive book discussion group.

Washington, D.C. recently chose Zora Neale Hurston's wonderful Their Eyes Were Watching God for their program, and this spring, Durham, NC chose The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams by Darcy Frey. This book follows four promising high school basketball players from Coney Island, New York as they pursue college scholarships as a means to escape the crime and poverty of their neighborhood.

The librarian I was speaking with said some of the adults she worked with didn't want to read the book and complained "that they didn't like sports," "they didn't like non-fiction," or "reading about kids in difficult circumstances is depressing." This, even though they are generally avid readers and dedicated library customers.

Certainly, we're all entitled to our tastes, including the tweens and teens we work with, who also resist when presented with books outside of their own tastes and offer similar excuses —- "it looks boring" or "I don't like science fiction," etc.

Many adults think length is the only criteria to consider when choosing titles for young people -— "short" equals appealing and "long" equals the kiss of death. During my years of working with reluctant-to-read teens, I've found that kids, like adults, are drawn to appealing covers and subject matter. For example, the first of Stephanie Meyer's incredibly popular vampire series, "Twilight," was named a Top 10 YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers in 2006, despite being nearly 500 pages long. Length did not deter reluctant readers from devouring a hot vampire romance, and word-of-mouth encouraged it, while other, shorter vampire books received cooler receptions.

This is something to keep in mind as you try to find titles with appeal to reluctant-to-read tweens and teens. There are no one-size-fits-all books. What matters is whether the subject appeals to the individual reader.

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