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.
