http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/sarah-dessen-20/

http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/harper-teen-books-check-out-this-web-20-presence/

http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/calling-all-vampire-kisses-fans/

http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com/2008/09/07/paula-yoo-readergirlz-september-author-of-the-month-on-youtube/

http://theunquietlibrary.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/get-plugged-into-reading-the-plugged-into-reading-network/

We use our blog and our Twitter account, https://twitter.com/unquietlibrary , to alert our patrons to our latest blog posts. I hope you will enjoy some of the resources I have highlighted!

The Unquiet Library via kwout

Information for Teen Read Week 2008 is now available from YALSA!  This year’s theme is “Books with Bite”—how delicious!    Teen Read Week will be celebrated October 12–18, so now is the time to start planning ahead!

One terrific resource is the Teen Read Week 2008 Wiki!  This wiki is truly a gold mine of ideas and resources for celebrating Teen Read Week and ways to incorporate the theme, “Books with Bite”, into your festivities! 

Teen Read Week – YALSA

 Another fabulous resource is the Programming Ideas page at http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/teenreading/trw/trw2008/activities/index.cfm. Here you can read more about ways to incorporate podcasts, tech programs, a fim festival, a taste test, display contests, and more for your week of celebrations!

If you are a librarian, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/teenreading/trw/trw2008/registration/index.cfm to register now!  There are some great incentives for the first 100 registrants, including the following:

2008 Registration Incentives

1. The first 100 registrants to sign up for YALSA’s Teen Read Week will receive a free, unabridged young adult audiobook compliments of Teen Read Week Promotional Partner Listening Library. Teens at your library will enjoy hearing their favorites novels come to life on audio.
2. All new regular members of YALSA who join through the Teen Read Week Web site will receive two free paperbacks courtesy Promotional Partner Scholastic.
3. The first 4,000 registrants will receive one free paperback from Galaxy’s Golden Age series, courtesy Promotional Partner Galaxy Press.
4. Register by midnight on July 14 and you could win a free copy of Breaking Dawn, the latest entry in the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, courtesy Promotional Partner Hachette Book Group USA/Little, Brown & Co. On July 15, we’ll select 200 registrants at random.
5. Twenty-five registrants will be chosen at random to receive a complete set of titles from Zest Books (about fifteen books total). The drawing will be held on Mon. Sept. 15, 2008.
6. One lucky registrant will win alibrary of Mirrorstone titles, approximate value $500 and based on availability. Five runner ups will win an autographed copy each of Sucks to Be Me and The Stowaway. The drawing will be held on Mon. Sept. 15, 2008.
7. All registrants can download YALSA’s pocket-sized, illustrated Books with Bite Recommended Reading Pamphlet, full of recommended titles drawn from YALSA’s awards and booklists and annotated by YALSA’s Teen Read Week committee. These trifold pamphlets can be printed on 8.5 x 11″ paper, cut to size, and then handed out to teens by the dozens.

Welcome to YALSA’s new blog. We changed blogging software (we are now using WordPress) and are working with an entirely new design. The new interface gives YALSA bloggers new features to make their blogging even better. This includes integration of tags, images, and links. Over the next few weeks we may make a few changes to what you see on the blog pages. The primary interface however is ready for public consumption.

To subscribe to the YALSA blog via RSS click on the Subscribe RSS link in the far-right sidebar. Or, simply put this URL, http://feeds.feedburner.com/yalsa_blog, in your RSS reader. You can also receive blog updates via Twitter by following YALSA at http://www.twitter.com/yalsa .

This blog is a valuable resource for librarians and teacheres who work with young adults and who love YA lit!  Surf over and explore the great new design!

YALSA via kwout

1. Let the reader choose what they like and want to read. Fiction doesn’t have to be everyone’s favorite. I’ll never forget my own son’s reaction reading “Little House on the Prairie” (a favorite of many other readers): “Are they really going to spend this whole chapter making a door?”

2. Expand the definition of “reading” to include nonfiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure and, yes, even Web sites. If a child enjoys reading, the focus of his or her reading will naturally broaden. He won’t read only shark books forever.

3. Be a good reading role model. Show your kids what you like to read, what you don’t like to read, how you choose what you read. Let kids see you reading.

4. Avoid demonizing television, computer games, and new technologies. Electronic media may compete for kids’ attention, but we are not going to get kids reading by badmouthing other entertainment. Instead, talk with kids about how reading can make a world in ways that movies and games can’t – and admit that TV and games can do things books can’t.

In a separate interview with School Library Journal, Scieszka also offers this piece of advice to teachers and librarians:

The thing teachers and librarians can do is to really step back and take a look at their required-reading lists: they don’t have to be all fiction; they can include alternative genres—and they should absolutely include some nonfiction.

Humor is another genre that gets slighted. You don’t see that many funny books on required-reading lists. Thank God Holes got the Newbery Medal, because otherwise I think people would have just skipped over it and said, “Ah, Louis Sachar, he writes some funny stuff.” People often think that humorous books aren’t really legitimate. So all of those things—nonfiction, graphic novels, science fiction, humor—should be on teachers’ and librarians’ lists.

I found these articles and comments interesting for two reasons.  First, it speaks to the issue of the general concern in our country about the decline in reading among young people.  More importantly, though, these articles raise the question of “What counts as reading”?

In elementary and middle school, students’ reading choices are often dictated by their “STAR”/Accelerated Reader Level (or something comparable) or a Lexile.  While the intentions behind these scores are typically honorable, I believe the consequences of using these kinds of scores/programs have long term negative effects.  I am always fascinated by high school students’ reflections on their experiences with Accelerated Reader.  Never have I heard one say, “It made me want to be a lifelong reader.”  Instead, I either hear immense relief at being liberated from the restraints of the program and requirements imposed by teachers or I hear students say because there are no longer any external rewards (”prizes”), they see no reason to read.  I have heard this over and over again both as a high school English teacher and a high school librarian.   During the one year I did elementary library, I can’t tell you how often I cringed when a well-meaning teacher would tell a student he or she could not check out a book because it was not the “right” level. 

I was a voracious reader as a child (at home and in school), but I can assure you I might not have been a lifelong reader had AR or something comparable been imposed on me in my early years. 

On the flip side of the K-12 spectrum, I have been a witness and a participant in debates about reading lists for high school students in English courses and what choices should be included on those lists.  Deep rooted traditions, educators’ personal experiences, district mandates, and political agendas drive who and what makes the final cut on these lists.   In recent years, I can’t tell you how many times I wished there was more room in the curriculum for more contemporary literature.   This “wish” was expressed by other media specialists at our recent January district meeting.

Yes, there are many classics worth our students’ time, but these classics often crowd out high quality and engaging modern literature that speaks to our students.  One example would be Nancy Springer’s I am Mordred.  During 2006-07, I elected to use this novel in place of some of the more traditional Arthurian legend novels on our district’s reading list (I will add that Mordred is an approved novel on the district list, but from what I have gathered in talking to other English teachers in our district, it is not one that many people are aware of or may not be perceived as “higher level” reading).  In the three times I read this novel with three different sets of 10th grade students, I was amazed, awed, and humbled by the connections my students made with this text and how it fired up their interest in Arthurian lore.   Not to “dis” other great Arthurian texts, but The Once and Future Kingjust does not speak to many young adults the way that Nancy Springer’s novel does.  Furthermore, one group of students was so perplexed by unanswered questions they had about the novel that we emailed Nancy Springer our “wonderings”.  We were thrilled and delighted to receive a response to *every* question within two days!  Hearing from a real life author was thrilling to my students and validated their thoughtful questions about the novel!  Susan Lester and Kim Blakenship, two fellow English teachers who used this novel with their students, have had the same experiences:  students who may have never enjoyed reading or read a book as an adolescent, totally got into this novel. 

As Scieszka points out, it takes only one great reading experience to hook a child or teenager on reading.   As a librarian, I try to provide a diverse range of books and magazines that meet the reading interests and needs of our students.  One of the most liberating things about being a high school librarian is helping students find a book or author that the student wants to read for fun, not because he or she has to do so!  Nothing is more thrilling to see the delighted surprise and excitement in the eyes of a teenager who connects to a genre or author!

The question, “What counts as reading?” is not a new one.  In my research as a M.Ed. student and Ed.S. student at the University of Georgia, the question was explored in my Language and Literacy Education classes.  Plenty of healthy debate as well as qualitative research studies abound regarding this question, yet the conversation of “What counts as reading?” does not seem to be reaching many veteran teachers or even or new teachers who are spanking brand new out of undergrad teacher education. 

I hope this question and conversations about it will become more commonplace as we try to balance traditional values and beliefs about reading with the “new literacies” that are evolving right before our eyes.  I hope that our libraries will be places where there are many and diverse answers to “What counts as reading?”!