It happened! I used the library ebook option and found the book a student needed to read that evening (or part of it) before school the next day. And it would never had happened without Learn&Play@cml.
So 3 cheers for Hoot being available.
And I finally got back to reading teen fiction. Columbus Metropolitan Library youth services have an annual book discussion and rotate Caldicot, Newbury, and Printz canidates. It was the teens turn this year. In past years I manage to read a very large quantity of teen books. Somehow this year, it was hard. Several books mentioned for teens that I read are really younger readers but good none the less. Excellent examples include Waiting for Normal and Eleven (Eleven is by Patricia Giff and definately appeals to 3rd-4th grade readers).
For the discussion it seemed like all the books at my table were dealing with control issues. Some of the books discussed had extreme examples such as Bodeen’s The Compound were the father even cut the Mother out of the real situation so he could have his grand experiment. On the other hand there was the mother who left before her child could leave, after letting her daughter think her older sister didn’t care enough to try to keep contact in Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen. The pace in this work didn’t pick up until about page 200, so while the book is good will enough teens stick with it to reach the part where the action is starting to happen?
Then there was Shift by Jennifer Bradberry who deftly shifts the reader from the present to the previous summer and from the surface of a friendship to hidden depths in both of the main characters, and features another extremely controlling father. This book vied for top pick of the table with Ringside 1925 by Jen Bryant who used a variety of free verse forms to represent the spectrum faith viewpoints in Dayton Tennessee.
Also highlighted in Ringside 1925 was the treatment of townfolk outside of the white male adult spheres of influence. The teen girl who wanted to break the mold in getting married and not going on to college to Willie Amos, who, because of his skin color didn’t get any schooling at all but still struggled to learn to read and develop hope.
And the last book at the table was The Fold by An Na and delved into how culture can control how we view ourselves, even if it is a Korean one transplanted stateside.
