Teen Stuff

I highly recommend Looking for Alaska by John Green. A Printz gold-medal winner and IA High School Book Award choice, this is one of the best novels I've read this year.

For mature teen readers through adults, the story is told by Miles, a new student in a southern boarding school, where he meets a close-knit group of friends, including a wild and mildly cryptic girl named Alaska. The voice of this coming-of-age story, although more contemporary, reminds me somewhat of A Separate Peace by John Knowles.

The characters are relateable and multi-layered, from Miles' roomate, nicknamed  "the Colonel," to the stern headmaster the students try to outsmart with a sure-to-be-legendary senior prank. This is the best kind of novel....it made me laugh out loud at times, reach for the kleenex at others, and continue to think about it long after I finished the last page.

I will likely seek out Green's other books, An Abundance of Katherines, which earned a Prinz silver medal, and Paper Towns, a well-reviewed novel published this year.

This is cool, especially if you are a fan of author Khaled Hosseini's works, The Kite Runner, and A Thousand Splendid Suns:

http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6618147.html

The Breakfast Club summer program for teens hosted Des Moines vintage clothing designers, Julie and Melissa, for a workshop on altered tshirts. Several participants changed an existing shirt or two into a new, updated shirt.

Pictured modeling her new shirt, which started out as a regular Community Y tshirt is participant Melisa Fonseca. Visit the consignment shop online site (or head there in person),Vintage Vitae, where Julie and Melissa sell their own creations, as well as other local and Iowa designers.

Read about Twilight's Stephanie Meyer "in concert"...or sort of.

Also, watch for news about a book discussion open to teens and adults this summer of the first, and possibly second in the popular vampire series by Stephanie Meyer. Interested? Let us know and we'll make sure you get an email or phone call when the date is set.

BRISINGR, Book Three in the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini, will be published in September, 2008.

New York Times bestsellers , Eragon and Eldest have both been New York Times bestsellers and Eragon was made into a movie.

A reserve list is already started for Book #3. Call the youth dept. at 754-5738 and ask to have your name added.

Twilight series author Stephanie Meyer has posted the first chapter of the story from Edward's point of view (instead of Bella's). She hopes to someday publish the novel Midnight Sun, which will tell his story in its entirety.

Meanwhile, she is hard at work on the fourth in the series, Breaking Dawn, which is tentatively scheduled to be published Fall, 2008.

Also, just FYI in Twilight movie news, a publicized open casting call went out January 18th for the actor who will play Jacob Black.

One of my jobs as youth services librarian is to determine where to shelve different books that come into the library. Often it is difficult to determine whether a book should be shelved in the "juvenile fiction" or the "Teen/YA section" of the library. I try to use 7th-12th grades as a guideline for the teen section...but that is a huge range of maturity and interest...as well as hugely differing ideas among parents as to appropriateness, etc.

Since these books are at a public library, we operate within "intellectual freedom" guidelines that basically say that it is not up to us to determine who can check out what materials...that is a "freedom of information" issue that is protected by the Constitution and applies equally to every library customer, including youth customers. The job of determining appropriateness, therefore, falls to the parents or caregivers of those youth.

The identification of materials as J or Teen or Adult are merely tools to help people find books that will interest them. I think of our young adult/teen collection as one geared toward the interests of those age groups...so sometimes include books that may be considered adult books, but are extremely popular among teen readers. A couple examples would be biographical books of popular musicians, a movie tie-in like Freedom Writer's Diary, or books that have been awarded the High School Book Award (a list that usually combines "teen" and adult books).

Library staff is always willing to give customers more information about content, if asked, so they can determine the maturity level for themselves. However, we can not possibly have this information for every book, nor can we guess or predict what every reader's idea of "inappropriate" or "offensive" could be.

Finally, there are many books in both the Juvenile Fiction sections and the Teen/YA sections that appeal to a wide range of readers, including adults...and I would encourage teens, young adults, and adults of all ages, to not forget to stop upstairs sometimes and browse.

Just FYI: I just saw that the teen book Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan is being made into a movie to be released October 2008.

The #3 book by Christopher Paolini to follow Eragon and Eldest is reported to be on schedule for a Fall 2008 release. Many readers are looking forward to this fantasy novel.

Paolini began plotting the Inhertiance series as a 15 year old homeschooled student, orginally envisioning it as a trilogy. However, he recently announced that what he thought would be the final book in the trilogy, will actually need to be told over two more books, resulting in a projected series length of four books.

Eragon was made into a movie in 2006, and is now available on DVD to check out from the public library.

I just saw something that I thought those readers of the young adult novel Feed by M.T. Anderson might be interested in. (Our LOL high school group read and discussed feed last spring.)

I was just reading through a library journal and came across reference to this article "Direct Brain-to-Game Interface Worries Scientists" from Wired magazine (link below). It talks about how the technology will use brain activity--essentially thought--as the video game controller...which is really close to how the implanted "feed" in the futuristic sci fi novel used thought to automatically innundate the thinker with "targeted" information.

http://www.wired.com/print/medtech/health/news/2007/09/bci_games