What did people discuss during all this socializing? One topic: How reading, by nature a solitary occupation, can also be a social one. Educational technology consultant Linda W. Braun’s Saturday morning session, “Social Reading: Inside the Ebook Book Discussions,” examined the ways that talking about books creates connection among readers. And while sharing one’s enthusiasm on social reading site Goodreads is terrific, those exchanges happen outside the book.

Enter social reading within Ereaders. Typically, reading an Ebook allows for highlights, note-taking, and sharing on Twitter and Facebook from within the book. Braun showed her audience iPad apps that take social reading a few steps further. First, she introduced two book apps—Wonders of the Universe by Brian Cox (a 3-D tour of the universe, which Braun sees as the future of nonfiction) and Cupcakes! (an app for creating virtual cupcakes; the future of cookbooks).

Braun then introduced two free reading apps—Inkling (allows for purchasing a chapter of a book at a time, the creation of reading groups, and private or public notes) and Kno (a textbook app that provides detailed sharing options perfect for study groups).

David Levithan speaks at the YALSA Lit Symposium in St. Louis. Photo by Emily Goodknight.

But the bulk of the discussion focused on the Subtext app. Subtext allows for the creation of groups, the easy purchase of one title for a group of readers, the side-loading of EPUB titles onto the app (including original student work, for example) and extensive sharing features. It is not only possible to highlight and add notes to the original text, the reader can also tag those notes, mark notes as spoilers, keep notes private, or turn off the notes feature altogether. Every attendee of the session left with a code granting access to a free copy of Steve Hamilton’s (Alex Award-winning) novel The Lock Artist (Minotaur Books, 2010) and the ability to join a reading group to begin November 10th.

This opens up myriad possibilities for both classroom and literature circles. Using Subtext, teachers and librarians can be right in the story with teen readers. Teachers are able to insert questions within the text and implement a setting that cloaks other student replies until the reader has posted themselves. An in-the-book discussion could level the playing field for students who are slow processors. They could read at their own pace at home, taking their time answering questions within the text, yet still feel part of the discussion.

There’s great potential for book club discussions as well. Book club members unable to attend their meetings could still participate in the discussion within the book. Other uses? Prepping for author visits, sharing creative writing projects, peer editing, sharing alternative endings–the list goes on. In sum, Subtext allows librarians to be part of the reading experience. It’s all about building relationships with teen patrons.

On Saturday afternoon, Rollie Welch, collections manager at the Cleveland Public Library, led the session “Classic Literature vs.21st Century Novels: Survival of the Fittest.” The purpose was to share ideas for persuading adults who work with teens to move beyond assigning or recommending classics that rarely appeal to teen readers.

Earlier this year, at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, Welch led a pre-conference session in which the attendees chose the one book that every teen should be assigned to read in 2057. In other words, what contemporary YA books will survive as a classic? (At that session, it came down to a tie between Laurie Anderson’s Speak (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999) and Marcus Zusak’s The Book Thief (Picador, 2005)).

The YA Lit Symposium session really got rolling when Welch shared 15 theme areas. For each area, he began with a classic novel typically assigned in school, then offered a contemporary novel and a nonfiction title on the same theme. Audience members had a wonderful time recommending alternatives and applauding their favorites. For example, for the theme of “Young Soldiers at War,” rather than assigning The Red Badge of Courage, why not try Craig Crist-Evans’s Amaryllis (Candlewick, 2003) or Evan Wright’s Generation Kill (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004)? In the Mystery category, rather than The Hound of the Baskervilles, consider Rick Yancey’s The Monstrumologist (S&S, 2010), or Richard Jones’s Jack the Ripper: The Casebook (Andre Deutsch, 2009). Rather than Robert Lipsyte’s The Contender (Harper & Row, 1967), try Paul Volponi’s Black and White (Viking, 2005) or Brian Shields’s The WWE Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to World Wrestling Entertainment (DK, 2009).

Welch believes that at least three on his list of classics will still be read and enjoyed by today’s teens–The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Even so, he offered Printz Award winner, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown 2010) by Paolo Bacigalupi as an alternative to the latter in the category of “Hero’s Journey of Self Discovery.”

The YA Lit Symposium is held every other year. The 2014 conference will be held in Austin, TX, over the Halloween weekend.

Angela Carstensen is Head Librarian and an Upper School Librarian at Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City. She also blogs at Adult Books 4 Teens. Angela served on the Alex Awards committee for four years, chairing the 2008 committee, and chaired the first YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adult committee in 2009. Recently, she edited Outstanding Books for the College Bound: Titles and Programs for a New Generation (ALA Editions, 2011). Contact her via Twitter @AngeReads.

June Elbus is 14 when she finds out that her uncle Finn, the one person in the world who seems to understand her, is dying of AIDS. June is devastated when he dies, and wary when she’s approached by Finn’s longtime partner, Toby. She’d never met Toby before—in fact, her mother had insisted that Finn keep him a secret. June and Toby’s new friendship is fragile, but one that leads to healing and understanding for each of them.

Why did you set the story in 1987, a time when there was such a stigma surrounding AIDS? 

I’m not sure the ’80s setting was really a choice. I started out with the idea of a dying uncle painting a final portrait of his niece. I didn’t know that the disease he had was AIDS until later on in the writing process. Once I understood that, it seemed natural that the story would take place in the ’80s. Setting it at a time when so little was known about the disease and when fear was rampant seemed the most interesting way to approach it. Narrator June’s uncle Finn dies just before AZT—the first real treatment for AIDS— came along. The idea that you or your loved ones could just miss out lifesaving treatment seemed like a particularly cruel twist of fate and something I thought worth exploring.

June is a perfectly realized teen character, vivid in her self-doubt, her uncertainty about her own nature and how the people in her life feel about her. How did you create such a touching, vulnerable teen character?

Thank you! I’m so glad you connected with June. I think I might have an unusually strong memory of my feelings at June’s age. Her sense of not really belonging anywhere, not connecting with her peers, being an outsider, watching the action from a distance—all of that is how I remember feeling at her age.

I also wanted to get away from anything that felt stereotypically “teen.” As a writer, I’m always trying to understand a character as an individual rather than as part of a group. So, although June happens to be a teen, I hope she is also very much a unique person with a singular way of seeing the world.

Did you anticipate that teens would read your book? Why did you choose to write a coming-of-age novel?

I would love to think that teens could find something to connect with in Tell the Wolves I’m Home. When I first started writing it, I thought it could end up as either YA or adult. By the end, I felt pretty sure it was an adult novel. I wouldn’t say I set out to write a coming-of-age story exactly. I felt like I was writing a friendship story, but because of June’s age there’s an inevitable coming-of-age element to it. The events of the story will surely be life changing for June and make a huge mark on how she views the world.

In this novel, love causes embarrassment, jealousy, and terrible vulnerability. Learning that, as Toby says, “Nobody can help what they feel,” is an important part of June’s coming-of-age experience. Do you think June moves on from the events of this story to trust herself and her feelings?

You’re right, love is the source of most of the pain in this novel. I think Toby is trying so hard through the course of the story to give this gift to June—to make her understand that her feelings aren’t good or bad, that what you feel is not something you can control—and I think by the end she does understand that. I think she is so much stronger by the end of the story.

Photo by Rose Cook

Like your protagonist, I understand you grew up in Westchester County, New York. Are there autobiographical aspects to the story? What was your inspiration for the novel?

The setting isn’t Pleasantville, exactly, but a sort of amalgam of elements from a few towns I remember. Same with the woods. There weren’t woods behind my school, but I do remember parties in woods around the town.

I did give June a lot of my way of thinking at her age. I also lumbered her with some of my own geeky teenage interests—an overly romantic view of medieval times, the escapism of movies set in the past, Choose Your Own Adventure books, and a love of the Cloisters, to name a few.  That’s where the autobiography ends, really. I don’t have a charismatic Finn-like uncle. My relationship with my own sister isn’t like June and Greta’s. My parents are very different from the Elbus’s.

When I was in eighth grade, my English teacher was an exchange teacher from London. We all liked him. He’d often share English music with us and generally had a good sense of humor. At the end of the year, he left. A few months later, we were told that he’d died. This alone was quite shocking. He was only in his 30s. Not long after that we found out that he’d had AIDS. Living in the suburbs, I think we all felt very distant from AIDS. It was a scary thought, but that’s what it remained for most of us—a thing we heard about but never saw, something unrelated to our lives. Here it had come right into our midst. Without being aware of it, that experience had stayed with me all these years. Writing often works this way for me. Rather than taking something from life and working with it, I write and write until finally I see where the material has come from. It’s those wonderful little moments of revelation that make the whole thing worthwhile.

Check out the starred School Library Journal review on the Adult Books 4 Teens blog.