The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
Our latest music reviews feature the bad old boys (Aerosmith)… and the good new boys (One Direction)—and it sounds like their albums couldn’t be more different from each other. The Avengers finally make it to the gaming table with some superhero moves, and NBA2K13 is bound to please those who are looking for action on the hardwood.
Take Me Home, One Direction (Columbia)
One Direction is certainly a phenomenon in the music world. This Simon Cowell-created boy band is so popular with its [...]
Best-selling author Harlan Coben is the only mystery writer to have won the Edgar Award, the Shamus Award, and the Anthony Award. Last year, Coben dove into the world of YA with Shelter, the first novel in his “Mickey Bolitar” series (Putnam). SLJ spoke with the Newark, New Jersey-born author about his new teen protagonist and his Jersey roots.
Amid the sparkle of bling and sounds of cha-ching, visitors to Las Vegas, NV, last week caught sight of thousands of educators from around the country wending their way through Metro Golden Mayer Grand complex toward its conference center for the 102nd annual National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) convention November 15-18.
Got a great story to tell about a banned book or another disturbing incident involving censorship? Then encourage your teens to enter the 2012 Youth Free Expression Project’s (YFEP) film contest—and give them a chance to win up to $1,000 and a free trip to the Big Apple.
The annual competition, open to kids 19 and under, hopes to educate youth about their First Amendment rights and the importance of free speech. It’s a perfect way to teach a lesson on [...]
Over the next few issues of SLJTeen, I’ll be posting brief summaries of many of the sessions I attended at the annual National Council of Teachers of English annual conference, held in Las Vegas, Nov.15-18, 2012. Hand-outs for many of the sessions are available from the NCTE 2012 website. This round up includes sessions on nonfiction resources for English teachers, literacy efforts for incarcerated youth and adults, and faeries in young adult literature.
The Collaborative Summer Library Program (CSLP) has launched the 2013 Teen Video Challenge, a national video competition for young adults to get involved with reading and their CSLP Beneath the Surfacepublic library’s summer reading program. Kids across the country are invited to create a 30- to 90-second video with their unique interpretation of the 2013 teen slogan “Beneath the Surface” in combination with reading and libraries. The idea is to involve teens in summer reading, before and during the summer months, by being part of the process. This is an opportunity for teens to showcase their creativity and have their ideas heard by a national audience.
If there was any doubt that 2012 William C. Morris YA Debut Award Finalist Ruta Sepetys could meet readers’ expectations after Between Shades of Gray, put those fears aside—her upcoming title, Out of The Easy, confirms that this writer is here to stay. Lost memory remains a popular convention in YA lit, as Unremembered and Being Henry David remind us, and for romantics, Meant to Be offers a fun frolic through the streets of London.
Former teacher and virtual event entrepreneur Jeremie Miller created the Teen Technology Project to marry his passion for technology, teens and social issues. After discovering his project through its Facebook page, I got in touch with Jeremie and asked him to tell me more about his hopes and aspirations for the project.
The idea of a book within a book is not a new idea—The Book Thief, Inkheart, and Fahrenheit 451 all explore this theme. It’s fun to think that the characters you are reading about may show up in your living room, ready to interact and share their literary lives with you. In some cases, such as Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, the books become characters themselves. For a light-hearted and quick read, check out It’s a Book by Lane Smith. Although it’s a children’s picture book, the humor will definitely appeal to teens.
In the 3D film adaptation of Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi,” a teenager named Pi squares off with a hulking and hungry Bengal tiger, the the only other occupant of a lifeboat adrift in the Pacific Ocean.
How do you plan a party for someone you have never met? It’s stressful enough planning a party for someone you know very well—you already know what foods to cook, what music to play, and who to invite. But planning a party for a complete stranger—or a whole group of them —with no inkling of their interests? That is downright terrifying. Nevertheless, it is what I have spent the past couple months doing.
Go ahead, have a second helping of stuffing and gravy—Just Dance 4 will keep it from going right to the hips! Feeling nostalgic, missing Ash and Pikachu? Fire up Skylanders Giants for a battle fix. And dear sweet Taylor Swift is not one to stay in that country box—she’s even experimenting with dub-step, and clearly it’s working. Her new album Red earned the highest sales of any album since 2002 (Eminem’s The Eminem Show), with 1.2 million copies sold in the record’s opening week.
In the final Twilight movie, Bella Swan, now a vampire, wields her newfound strength, adjusts to motherhood, and with her vampire brethren face a new enemy.
Some genres have year-round appeal. Enter the ghost story. This fall’s ghost stories combine other elements our students enjoy reading. A girl dies too soon. A crime needs to be solved. The Titanic. These books have short, cliff-hanging chapters with no good stopping place. You can almost read them in one sitting―unless your fear factor is released. Like me, you may have to do Pinterest between chapters, and refrain from reading them before bed! Happy haunting!
The National Forum on Libraries & Teens is a year-long grant funded effort that brings together key stakeholders from the areas of libraries, education, technology, adolescent development and the for-profit and nonprofit sectors to explore the world of young adults and library services to this population, and ultimately produce a white paper which will provide direction on how libraries need to adapt and potentially change to better meet the needs of 21st century teens.
Find yourself looking for inspiration when it comes to creating awesome programming for your teens? The 365 Days of YA Task Force wants to help, but first, you have to be willing to share your successes and creativity! The 365 Days of YA is a Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) task
force charged with creating a calendar of easy to implement plans for programs, services, and activities for teens. These are simple ideas that can be used by anyone working with youth in libraries.
Tales of aliens and bounty hunters, rockers and assassins, and a true story about addiction that reads like fiction are all part of this issue’s contributions from Bookmarked’s readers.
The American Libraries Association (ALA) Public Programs Office is now accepting nominations for the ALA Excellence in Library Programming Award, sponsored by the ALA Cultural Communities Fund. The award will recognize a library that demonstrates excellence in library programming by developing and presenting a cultural or thematic program or program series during the previous year (September 1, 2011 – August 31, 2012).
With the release of Adele’s lushly orchestrated theme song and heaps of media coverage, the buzz is building for the opening of Skyfall (PG-13) on November 9, 2012. Take advantage of the Bond bonanza and display or booktalk a selection of recently published young adult spy thrillers. Impossible to put down, these titles feature an array of unforgettable protagonists, a mix of time periods and settings, and a teen-tantalizing variety of narrative styles.
Bootleggers, gangsters, and a dash of romance—what could be more glittering and decadent than New York City in the Roaring Twenties? In Janet Fox’s new novel, Sirens, seventeen-year-old Josephine Winter is shipped off to live with her rich cousins in Manhattan. Caught up in the swirl of the bobbed-hair set—and the shady men who court them—Jo soon realizes that this world of jazz and gangsters and their molls hides a nest of lies, and she is faced with a choice: hang on to her soul, or lose herself in the decade of decadence.
