Allez [Teen] Cuisine!
RSSKaren Kleckner, Colleen Seisser -- School Library Journal, 09/02/2009
“Which teen’s cuisine reigns supreme?” was the driving question behind last year’s “Books with Bite” Teen Read Week at the Deerfield (IL) Public Library (DPL). To inspire and involve local teens, as well as showcase our cookbook collection, we created “Iron Chef Deerfield,” a teen cooking competition modeled on the popular TV series. Looking for a great activity for this year’s Teen Read Week? This could be the one for you.
We took advantage of our Web site, newsletter, and the local high school’s popular “Extreme Cuisine” cooking club to recruit kids. The roster filled up immediately, with six teams, each with two or three participants. Celebrity judges included the owner of a popular neighborhood restaurant, the food editor of the Pioneer Press newspaper, and the marketing specialist from a nearby Whole Foods Market, which generously donated ingredients for the competition, T-shirts, and the grand prize—a cooking lesson with one of its executive chefs. We borrowed all of our kitchen utensils from our park district’s senior center and a local rehabilitative care center. 
On Saturday, October 18, 2008, the teams, armed with three library cookbooks of their choice, had 60 minutes to create a culinary masterpiece in front of a live audience. Our surprise theme was “lunch stuff!” and we loaded up the tables in the center of the “Kitchen Meeting Room” with breads, fruits, veggies, cheese, prepared meats, and condiments and watched as kids prepared sandwiches, salads, wraps, and even a tapas plate. We got rave reviews from the participants
and their proud parents and friends. Overall, 75 adults and teens attended the Saturday afternoon session—our largest turnout for a teen program. The success of Iron Chef Deerfield inspired us to hire a teen librarian, and the event was featured in Deerfield High School’s newspaper and on its morning news show. For this year’s Teen Read Week, Oct. 18-24, we’ll be hosting a teen movie night, a hi-tech craft program using old computer parts as components, and a discussion of Daniel H. Wilson’s book, How to Survive a Robot Uprising. For more details, visit our teen services page.—Karen Kleckner, head of readers’ services/PR coordinator, Deerfield Public Library, and Colleen Seisser, DPL’s teen services librarian
