Public Libraries

SLJ and NCTE collaborated to create 18 booklists of titles to replace, or use as a companion to, canon "classics." 

When I was in middle school, the word “nerd” was thrown around a lot, a word that then meant someone who was too much, who loved something too deeply. This passion was a delicate flame within me when I was 14, a little older than Elissa, the protagonist of my novel, We Are the Song.

When I finally found my way to writing a novel about growing up as an immigrant with hip dysplasia, it was this wholeness—not parts of me segmented into boxes—that guided me. I wrote Breathe and Count Back from Ten because the only way I can imagine creating books in a world that draws boundaries around my identity is to write myself beyond them.

I highly recommend this engrossing read and already need to see what mystery Iris and Alice will tackle next. Great read.

Teen Librarian Karen Jensen shares some of the online resources she's reading and talking about for the month of May

As much as my younger self loved final girls like Gerda from The Snow Queen, Buffy Summers, and Clarice Starling however, these characters didn’t exactly reflect my lived experience. They were all white women and they were all at least coded as being Christian, if not outright stated to be so. So in 2019, I decided to write a final girl who was like me: Ilana Lopez, the biracial heroine of The Ghosts of Rose Hill. 

With the message "Open books, open doors," this beautiful poster by Rafael López is available to SLJ subscribers and here, as a download. Created by SLJ, supported by Penguin Random House, and in partnership with NCTE, NCAC, PEN America, FReadom, and Library Journal, the powerful image promoting free expression is also available as social graphics for sharing on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.    

I like to think series books are the “Comfort Tacos” of the book world; they pull you in and swaddle you up in a world where you know you belong, know you feel comfortable, and where everything is just a little easier.

To support teachers and librarians in the face of ongoing censorship, School Library Journal and Penguin Random House—in partnership with PEN America, NCAC, NCTE, FReadom, and Library Journal—have created a poster that vividly illustrates the importance of intellectual freedom.