A Glimpse at the World of Teens

(this post is not about Summer Reading, I couldn't help myself!)

I am honored to be acting as a NYS judge in the national Letters About Literature program. I received my packet of letters this week and started reading and two things jumped out at me.

The goal of the program is for kids and teens to write letters to authors to let them know how their book changes their view of the world or of themselves. The letters I received were from 7th and 8th graders. I had kids from Nassau and Suffolk, as well as a few from Manhattan and a bunch from the Rochester area (the city as well as the rural/suburban areas around it).

The first thing I noticed was how many of the students talked about being bullied. It was without a doubt the most frequent theme in the letters and what was especially striking was how many of them said they had been picked on for no reason. I was proud, though, that they were willing to write about it in letters that went through their teachers, which tells me that anti-bullying efforts are working to at least help kids feel brave enough to talk about being bullied. It's an important first step.

The other thing that struck me was how many students made comments like "Living in my comfortable, middle class home, I didn't know that there was . . ." and then said things like poverty, racism, discrimination, war. It was shocking to me that in this age of 24/7 media and constantly being plugged in, our teens are that insulated from the world outside their doors. Now, granted, some of this is just teens being self-absorbed teens, but still.

This made me think again about an article by Douglas Rushkoff in the February, 2011 School Library Journal I've been talking about to everyone. It has to do with rethinking how we do technology with young people. The letters made me recall his comments about how social networking is changing the way we communicate. Discussing how communicating in virtual environments removes the 93% of communication that is non-verbal, he says "our interactions online become highly literalized, suspicious, devoid of context, and continually parsed for their real meaning. We end up experiencing one another much in the way someone with Asperger's does" (p. 31).

So. Yeah.

Instead of feeling inspired by many of the letters I judged that talked about how reading whichever book made them see what the world is really like, I feel oddly depressed. Mostly because I get the sense that this wasn't life changing for most of these teens, but just another assignment for school and that they would go back to their comfortable, middle class lives and forget the glimpse beyond their doors. And social media is going to help them do it.

Bluh.

Cash in the Coffee Can: $278

Straight from the CEO's Mouth

I learned two things this week from meetings where Mr. Galante spoke that are super important for teen services.

First, did you know that teens are our largest population of library users? On any given day, 10,000 teens walk through our doors. This is huge, folks, both literally and figuratively. Are we, organizationally and individually, doing all we can to meet the library needs of those teens?

Second, it was so great to hear at the Director's Talks that the decision to stop buying books rather than face library closures was made in order for our libraries to remain community spaces. This is also huge, especially for our teens, who often have no place else to go than the library.

As we plan for Summer Reading, keep these things in mind. If we're seeing 10,000 teens a day, we can easily register more than 7200 for Summer Reading. And think of what being a community space in your community means, especially in the summer months, especially in the face of looming budget cuts and use that to inform not only your program planning, but your advocacy efforts as well.

Cash in the Coffee Can: $264

Halfway There

Can you believe it? But the cash can doesn't lie and here we are, halfway to the goal!

Now that we're solidly into 2011, the SR book lists are done and we're heavy into the planning stages for Summer Reading 2011, my blog focus is going to be more practical in nature. I hope. I usually start out thinking nuts and bolts and end up writing library theory (along with the occasional rant).

And given how . . . wintry . . . this winter has been, isn't it kind of nice to start thinking about summer?

Cash in the Coffee Can: $250

Do We Sell Our Teens Short?

I was contacted by Queensborough Community College to be a partner/support organization on their application for The Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts. We've done Big Read programs before and we did it when I worked at BPL, so I was really excited to be part of QCC's project.

Then I read the text they had selected: The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick.

The Big Read is geared at middle and high school students with an aim "to broaden audience outreach and deepen participation, especially reaching lapsed and/or reluctant readers" so when I read Ozick's haunting literary novella about a Holocaust survivor, I will freely admit to thinking "This will NEVER work with our teens!"

I understand why QCC selected this text; they have a renowned Holocaust Archives and Resource Center they are planning to use to support the program, but I just got stuck on how hard a sell this book is going to be to reluctant readers.

But then I started thinking about my own prejudices and assumptions about what teens can handle. This came up a little bit in the In-Service on Tuesday, too. Early next week, I'm participating in a two-day training with People and Stories/Gente y Cuentos a reading and discussion program that introduces literary short stories to underserved adults and teens. The whole foundation of their amazing work is that even people without much formal education can interact with high quality literature in a way that incorporates their lived experiences as a valid means for understand the text.

So I've been reading Paulo Freire again and thinking about popular education and realized that I have been too willing to accept that our teens "can't handle" complex, moving works of literature in this "Jersey Shore" day and age. And maybe some of them can't, or won't, but that's no reason not to see what they CAN handle. And so I am preparing for the literary revolution!

Cash in the Coffee Can: $236.00

Part of The Post I've Been Struggling With

A couple of weeks ago, I walked through the Central YA room on my way out through the staff room at the end of the day and was struck by something so unusual I had to ask around later on to see if I had seen what I thought I had seen. There were teens, teen girls in particular, browsing the fiction stacks, talking about books and seeking reader's advisory from the librarians.

This doesn't seem like something that should have drawn my attention, right? After all, isn't this at least part of what a library should be? But until I walked through that day, I hadn't realized that I never saw teens browsing for books in that space before.

What changed? There are no computers in the YA room right now because of the construction, no tables either. And I had to ask myself if the teens who were now using the room, who clearly were taking ownership of the space, its collection and its staff, had been limited in their prior usage by the noise and crowds that had previously existed around the tables and computers. (BTW, when I asked the staff if they had noticed the same changes in usage, they said yes, that they had been remarking on it amongst themselves since the construction walls went up.)

But here's the thing, and the place where I keep getting stuck: is there a way for the teens that need the library as a space to use the computers and hang with friends to coexist with the teens that need the library as a space to find books, be creative and do homework? Of course, this assumes that these are two distinct groups ("readers" and "non-readers," perhaps) with divergent needs, which may not be the case.

Can libraries do both of the things I think we MUST do at the same time and well: connect people to the social and political resources they need AND connect people to the cultural and creative resources they need?

Cash in the Coffee Can: $222.00

The Post that Wasn't

I've been working on this post on and off for 2 days because I can't quite figure out what I want to say even though I kind of know what I want to say. I've given myself a headache, actually, which tells me that I need to throw in the towel. So here is what I will say:

For anyone who thinks we don't need libraries, I recommend the brilliant, if unsubtle, Mike Judge satire Idiocracy. Actually, I recommend it to everyone (with the understanding that the people who don't think we need libraries probably won't get the point).

To everyone else, I will add that I watched this movie the first time in 2007 after it was recommended by a library director speaking at the Urban Libraries Council Executive Leadership Institute. I watched it again this past November and was alarmed by how much closer we've come to the future world Judge depicts in just three short years.

Great movie making? Maybe not (although it is pretty funny). Terrifying prediction of our likely future? Sadly, yes.

Cash in the Coffee Can: $208

Awards and Booklists and Teens (oh my!)

I became a YA librarian for the books. As a children's librarian, I had started working more and more with tweens so I was reading a lot of middle-grade fiction (what we called "young teen") for work and a lot of YA fiction for fun. My excitement over the fiction is what prompted me to make the switch to YA services when I applied to NYC libraries and the rest is history. Except that these days, I have to admit, my interests are less and less about the books. Which I am okay with most of the time, although I do feel guilty for not reading as much or as widely as I could.

But yesterday I participated in the Queens Library Mock Newbery meeting and I am now 100% committed to having a Mock Printz Award for books published in 2011.

I had never participated in a mock award meeting before (shocking, I know) so it was interesting to learn about the process and really exciting and inspiring to sit in a room with other professionals who are passionate about literature for young people and actually TALK ABOUT BOOKS! It was so much fun, especially to hear the wide range of opinions on each of the books.

But here's the thing--the ALA awards and lists are for us and other educators. I have never once had a kid or teen run in on a Monday afternoon in January and ask for the winning books, although I've had plenty of peers do so. That does not necessarily negate the value of awards (and to a certain extent any list of recommended reading we as professionals and adults prepare for teens and kids) but it should be a reminder that many of these books will never fly off our shelves.

On still the other hand, that does not mean that participating in a mock awards process is an exercise in futility. It is something nearly all large libraries and systems do because (I think) it is a way to remind us as professionals of our own expertise and to empower the vast majority of us who will never be on a "real" ALA selection committee. In looking at the lists of mock awards winners NYPL, BPL and we have chosen over the last few years, there are often stark differences between them and the "real" winners, which often reflect our unique point-of-view as librarians working with youth in an extremely diverse urban environment. This is useful! We should know what our peers consider the best of the best but we should also be critical and think of what is the best of the best in our corner of the library world. And if nothing else, it's a way for us to access quality books we might not have otherwise read which we can then bring to those teens who will appreciate them.

Cash in the Coffee Can: $194.00