Tag Archives: YALSA

General, Public, School Media Specialist

Five YALSA Book Lists for Teens & Young Adults

Some rights reserved by Wishpond
Some rights reserved by Wishpond

YALSA is the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association. Here, for your review are their recent top picks across several media types. Do any of these titles surprise you? Are there some missing in your estimation? Share your thoughts in the comments field.

2014 Great Graphic Novels for Teens
YALSA has announced its 2014 Great Graphic Novels for Teens. The annotated list of 78 titles is drawn from 122 official nominations. The books, recommended for those ages 12–18, meet the criteria of both good-quality literature and appealing reading for teens….
YALSA, Feb. 4

2014 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults
YALSA has announced its 2014 list of Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults. The list, drawn from 183 official nominations, is presented annually at the ALA Midwinter Meeting. The complete list of 74 titles, including annotations, is divided into four categories….
YALSA, Feb. 4

2014 Best Fiction for Young Adults
YALSA has announced its 2014 list of Best Fiction for Young Adults. This year’s list of 98 books was drawn from 175 official nominations. The books, recommended for ages 12–18, meet the criteria of both good-quality literature and appealing reading for teens. The list comprises a wide range of genres and styles, including contemporary realistic fiction, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and novels in verse….
YALSA, Feb. 4

2014 Fabulous Films for Young Adults
YALSA has announced its 2014 Fabulous Films for Young Adults. The list identifies a body of films relating to a theme that will appeal to young adults ages 12–18 and is presented annually at the ALA Midwinter Meeting. This year’s list includes 25 titles based on the theme “School’s Out Forever—YOLO (you only live once).”…
YALSA, Feb. 3

2014 Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults
YALSA announced its 2014 Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults list. The list for ages 12–18 is drawn from the previous two years of spoken-word releases and presented annually at the ALA Midwinter Meeting….

To see a wiki chocked full of other YALSA library tips and book lists, go to http://wikis.ala.org/yalsa/index.php/Main_Page

Academic, Check this out:, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

2014 Teen Tech Week Materials

Image by nic519. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons' licensing.
Image by nic519. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons’ licensing.

Looking ahead to 2014, YALSA (ALA) has exciting news about   Teen Tech Week which will be March 9-15, 2014. The theme this year is DIY @ Your Library and it presents a chance to showcase your non-print resources available to youth. The purpose of this week is to demonstrate to teens and their families, the positive influence of libraries in their communities.

Free monthly webinars will begin in December, but you need to register.

Free toolkits are available online to help plan and publicize this week at your library. For additional creative ideas, click on the Makerspaces In Your Library or Game-Based Makerspaces posts by CMLE. Or, link to an article featuring Sauk Rapids-Rice High School’s new monthly, mini makerspace.

YALSA, Young Adult Library Services Association’s mission is to feature resources for youth ages 12-18 by, “… offering teens a space to extend learning beyond the classroom where they can explore, create and share content.”

Academic, Check this out:, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Teen Read Week

Image by goXunuReviews. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons' licensing.
Image by goXunuReviews. Retrieved from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons’ licensing.

How is your library engaging teen readers?

For the past 15 years, Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has sponsored Teen Read Week (TRW). It is a national adolescent literary initiative to sponsor continued readership. This year TRW will be held on October 13th-19th. The theme strives to encourage teens to discover the unknown and continue to explores mysteries, “Seek the Unknown @ Your Library.”

Click here for additional information about Teen Read Week from ALA. 
General, Public, School Media Specialist

Got Reluctant Readers?

red bookThe Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced its 2013 Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers selection list recently at the annual ALA Midwinter Meeting. The Quick Picks list suggests books that teens, ages 12-18, will pick up on their own and read for pleasure; it is geared to the teenager who, for whatever reason, does not like to read.

The complete list of 65 titles and 3 series, drawn from 217 nominations, can be found at http://tinyurl.com/aztxrlz

The Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers committee also selected a Top Ten list which can be found at http://tinyurl.com/a8gbuks

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Social Reading: The Next Big Thing?

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So, I came back from the MLA and MEMO conferences charged up with new ideas, which is a good thing!

And, maybe because of some new awareness, three interesting things have converged in my world within the last two weeks….

  1. One task I assigned myself is to finally enter my book collections into Goodreads, and take the hundreds of scraps of paper containing  books I want to read, and enter them in my “to read” Goodreads shelf too. Now that there is a mobile app, I can go to the library and easily pull up my wish list right on my phone. And yes, eventually I can even scan in the new bestsellers while out shopping, that I want to read, but am too frugal to buy! So, I am well on my way with Goodreads!
  2. Then, I heard about Subtext, an app that allows groups of people to read books together online, and comment in the margins, highlight text, do polls, and other things you might expect to do verbally in a face-to-face bookclub. Free books, by grade levels too, so this app has K-12 schools written all over it!
  3. Then, I discovered a literature blog  called, The Hub: Your Connection to Teen Reads, from YALSA,the Young Adult Library Services Association of ALA. This site provides a one-stop-shop for finding information about teen reads, including recommendations for great teen reads, information about YALSA lists and awards, book trailers and other book-related videos, and best of the best lists. They also just did a series of posts about “The Next Big Thing”, and the one about social reading caught my eye. Amazingly, they mention Goodreads and Subtext as tools for new online bookclub possibilities. So now, my head is buzzing with other new possibilities.  Read the full  blog post at http://tinyurl.com/9mkpygg.

Please share your comments about whether you use Goodreads or Subtext, and whether you already host or participate in online book clubs in your personal or professional life. Maybe we can form a little bookclub community!