Want to Serve Teens? You Have to Know What They Think
In January I went to ALA and was astounded when I ran into two teenage girls. We all stood there and stared at the Pandemonium ARC. I believe there were longing caresses of the ARC itself involved but it had a huge DISPLAY ONLY sticker on the cover so we just sat there and dreamed. We struck up a conversation and I was super impressed to learn that they had paid their own way to ALA and they submitted for a The 2012 Project pic. Then a couple of months later I ran into Marissa, one of the two, again when I went to meet Lauren Oliver. It turns out that these two fabby fab teens are book bloggers and they have a blog entitled Beneath the Moon and Stars. I have met some more teenage book bloggers via Twitter. Honestly, I love reading what teens have to say about the books they read. We can read and review all that we want as adults, but if we are going to serve teens we need to spend time getting to know, understand, and respect teens. So today, I introduce you to Marissa and Jasmine. These are two teens that you should follow to keep your pulse on what teens are reading, and what they think about it.Hi this is Marissa and Jasmine. We started our YA book blog Beneath the Moon and Stars back in November. We wanted to make a blog because we saw tons of other bloggers getting awesome books for review. Also we’re best friends who both love to read and we got tired of talking to just each other about these amazing books so we figured why not make a blog and tell everyone else about them? Since starting our blog we have talked to tons of amazing bloggers and authors and went to a lot of events where we were actually recognized which was really cool.
Back in January we heard about ALA which is a national book conference and this year the Midwinter one was in Dallas so we decided to go. We are so glad that we did. It was such an amazing experience and we got tons of book and we met a lot of great people including Karen who runs this awesome blog. People were really surprised that we were teens who not only read all the time but blogged about it too because most of the people who read and blog about YA aren’t actually teens. That’s understandable but if you’re a teen and you love to read and are interested in blogging about it you should go for it. As long as you put the right amount of time and effort into it it’s really not that hard.
Okay so now to recommend books. It’s really hard for us to recommend only 5 so we decided to split up our favorites for different genres. Hopefully sometime soon you can go on a book shopping spree. Now get ready to take notes:
Please be sure to go visit their blog and leave them encouraging comments. They are doing what we all work so hard to get teens doing: reading! Do you follow any other teen book bloggers? Let us know who in the comments. Also, what are your recommendations for amazing series, dystopian, paranormal romance, and contemporary fiction? What book isn’t very popular that you love? Share in the comments.
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About Karen Jensen, MLS
Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 30 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).
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