Support Teen Lit Day

Today is Support Teen Lit Day! If you support Teen Lit, there are a lot of ways you can participate.

3. Why YA?

Join the discussion and share your favorite YA titles!  Read the post that started it all and then share yours.  Want to read my Why YA? moment – read my letter to Lauren Oliver.  Or read how the Hunger Games changed the way Sara Ansted viewed the world we live in.  Teens and adults everywhere are invited to share their Why YA? titles.

4.  Put it out there so they can see it

Let’s face it, we all just a book by its cover and it is one of the ways that we choose what we read.  Make sure you have ways to show teens book covers and catch their eye.  Weed your collections so every shelf is only 2/3s full and face out a title at the end of each of the middle 3 shelves.  If you have end caps or table tops use them.  Put up signs, shelf talkers, and booklists (make sure you put book covers on your booklists).  You can find already made signs and posters at the TLT Facebook page.  Make it easy for teens to come into libraries, find what they want and walk out satisfied.  They may have to be put on the waiting list for The Hunger Games, but you know that they may also like x, y and z.

5.  Talk to staff about teen lit

Every week I send out a message that highlights upcoming teen programs, news stories and teen titles.  I give a book review of a title that we have in our collection and then suggest 2 to 5 other titles that readers may like if they like the book I reviewed.  Then, when a teen patron walks up to the desk and I am not there, a moment may click for my staff and they know just where to go find the information to help teens walk out satisfied patrons.  And right now, 2 of my co-workers are now reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.  So when a teen walks up to check out that book they can say, “ooh, I really liked that book, you’ll have to tell me what you think when you are finished reading it.”  And voila – a connection has been made and we move one step closer from THE library to MY library.

Don’t forget to let teens see you read.  One of my co-workers is also a classroom teacher and when they have reading time in class, she reads YA lit.  Her students often ask her about what she is reading check out what they see her reading.  Modeling should not be underestimated when it comes to reading.  I created a hand out on ways to help your child be a better reader because parents kept asking and my #1 tip: let your children (in this case teens) see YOU read.

Have a great Support Teen Lit Day everyone.  I know you are out there doing it every day and I am so honored to consider you my peers.