by Denise Ryan, niseryan@hotmail.com

Right now I’m pairing new fiction with older books. Yup, right out there in valuable display space I’m putting elderly books with dated covers and silly titles like Fat, a Love Story (Barbara Wersba, 1987) and Secrets of the Shopping Mall (Richard Peck, 1979). But here’s the trick: Right next to these books I’m displaying hot new titles with similar themes. So, that’s the gimmick – old book, new book. How similar, yet how different! Why not read them both and compare?

For instance, with Fat, a Love Story, I’ve paired last year’s Huge by Sasha Paley. Both books are about weight, dieting, and love. I can’t keep Huge on the shelf, but Fat is really good too and it never moves. Never. The cover is just too…yesterday. (A girl with a bad haircut is eating a piece of cheesecake while a thinner couple drives by in a convertible. Back in the day, it was probably the coolest thing ever. Now? It looks like something your mother probably read.)

For a while now, I’ve been trying to get young patrons to read worthwhile older books, urging them to ignore the dreary decades-old covers in favor of plot, characters etc. But that’s been a doomed effort for the most part, and I’ve seen lots of patrons reject one edition of a book one minute, only to seize the exact same book – with a newer cover – the next.

So, I’m really excited that this “pairing” approach seems to be working. The kids still make fun of the unfashionable covers (that’s half the fun), but they’re taking the old books along with their newer counterparts. Somehow, the association between the two gives the older books credibility and they’re getting some attention again – just in time to avoid the “weed pile.”

Here is a short list of books I’ve paired, but possibilities are endless!

Theme: Social misfits
Freak (2007) by Marcella Pixley
The Seventh Grade Weirdo (1992) by Lee Wardlaw

Theme: Body image
Huge (2007) by Sasha Paley
Fat, A Love Story (1987) by Barbara Wersba

Theme: The mall
It’s a Mall World After All (2006) by Janette Rallison
Secrets of the Shopping Mall (1979) by Richard Peck

Theme: Sexual assault
Safe (2007) by Susan Shaw
Are You in the House Alone? (1976) by Richard Peck

Theme: Boarding school
A Great and Terrible Beauty (2003) by Libby Bray
And Both Were Young (1983) by Madeleine L’Engle

Theme: Future societies
The Declaration (2007) by Gemma Malley
The Vandal (1979) by Ann Schlee

Theme: Survival in the Alaskan wilderness
The Trap (2006) by John Smelcer
Death Walk (1991) by Walt Morey

Theme: Summer camp
Camp Rules (2007) by Jordan Roter
The Goats (1987) by Brock Cole

Yup.  Just two more weeks before April, which means Poetry Month is once again upon us.  Although I can’t write poetry to save my life I do love to read it.  It was this fact that was foremost on my mind last year when I planned my first Teen Poetry Program.  I wanted something low-key, educational but fun and settled on a kind of coffee house type program where teens could sip on coffee/tea and listen while others read their poetry outloud, slammed if they knew how, read someone elses poetry, then participated in a series of activities that would teach them some poetry skills. 

You can read all the details about the program on an old blog post.  We’re planning a similar event this year, however, we’ve invited a local published poet to come in and “open” the event.  If there was one thing I learned during my experience last year it was that poetry programs are a perfect opportunity to collaborate and network with your local high schools.  It was because of the poetry program that I managed to meet one of the school librarians and also an English teacher who offered her class extra credit for attending the event and extra points if they recited a poem.  If it wasn’t for her class I probably wouldn’t have had so many attend the program.  For some reason I always felt kind of down about that fact, that the only way we managed to get teens to come to our program was to essentially bribe them.  But looking back I realize that it’s all about perspective.  Despite how we got them through the door, they did come, they did have fun and I do believe that they brought something back from the experience. For me that is the very definition of a successful program.  Many of them were very shy in the beginning or acted too cool to read poetry in front of an audience but it only took a few brave souls and one amazing young lady who really knew how to slam to encourage the rest to step up.  Of course, the flavored coffee and chocolates probably helped too.

 Below is the slide presentation I used during the program.  Please feel free to use it, change it, as you like.  I found most of my activities from the IPL Teenspace poetry wiki but unfortuntately it doesn’t seem to be working right now so I can only provide the cached link. I would love to hear some ideas from our readers on various poetry programs, there are so many different ways to share and encourage a love of words and writing with teens.

| View | Upload your own

Thank you for reading the Alternative Teen Services Blog. Please take a few minutes to let us know about your interest in reading this blog!

http://www.polldaddy.com/s/38F3D9E7702F9350/

Thank you for your time!

Introducing one of our new bloggers for the Brave & Brass Blog! Denise Ryan is a writer, a book reviewer, a YA librarian. She lives in Stamford, Connecticut where she’s currently reading One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke.

Every day, kids crowd around my desk to talk about Twilight, the novel by Stephanie Meyer about Bella, a teenage girl who moves to Forks, Washington and falls in love with Edward, a vampire who has been seventeen years old for more than a century now.

My screensaver, courtesy of my YA patrons, is a photo of a silver Volvo S60 R, the same kind that Edward drives. I receive emails from teenagers with addresses like “vampiregirl16″ and “edward4ever.” (Immediately, I know which “Edward” they’re talking about and it’s not a kid from town.)

Generally, these are girls around the age of 14, but not always. The kid who printed all the cast photos from the upcoming movie Twilight, based on the book, is a boy. He’s already planning a party at his house on opening night.

What is it about these books? How have they conquered popular culture? (Vampires were cool when I was a teenager too, although we were reading the Anne Rice series about Lestat and Louis.) Personally, I think it’s all about physicality and desire – desire for flesh – desire that is dangerous and must be quelled – desire that can kill.

Here, I’m talking of course of Edward’s desire for blood, but also of Bella’s desire for more ordinary human contact with the gorgeous guy she loves. In Twilight, both are potentially fatal; every time Bella and Edward get a bit too “hot n’ heavy,” they must break apart before Edward becomes too overcome with bloodlust and (literally) devours his girlfriend. The characters both crave and fear intimacy. In short, the book is full of sex without anyone ever actually having any – very much like the imaginations of many young teenagers!

If your patrons haven’t read the Twilight saga yet (there are three titles in the series: Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse), offer it to them. It will keep them busy for a while. Here’s a short list of other “Forbidden Fruit” fiction for readers who can’t get enough of vampires:

De La Cruz, Melissa: Blue Bloods

Hautman, Pete: Sweetblood

Klause, Annette Curtis: The Silver Kiss

Mead, Richelle: Vampire Academy

Moore, Christopher: You Suck: A love story

Rice, Anne: Interview with a Vampire

Sedgwick, Marcus: My Swordhand is Singing

Schreiber, Ellen: Vampire Kisses (with four sequels)

Vande Velde, Vivian: Companions of the Night

Westerfeld, Scott: Peeps

For more Vampire Fiction recommendations, visit the Teen Lib Wiki page about Vampire Romance Fiction!

Posted by Denise Ryan from Stamford, Connecticut. You can contact denise at niseryan @ hotmail.com

Introducing Jennifer…. Jennifer is a Young Adult Librarian for the Otis Library at Norwich, CT. Getting a new shipment of books is the best part; it always feels like Christmas morning and she has the hardest time deciding which book to take home first. Thus her bookshelf is filled with books and she has a mile long list of books-in-waiting. She’s also addicted to the internet.

Teen Library Websites: Love them or Hate Them?
I’ve recently spent a lot of time researching library websites in anticipation for our new website for Otis Library in Connecticut. Our site, in trying to be uniform as a whole site, quickly made our teen page less about graphics and more about the information.However, when I first looked around, there were pages that I wanted to emulate (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery). My favorite site was the teen site at the Public library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County of North Carolina. Their Library Loft page is bold, interesting, and chock full of information. The Louisville Free Public Library has a wonderful teen page including, along with many other libraries, booklists. I freely admit to including 2 booklist pages after looking at this page. Teens at the Johnson Country Library’s teen page can change the background theme of their page with several choices including Goth or monkeys. Each library strives to make their page unique and attention grabbing, but according to teens that I’ve spoken with, it may be a lost cause.

1) Do teens really look at library websites?

2) Are they drawn to images/graphics or more information?

3) What do they envision for the library website?

The biggest question of all:

4) Do they even care?

With all the social networking sites (yes, I’m on myspace, facebook, and Shelfari – all under the title YABOOKNERD to make it easy) does it really matter to have a wicked cool teen website? From the teens I talked to, most didn’t really know that we had a website catering to them. Once they did know, they didn’t seem impressed and when asked would be unlikely to use the site, unless they were bored. So in this case – how do we reach out to teens? Does anyone else find the library website a tool of the past?

Posted by Jennifer

New post from Jeff 2.0! Jeff took a 15 year detour through chemistry and engineering before becoming a librarian. He wonders why he didn’t start there in the first place. In addition to being a YA specialist, Jeff is also a Boy Scout leader.

Intellectual Property Rights, Creative Commons and…Nine Inch Nails?

Teaching information literacy skills is an important role for YA librarians. Educating teens about such issues as intellectual property rights, digital rights management (DRM) and the law can often come across as preachy. Fortunately, an unlikely partner can help break the ice with teens on this subject: Nine Inch Nails.

Ask a teen where they got the music on their MP3 player and they’ll likely reply “the internet.” Of course, the real question is: was it obtained legally? While authorized downloads of artists’ music are available through online retailers such as Apple’s iTunes Store or Rhapsody, many people still use file-sharing protocols such as Limewire, KaZaa and BitTorrents for unauthorized downloading (aka theft) of copyrighted materials.

The world seems divided into two camps: those who view all intellectual property as essentially being public domain (as long as they don’t get caught), and those who view all intellectual property as private property posted “no trespassing, authorized persons only”. The former camp says that copyright stifles creative uses of intellectual property such as sampling in music; the latter camp says that owners of intellectual property should have the right to control all its uses.

As in most ideological battles, there is a middle ground. Enter Creative Commons, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable corporationthat defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Our licenses help you keep your copyright while inviting certain uses of your work — a “some rights reserved” copyright [http://creativecommons.org/about/]

Many teens may be familiar with Creative Commons from its use on Flickr. Flickr allows you to apply Creative Commons licensing to grant other users the right to use your work under certain circumstances.

Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails have given us the opportunity to use their music to educate teens on intellectual property issues. NIN has released their latest album, Ghosts I-IV under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. This means that you can share it, or remix it and share it under the same license for noncommercial (i.e. free) uses as long as you attribute it to Nine Inch Nails. Nine Inch Nails offers the album for download for only $5, or you can download a partial album for free from the website or via BitTorrent.

The album consists of instrumental tracks which are perfect for remixing and/or adding vocals. One of the programs suggested for Teen Tech Week 2008 (or any other time) involves teens using Splice Music, JamGlue, or Audacity to create their own music. Why not include downloading the free Nine Inch Nails tracks and have the teens make their own remix? How about adding vocals? What about a music video posted to YouTube? The finished product could be uploaded and shared following the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. The teens will have fun exercising their creativity, and we will get the opportunity to talk with teens about intellectual property rights and Creative Commons licensing.
Posted by Jeff 2.0