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Dear Readers,
The Brave & Brass Book Blog will soon be integrated into our main Alt Teen blog. In a couple of weeks, the B&B blog will no longer exist separately. Posts form the B&B blog have already been imported into the main blog at www.yalibrarian.com.
If you stay subscribed to the B&B blog Feed, (that you are likely currently reading in your rss reader) then you will continue to get literature-themed posts. We have created a new feed that will catch all lit-themed posts on the main blog and distribute them to the rss reader of your choice. And that feed will automatically be updated for you, so you don’t have to lift a finger. if you like what you are getting, do nothing, and you will continue to get it.
However, if you’d like to get all posts from the main blog (about teen programming, news, rants, etcetera), then please consider subscribing to our “Main Blog” with this feed.
Live journal readers can continue getting literature themed posts by doing nothing. Just keep reading this lj feed, and we will send “lit themed” posts your way. However, if you want to get ALL POSTS, then add this feed to your friends list.
The Internet exists to teach us that we are never as obsessed as we think we are. There is always a more fanatical collector or expert on obscure 16mm film reels or paperback young adult novels, to show us we are but mere enthusiasts. On a recommendation from the YALSA listserv, I visited The Dairi Burger to read about the reissue of the execrable teen series Sweet Valley High. Witty and smart readers visit the site and demonstrate a remarkable memory of plots and characters that overwhelms my own. But we all have similar stories. Most of us read compulsively, sometimes under bedsheets with flashlights, and devoured books like cakes then and now. Some of those books were destructive to our impressionable psyches, but when we’re all grown up we hope they form a generational bond, a laugh, a deep roll of the eye or maybe even some critical analysis.
While the SV canon—and it is canonical, though sometimes flexible with fact and reality, with hundreds of titles and series within series—may seem benign and forgettable to most, Francine Pascal’s covert mission of normalizing repulsive, greedy, shallow, and extraordinarily sexist behavior has helped to socially condition most of her vulnerable young readers. At the outset of each book, Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, our heroic twins are always described in their perfect size six, tanned, sun-streaked blond glory, with eyes the color of the Pacific Ocean, even! What is intended to read variously as virtue, vivaciousness, ambition, magnanimity in the twins is really callowness, condescension, ruthlessness, self-righteousness. And what of the fat or single, LGBT folks, people of color, the poor? If they even exist in this world, they are tragically doomed or soon forgotten and they function as catalysts for the primary characters, eliciting pity and
contempt.
This reissue is completely irresponsible and unnecessary. And the only reported edit is that Jessica and Elizabeth are now a perfect size four. I know that none of this is new, that we are all familiar with the evils of media for young people. Most likely children and teens today will not be interested in hoary Sweet Valley when they have young adult books like Gossip Girl, The A List, The Clique. The new offerings are mordantly self aware and cheeky and seem sometimes to have a hint of parody, even while they exist primarily to prop up the most garish and exclusive brands. In the SV books, characters are often kidnapped, raped, beaten, and tragically killed, but maintain a glazed innocence and mostly abstain from drinking, drugs, and sex, except for when it kills them to prevent others from indulging. At least the new naughty YA books aren’t pretenders.
And for illustrative purposes here are some choice quotations:
“There are a dozen fairy-tale princesses, Rose thought, and they’re going to make me a fairy-tale princess too.”
“He responded by turning his face to hers and kissing her hard, his arms crushing her against him, his mouth demanding what his body wanted to take.”
Lila, upon seeing Manuel: “I don’t know how she can date him. He’s so ethnic and working class.”
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
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!
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 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
In my place of work, there is a centralized fund used to purchase teen materials for the branch libraries and those purchases are usually based on starred reviews in journals. Unfortunately, these starred books tend to be the types of materials that teens in my community are not interested in. Instead, they hunger for urban books, high-interest non-fiction, and manga. There are also requests for the best sellers that don’t necessarily get starred book reviews, such as James Patterson’s Maximum Ride series. And I also have some classic readers that are gearing up for college.
Thankfully, I have an infill budget that can be used to build the collection beyond starred booklists. Herein lies the challenge. With a modest amount of infill money, where should you start? Should the money go towards building a core collection? This can be especially pertinent if the collection is lacking core materials and balanced genres. Should it be spent on high-interest materials that will fly of the shelves? The missing college-bound classics that a handful of teens are requesting? Best sellers that aren’t stocked by the publication date because they weren’t starred in a review journal? Selection lists from the Young Adult Library Services Association? As a children’s/teen librarian with a modest budget, I must make the best of the allocated funds to provide teens with a balanced collection.
Here’s what I did to meet this challenge:
The first year I worked here, I purchased core materials for the collection. Authors such as Sharon Flake, Sharon Draper, Walter Dean Myers, and Jaqueline Woodson were missing, possibly because they were initially available but never returned. To get ideas for what makes a core collection in an urban library,I browsed book blogs on the internet, recommended reading lists on Amazon.com, and articles published by YALS and VOYA. I spent the remaining money on high-interest materials and manga. Teens in the library eagerly provided me with a list of manga series to order. And YALSA’s Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers is an excellent resource when buying high-interest materials for teens.
 During year two, I have focused on acquiring urban books, which includes the Bluford High Series and the Kimani Tru Series. I’ve also run into a dilemma with the manga collection, in which most of the material acquired from year one is permanently missing. In other words, about 40% of the manga has been stolen. At this point I had to decide between purchasing new manga series that our animanga club has suggested, and reordering missing titles. I chose to acquire the new series and year three collection money may focus on missing titles.
At the end of the budget year, I plan to use YALSA’s Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults and Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers to get up to date with new high-interest materials. I usually poke around in the other YALSA selection lists too, including Great Graphic Novels for teens.
I think the key to building any collection is to have a game plan and teens should be involved in the process of developing the plan. I based the way I built the collection on the interests of teens in the community. I did surveys that asked about their favorites subjects and I also take notes from reader’s advisory interactions. That’s how I found out that urban books, high interest fic and non-fic, and manga are the materials most likely to be checked out.
With a modest budget, you can’t have the perfect teen collection. You can only build towards it. So you have to make decisions about what aspect must be focused on. I chose high-interest materials because I want the books to be read. But I balanced out that focus by purchasing core authors that teens from the inner-city would be required to read for book reports or just because their friends told them about it!
Resources
Core Collection
YALSA’s Outstanding Books for the College Bound
Urban books for Teens
Crazy Quilts Blog - 2007 list for teens of color
Crazy Quilts Blog - 2006 lists
Selection Lists
YALSA Selection List
Manga
TokyoPop
DelRay
Addendum: Readers, if you have any good resources you use for collection development, please share!
During our peak business hours on any day of the week, it’s common for a teen to meander up to the circ desk every 5 min to inform me of the boredom or new drama in their lives. What begins as a game can quickly become distracting for the patron I’m currently assisting. I’m sure that you too are familiar with the various ways harmless teen behavior becomes disruptive or escalates to more serious issues. In an attempt to create a positive environment for teens to interact outside of programs, I struggle to find the right type of activity to sustain their interest as well as occupy a good amount of their spare time. Because it’s hard to break into conversation with some teens, I’d like to share a few practices I’ve tried which have shown to influence constructive relationships between teens and books as well as teens and myself.
When displaying “Pep Rally” found in Blue Lipstick: Concrete Poems by John Grandits, I’m greeted with gaffaws as teens gaze upon the wry stick figured cheerleader illustration. The word ‘air’ fits within a large O for a head, ‘ridiculously thin waist’ bends to form the torso, ‘bOObs’ cross the mid-section, and ’stupid little skirt’ collapses upon itself as it swishes side-to-side. In this collection of 30+ poems, language acrobats across pages, zig-zaging, and curling as hair might on a “Bad Hair Day.” These clever word pictures accompany the opinions of a mistrusting high school teen who eventually learns to confide in someone like “Andrea, a cheerleader who turned out to be a regular person- annoyingly pretty, but a regular person.” It doesn’t matter if teens read all of the poems, for they just might open up towards you.
You can use prompts found in the Write Brain Workbook: 366 Exercises to Liberate Your Writing by Bonnie Neubauer to get teens thinking outside of typical first person stories. On a strip of paper type “Without looking down, describe what, if your feet had eyes, they’d see right now” or other various excerpts to litter your teen area, create a bulletin board display, or slip them inside books during checkout.
Hopefully you’ve picked up a few good hints to assist you in your interactions with teens. As I discover other helpful practices, I’ll give ya a holla and share. For more inspiration, follow these links: Immersed in Verse: An Informative, Slightly Irreverant & Totally Tremendous Guide to Living the Poet’s Life by Alan Wolf OR Poetry is Contagious: How I Teach My Students to Write Award-Winning Poetry by Betsey Coleman.
A while ago I shared with you a review of It’s a Bird, from a graphic novel review newsletter I write for my library system called Getting Graphic. It has been a little longer between reviews than I had planned, but today I am back with two more reviews for you. The first review is a newer title that you should definitely be aware of and the second is an older title, and is perhaps my favorite graphic novel of all time. I will continue to post more titles here each month or so, but if you want a little more please check out the newsletter itself and feel free to subscribe if you so desire.
The Plain Janes
By: Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg
 When Jane was knocked off her feet by a nearby terrorist attack in Metro City her parents decide it is time to leave. The family moves a long way from the city to a suburban town called Kent Waters. Jane hates it there, until she forms a secret club called People Loving Art In Neighborhoods, or simply P.L.A.I.N. The group, which is made up of four less than popular girls, all named Jane, attempts to create meaning both for themselves and for their town by creating renegade art projects throughout the community. While some folks seem to love the art provided by P.L.A.I.N. the community as a whole begins to fear it and starts to investigate these “crimes” very seriously. The Plain Janes is the first of a variety of graphic novels put out by MINX, an imprint of D.C. comics that is aimed at teenage girls. It is fun and quirky, and will certainly appeal to its intended audience, as well any adult, female or male, who can remember what it is like to be a teenager trying to find his or her way through life.
Blankets
By: Craig Thompson
 At a very expansive 592 pages, Blankets has the space to cover a lot of material. In this novel, the author relates his childhood, telling readers about his family, which consists of two very religious and strict parents as well as a younger brother who is at times the companion in his adventures but can also double as his mortal enemy. His bizarre family life and childhood are the reasons that he often feels ostracized from his peers until he meets Raina, who soon becomes his first love. This is a coming of age tale, much akin in style to J.D. Salinger’s classic The Catcher in the Rye. Often, Heralded as one of the best ever graphic novels and as one of the first great examples of the genre, Blankets has a lot to live up to. Readers will not, however, be disappointed in this choice, even if they go in with the highest of expectations. This is one title that any graphic novel fan should be aware of, and is a great title for a first exposure to the genre.
In and Out of the Rabbit Hole
China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun is a singular phantasmagoria that nonetheless tempts comparisons to Alice in Wonderland, Narnia, and His Dark Materials. In his acknowledgments Miéville thanks Lewis Carroll, Tanith Lee, and Neil Gaiman, among other writers, clearly signifying what is to come for the reader. By not shrugging off his influences, Miéville can integrate them unselfconsciously with his own ideas and language. Miéville is a master of the switcheroo and the sneak. He thumbs his nose at conventions of the fantasy genre like councils and prophesies. And happily, he values libraries and librarians. The extreme librarian and bookaneer Margarita Staples says,
“I used to really look forward to requests for books way down in the abyss. There are risks: hunters, animals, and accidents. Twenty years ago, I was in a group looking for a book someone had requested. We were led by Ptolemy Yes…after weeks of searching we ran out of food and had to turn back…he’s out there still in the Wordhoard Abyss living off shelf-monkeys, looking and he’ll be back one day, book in his hand.”
Un Lun Dun is shelved in my library’s YA division and I think a lot of geekier older teens would love it. However, the book would be just as appropriate in any adult collection. It is irritating that a book is considered YA if it is fantasy and features teenage protagonists. Un Lun Dun’s heroines are the tall blonde Zanna and the awkward round Deeba, who both find themselves in Un London, one of many abcities including Lost Angeles, Baghdidn’t, Parisn’t. The story of the abcities is a critique of disposable culture and environmental collapse. Broken things find their way to abcities where they are repurposed as tools and weapons.
While Miéville packs his story with too many characters to remember, Un Lun Dun delights with its many inventions: Brokkenbroll, smombies, Smog, Klinneract, Wraithtown, Webminster Alley, Storyladders, the Black Windows, and MOIL (Mildly Obsolete in London.) Miéville enlivens his inventions with great illustrations that give a sense of how cinematic this novel could be.
One of Un Lun Dun’s most subversive moments occurs when Deeba is accused of terrorism by Inspector Churl. “Were you terrified, Murgatroyd? There you go girl: you’re a terrorist. You make me twitchy, and under Article Forty-one of the 2000 Terrorism Bill, that’s all I need. Time for some reasonable force, I think.” It is exciting to see a fantasy novel marketed to a teenage audience exposing corruption and the erosion of civil liberties. I only hope that readers can draw the obvious parallels to our present-day situation.
Un Lun Dun was exciting to me in a way a book hasn’t been since I was nine, reading by flashlight under the covers. It is a smashing combination of dystopian anarchism and realist hope.
   
The Alt Teen Services website has a Twitter account. We plan on bringing you the latest tweets/news on young adult authors, teen literature, and our blog posts. Most of the tweets will be reproduced from MySpace bulletins posted by YA authors and publishing companies. If you don’t feel like going through the on slaught of bulletins or don’t have a MySpace account, follow us on Twitter. This could also be a great resource for posting on your teen blog. If you’re a young adult author, make sure you’re bulletins are considered for promotion by friending us at http://www.myspace.com/yalibrarian and http://www.myspace.com/trailswest.
Alt Teen Services on Twitter 8-16 thru 8-22:
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