Wrap-up

"This is end my beautiful friend."

I went to the Teen Talent at the Mulberry St. branch yesterday. Daniel, the star of my teen interview, was in 3 of the 5 performances. The teens were nervous and excited. They had invited their families, friends, and their teacher to the show. The teacher kept shushing (SHHHHHH!) them as they scurried around the library. None of the librarians said shush and none of the other patrons complained. It was nice to see how much the library is part of their lives. These teens come to the library every day afterschool and participate in most of the programs the library offers.
Teens are a very important demographic in the library. Librarians should aim to tap into teens enthusiasm for things--when they love something, they really love it. And they really like it when the YA librarian listens to them and is able to create programs for them and recommend new books to them. It was so nice to see how much the teens appreciate Kim (the YA librarian) and how much they use the library.

I really enjoyed discovering YA lit. I loved, loved, loved True Diary and Freakshow and Little Brother. I got to indulge in my love for Gossip Girl and Chuck Bass. We watched The Wire!! It was great. Seriously, I got to been a teen all over again with none the angst.

XOXO

"All in the game yo, all in the game"

So says Omar from The Wire.

Street lit is an interesting genre and it's gaining a stronger presence in libraries. I'm having trouble getting into True to the Game but I can see its popularity. Teens like books that are "real" and "true" and street lit offers that. There's a chaotic rawness to these books and there's no sugarcoating going on.

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I can't make it through True to the Gameright now...too many other things going on. Prior to this class I hadn't read any street lit but now I've discovered
Around the Way Girls which I liked a lot better than True to the Game. While these girls are involved in all kinds of crazy drama involving men, drugs, guns, clubs, and just about everything else, there's also internal reflection. We get to know what these girls are thinking and feeling. (On a totally random note: the character of Frido? All I kept picturing was a gangsta-hobbit.)

I loved Tyrell and will definitely read the upcoming sequel. I know it's a much more emotional read than street lit but I still think it's a good recommendation. I'd want to talk to the patron to see which reading direction they wanted to go in.

Safety

I don't know where to begin. Living Dead Girl is too horrifying for words. I can't find the right words because everything would feel like it is trivializing Alice's story. It gives you the feeling of all the air being sucked out of your body while being kicked in the stomach and back simultaneously. It's something so brutal that you want to scream as loud as you can to have some sort of release but you can't make any noise. This was a terrible and sad story. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be like "why didn't she run away?" and part of me thinks that too but at the same time this girl has been so traumatized and scared and everything that once was has been beaten out of her. She's just a shell of who she was. There was a recent article which I, unfortunately, didn't read but I skimmed it and it said that people who are in terrible situations such as abusive relationships often lose the will to leave. They've become so defeated and broken that escaping has gone beyond them. God, this book was brutal.

I finished ALmost Home and while I can appreciate the stories I wish we had gotten to know the characters a little more...that they had revealed themselves more while telling their stories. Eeyore's story was terrible but at least you had some hope in the end. These are very broken kids and sometimes you can't come back from that kind of brokeness. And I wanted to knock out that teacher of Rusty's...what a predator.

I know that sad and upsetting stories have high appeal to teens. I haven't read A Child Called It but I think I'm going to have to at some point. I think part of the appeal is that adolescence is a very emotionally volatile time...everything seems to felt to the utmost extreme and these books allow them to give into those emotional extremes. I think it's hard in class sometimes because we're not reading these books as teens, we're reading them as adults and sometimes forget that we might have a different viewpoint than teens.

Anyway, I made it through After School Nightmare. Manga and your backwards reading...how your frustrate me!! Seriously, I have a really hard time with it and it always makes me feel like I'm going to miss something important in the plot.

Afterschool Nightmare was SO weird.