Central Massachusetts Year of the Teen

Booklist has just announced their top 10 list of new romance fiction for youth. From their website:

“Although there aren’t any blushing beach reads on this year’s list of the best romances reviewed in Booklist during the past 12 months, these titles do explore a wide range of the ever-curious and urgent tuggings of the heart, with a mix of genres, including fantasy and even a biography, from boy-meets-girl to boy-meets-boy.”

The full, annotated list with suggested grade levels and links to full reviews can be found in Booklist Online.

Common Sense Media has just release the results of a new national poll on how teens use social networking, and how parents perceive their teens’ online behavior. The disparity is surprising. You can read the full poll results, a summary, or just check out a chart on the Common Sense Media website.

ALA will be webcasting the Youth Media Awards, including the Printz, live on January 26 at 7:45 am Mountain time. Space is limited, so get there early! I will be attending the press conference in Denver, and will be posting the results as they are announced to the Youth Services Notes blog.

Find out more about the webcast on the ALA website.

There is a great posting by social networking expert danah boyd regarding cyberbullying as it relates to the Lori Drew case. She says, “Lori Drew abused her power as a knowledgeable adult by leveraging her adult knowledge of psychology to humiliate and torment a teen girl. Put another way, Lori Drew engaged in psychological and emotional child abuse. Child abuse includes the psychological or emotional mistreatment of a child. Unfortunately, most legal statutes focus on sexual and physical abuse and neglect because emotional abuse is very hard to substantiate and prosecute. But realistically, she should’ve been tried with child abuse, not a computer crime.” What do you think?

The article is definitely worth a look – the comments are insightful too! Find it at: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/11/30/reflections_on.html

If you have teens in your library who LOVED Twilight, and need something new to read, check out the new YALSA Popular Paperbacks list called “Dead, Dying and the Undead“. From their website: “Death can be an adventure, but not everyone lives to tell about it.  Join us in exploring the often mysterious world of death and those who experience it.”