National Library Week - What's Hot in the Library!

Today I have with me an awesome librarian blogger. Kelly from Stacked. She's a teen reference librarian in Illinois! Gotta love those Illinois librarians... :) She's here to talk a bit more about how she selects books for her teen readers!


As a teen librarian, one of my biggest jobs is selecting materials for our teen department -- that includes fiction, non-fiction, and audiobooks. I'm a big believer in buying what the kids want, so when I'm asked to buy something, I almost always do. Once in a while I like to see what is and isn't moving, too, to make sure I'm buying enough of what readers want. Here's a little insight into the last couple of years -- I'm purposely excluding Stephenie Meyer's series.

With books that have a 2010 copyright, the highest circulating title so far as been Rachel Vincent's My Soul to Save. Her series has been doing so well at our library that I've already got her third book in my cart for my next purchase. The paranormal-without-being-vampires-or-werewolves theme seems to be the draw here, along with a fast-moving plot and the well-known publisher Harlequin. Other titles with the 2010 copyright circulating very high so far are The Naughty List by Suzanne Young and The Iron King by Julie Kagawa -- another Harlequin!

Looking at the last two years, our biggest movers have been the Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard, Chronicles of Vlad Todd by Heather Brewer, and Vampire Kisses by Ellen Schreiber, Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead, and Debbie Vigiue's Sweet Seasons series. Darren Shan's Demonata series moves a heck of a lot, as well.

One of my favorite things to do is book talk. I'm in the schools book talking regularly, and I'm always surprised what books are huge hits post-talk. This year, I've talked a lot of wonderful books, including How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiord, Some Girls Are and Cracked up to Be by Courtney Summers (a HUGE hit with not only the girls but the BOYS - something I cannot commend her enough on), Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland, Someone Named Eva by Sally Walker, among others. But take one guess the most popular book I've talked?

Charles and Emma: The Darwin's Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman.

This surprises me, as it is a book that languished on the shelf for a long time and even left me, the open-minded reader, not wanting to touch it. I feared too much science and not enough story. But that's just how I sold the book to the group of eager 9th graders -- this is a book about being human and making decisions that impact one's beliefs in science and in religion. It's a story about what happens when your wife dies and asks what happens in the afterlife. It's a story that is entirely non-fiction but paints Darwin as any famous person in today's world. The kids were drawn to the science and the religion, but they were drawn into the story about choices and how one can balance what one believes and what one discovers about the contrary.

One of the things I think keeps me successful and motivated is that I am a reader. I read the books my teens are reading and I blog about them tirelessly. It keeps my mind fresh and makes me think about what it is my teens will connect to, and it gives me an opportunity to connect with a wide variety of not only librarians but READERS. There are some fantastic bloggers out there who get a lot of slack -- and in particular, I cite Kristi at the Story Siren here -- for posting "only positive reviews." You know what? Those are my readers, too. My readers know what they like and thus will like about anything they read. Me? I'm a critical reader and DON'T like everything I read. I love making the connections with those who are opposite of me. It keeps me grounded and makes me a much more critical collection developer. Just because I thought it stunk doesn't mean my teens won't LOVE it.

I love my job. I could not ask for a better way to combine what I am passionate about -- reading and treating teenagers like real people -- than being a teen librarian. Sure there are endless challenges, but that's what makes the job exciting and working with teens exciting. I never know when a program will have 1 boy show up or when it will pack a room with 30 kids. But each time, I know it goes back to talking about reading and what we love to read about. Despite how much we hear about the changing library, it really boils down to a passion for the written word. That in itself comes through in a million forms and formats.

As we speak, I'm blazing through Birthmarked by Caragh O'Brien, as it has been sitting on the shelf until today. It's one I know my kids will eat up, but it takes me to read it and sell it to them sometimes to get it going. I do it for me, but I do it for the teens who are always looking for the next book to make them fall in love again with reading.

Thank you Kelly for stopping by today! I really love my job at an elementary school library but I do envy those teen librarians... they have a better reason to read YA fiction than I do! :-D