Middle/Grade Tween Read-Alikes – Mental Illness and LGBTQ+

     Middle grade and tween read-alikes? Now you might be thinking “Hey wait! This is TEEN services underground!” And you are correct! However, teen services can span a large range of ages and encompass readers at all different levels.

     One library that I work at, has the Teen age range set from 10-17 years old. 10 year olds are still in elementary school and are likely not going to be reading any YA yet. Therefore, to really be able to serve them and their needs, we need to reach into our middle grade and juvenile fiction sections. Not only do you have teen patrons that will still be in elementary school, you may have older readers who might be reading on a lower level, or may not be comfortable with the content presented in a YA book.

     Recently, I have had several parents seeking out books about LGBTQ+ and Mental Health topics. These are not common themes in middle grade fiction like they often are in our young adult section. So to make lives a bit easier, I have put together a list for each of these topics that covers a variety of things within it.

     For the mental illness list, I have put the book and the author with the mental illness bullet pointed below it, that way it’s easier to skim through. For the LGBTQ+ list, it is just the books and their author. I have uploaded them below as PDFs. As always, if you would like the editable publisher file, please let us know and I’d be happy to send it along!

     If you have lists like these, or know of great books to be added to the lists, please share with us in the comments!

LGBTQ – Juvenile

Mental Illness – Juvenile

Accepting Applications for New Agents/Bloggers

Now that the holidays are over, we wanted to repost our call-out for a new blogger(s). The blogger requirements are pretty easy.  Here is what we’re looking for

• A teen services librarian or someone who has teen services experience.
• Ability to post 1-2 posts a month
• Be able to do a variety of posts (RA, programming, pep talks, etc)

We are trying to diversify our writers and would love to find people who are any (or all!) of the following

• located in the south or west coast
• who are POC
• who are a school librarian

Pretty easy right? If you’re interested, please send an email to teenservicesunderground@gmail.com and answer the following questions by January 25th.

1. Why do you want to be an agent?
2. Tell us a bit about yourself. What can you bring to the group?
3. Can you commit to 1-2 blog posts a month?
4. Give us some sample of things you’d talk about! If you have sample posts, even better.

 

Snack Food Olympics

Just because there is no Olympics this year doesn’t mean you can’t host your own Snack Food Olympics at the library! Food programs are perennially popular with teens, and the best part is that no one needs to be a world-class athlete to compete.

For my 90 minute program, I scoured the web for Minute to Win It-style activities, and party games involving food. Knowing that each event may only take a few minutes to complete, I planned the following seven activities, designating five as “must do” and keeping two on the backburner in case I needed to fill time or do a tie-breaker. (I ended up having 12 teens, so I had them compete in some activities on their own and others in pairs or teams. I kept a scoreboard with each participant’s individual points, though.)

• Whopper Relay – We got the ball rolling quite literally with a Whopper relay. For this challenge, participants had to roll a whopper on the ground from one end of the room to the other using only their noses. This was hilarious to watch.

• Oreo Cookie Curling – Okay, so this was basically Oreo Shuffleboard, but I couldn’t resist the urge to alliterate. The goal was to push your oreo across a long table with the hope that it would come to rest in a designated point-earning area. I used masking tape to section off three areas of the table making them worth one, two, and three points respectively. I gave each teen three chances to earn points.
• Blind Doritos Taste Test – This was one of the most difficult challenges for my teens. I purchased four different types of Doritos: Cool Ranch, Spicy Nacho, Salsa Verde, and Flamas. Each teen wore a blindfold, and had to try to correctly identify each flavor. I thought the classic flavors like Spicy Nacho and Cool Ranch would be easy for most teens, but something about wearing a blindfold really made this difficult.
• M+M Challenge – Apparently this game is also known as “Suck it Up.” Knowing my teens, I decided to go with a more tame name! Each participant gets a bowl of M+Ms, a plate, and a straw. The goal is to suck up each M+M with your straw and release it on to the plate. The fastest person wins! You can make this more challenging by asking teens to sort the M+Ms by color.

• Popcorn Toss – For this challenge, I asked the teens to work in pairs. Two players stand a certain distance apart from each other and take turns throwing popcorn into each other’s mouths. After each successful throw, they both must take one step back. The team that gets the furthest apart from one another wins. Each member of the winning duo was awarded 10 points, but to keep it from getting too messy, I took away points for any popcorn that was dropped on the ground.

BONUS ROUNDS:

• If you’re short on time and need a tie-breaker…
  Face the Cookie – This is a really entertaining one to use as a tie-breaker. Each player gets an oreo, leans their head back, and places the oreo on their forehead. Then, they must get the cookie from their forehead to their mouth without using their hands. It’s really difficult! If the cookie falls, players must put them back on their foreheads and start over.
• If you need to fill some time…
  Spaghetti and Marshmallow Towers – This challenge works best if you divide participants into pairs or teams. Give each group some uncooked spaghetti noodles and marshmallows and ask them to build a tower. The tallest freestanding tower wins. I made a rule with my teens that the tower had to stand on its own for at least one minute.

If you’re interested in planning your own Snack Food Olympics, know that it’s quite easy to modify to fit your library’s unique needs. For example, I did not require registration (my teens are so fickle!) and I wasn’t quite sure how what my attendance numbers would look like. Because of this, I selected activities that could be done in teams, pairs or individually, and I planned for more than I needed knowing that the snacks would get eaten at future programs if necessary. You can do this program simply and cheaply, or you can go all out and plan something major. There are so many possibilities!

Teaching when there isn’t enough time

Time. There’s just never enough! In an ideal instructional setting, I will fully collaborate with teachers and their students start to finish on a project, including co-planning and assessment. But, sometimes (like right after a long winter break!) my schedule is too full to support long-term collaboration, the curriculum is too full for a long project, I was asked to get involved in a project at the last minute, or the teacher is a more reluctant collaborator and is trying to dip a toe or two into working with me as the librarian. All of this is quite understandable, and I want to make a good impression on students and faculty through meaningful instruction even when there isn’t a lot of time for it.

Should you find yourself teaching on a time crunch as I sometimes do, here are a few quick tips to help you and your students find success.

1. Ask for a bit of advanced prep for the class. Depending on what you’ll be teaching and when, have the teacher go over the assignment sheet, give out lesson materials, assign a video or exercise, choose a project topic, select sources, or write a thesis statement to help students get ready for your teaching.
2. Set one clear goal for students. Surely, there are many skills that a group of students need to work on when it comes to information literacy, reading, and research. Pick only one when time is short. Yes, it might feel like the teaching is a bit reductive, but it’s likely you can follow up with your student group in another class or later on in the same course to build on their previous teaching.
3. Create a digital or physical resource kit (LibGuide, LiveBinder, Schoology, etc) so that your teaching can be extended even when you aren’t present. Even when you aren’t specifically teaching students to select and evaluate sources, for example, leaving behind a cart of materials or setting up a portal with sources selected for the project can be a big help to teachers.

May your New Year be full of time to teach slowly and deeply and collaborate fully! But when it (inevitably) isn’t, I hope you find these suggestions helpful!

Reader vs Reader: Pride

Welcome to Reader vs. Reader. Two librarians who have read the same book will discuss it critically.  They may agree, agree on certain points, or completely disagree.  RvR will challenge your reading comfort zone and dig deeply into the text to find potential problems or subtle brilliance.  And maybe both.  

In December, Andrea and Elizabeth both read Pride by Ibi Zoboi

[book-info]

The Quick Reactions:

Elizabeth:   I wanted to love it, but it just clunked in too many places. I might have been looking too hard for the Pride & Prejudice connections.	Andrea:  I really did want to love this one, but it really did feel like something was just off/flat. I’m not quite sure why, but it didn’t click with me as much as I had hoped.

Snippet of our conversation (Warning: spoilers everywhere!):

New Programming for the New Year

     Is your teen programming attendance really low or virtually non-existent? You’re not alone! Teen programming can be so difficult sometimes because one year, you could have great attendance and really interested patrons, then the next year it’s like they all disappeared and no one is showing up to anything.

     It could be that they stopped showing up because they moved, graduated, the time/day of your program no longer worked, or they simply lost interest. This can all feel very defeating, but there are still things you can do to try to change that and reinvigorate your programming.

     I currently work at two public libraries and it’s so interesting to see the difference in attendance for teen programming. At one of them, we have anywhere between 10-30 teens at almost every program. At that branch we have programs on the second and last saturday of every month. And we also do an after hours program every other month.

     My other library, has very poor attendance for majority of the teen programs but has a large amount of teens that hang out after school. That branch has a Teen Tuesday event which usually has around 20 teens. That program is more just hanging out and playing video games and chilling with their friends. Our more structured programs are the complete opposite, and we count ourselves lucky if ANYONE shows up. Hence, we’ve decided to revamp our programming and see what happens!

      Until now, we’ve had three weekly Friday teen programs. They were: Teen Crafternoon, Teen Board Game Time, and Teen Robotics with cubelets. We found that teen crafternoon is generally a hit, but when they don’t know what they are doing each month, attendance has suffered. The other two, got very old, very fast.

     Thus we have our new ideas! We are keeping Teen Crafternoon – but explicitly stating what we are doing each month so they know ahead of time. We are changing Teen Board Game Time to just general Teen Game Time. This allows us much more freedom in what we can do. We are not taking robotics away completely, we are instead switching it to Teen STEAM so that we can do other things but still use cubelets when we want!

     For January, the first things we are doing as part of the new revamp is: dream jars for Crafternoon, life-size board games for Teen Game Time, and we’ll be making slime for Teen STEAM. We are hoping these fun, new activities will help boost our attendance.

     If you don’t have many teen programs at all and are starting from scratch, here are a few things you can think about when coming up with teen programming next year. Some of the things are:

• What day/time works best for your location?
• What is your age range? Is it by age or by grade? (ex: ages 11-17, or 6th-12th grade?)
• What sort of programming are your teens actually interested in?
• Are you able to offer food? Food brings teens in!

     A great way to start collecting this information is to put out a survey in your teen space or to have available at your youth service’s desk. Once you start getting them turned back in, you can begin to see the needs/wants of your patrons.

     If you want to just dive right into programming and see what happens, there are several easy and relatively cheap/free programs you can test out. Some ideas you might try are:

• Recess Rewind – hula hoop contest, 4 corners, parachute games, red light green light, simon says, etc.
• Paper airplane challenge – just need paper and maybe tape! Can do contests of who’s goes the furthest, who has the craziest design, etc.
• Minute to Win It: these are all over pinterest and supplies can usually be found hanging around the building or the dollar store!
• Legos – give them challenges like tallest tower, longest bridge, or a specific thing to build.
• Coloring/Drawing – just put out different coloring pages and supplies and let them create.

     The last thing you might consider trying out before diving straight into new teen programming, is more passive programming to get teens to start interacting at all. Many of these can also be set up using supplies you already have, and don’t always take a lot of time on your part. Unless you decide to set something up that is more in-depth or done over a span of time. Some starting ideas you can think about are:

• Post-it note poetry – you may want check these every few days for appropriateness…
• Book reviews
• Coloring pages/word searches/crosswords/sudoku
• Bookmark contest
• If you have a white board – Would You Rather…? weekly questions
• Scavenger hunts

Are you doing anything to reinvigorate or revamp your teen programming? Have you tried any of these ideas out or are planning to? Let us know in the comments!

Teen Reader’s Advisory for the “Bad Stuff”

A little while ago, I happened to be chatting with one of my TAB members in our Teen Space, when a mother and younger-teen daughter stopped to ask if I had any good YA book recommendations that didn’t have a lot of “bad stuff.” It must have been fate because I turned to my TAB member and said “Anna is the one you want to talk to!” Anna is a voracious reader and takes out stacks of books at a time. She has been raised to love literature, but prefers books that are a bit more on the “tame” side of YA.

This is one of the issues that I face on a regular basis – trying to suggest books for younger teens who have started to grow out of middle grade fiction. I don’t have all that much time to read these days unless it’s bedtime picturebooks, so when I do read a YA book, it tends to be of the less-tame variety.

Anna gladly went to the shelves and pulled out several books for them. After that I asked her if she could make up a list of book recommendations for me so I could have it on hand. She came up with a great idea of reader’s advisory cards with the book summary on one side and a checklist of “Things to be aware of” on the other side. She also created a generic form to keep in the Teen Space for any other teens to pass in. Based on their reviews, she will type up a card to add to the stack. She came up with a bunch of her own reviews to start us off. Anna was also able to use this project in conjunction with her church community service project, which I thought was a pretty great fit for both organizations!

I don’t really have much in the way of reader’s advisory tools in the Teen Space, so I loved this idea. (I also loved that I didn’t have to do it myself!) I am also totally going to steal our agent Elizabeth’s ideas for TAB Picks bookmarks – such a great idea! You can read her latest post about great TAB ideas HERE.

 

Here are some links to book lists of “clean teen reads”:

http://byrobinking.blogspot.com/2015/09/40-clean-reads-for-teens.html

http://www.deliciousreads.com/2015/09/40-clean-reads-for-teens.html

https://www.thriftyandthriving.com/clean-books-for-teens/

How To Have a Successful Public & School Library Crossover Book Club

Collaboration is huge in library world, and between school and public libraries! A great place to do this, whether you’re well established with your counterpart or just starting off, is with a crossover book club! I have done this both from the school library side and the public library side, with great success, but in various formats.

When I was at the school library (I was at a junior & senior high school) we formed what we called the Crosstown Book Club (being north of Chicago, we all know the Crosstown Classic between the Sox and the Cubs, so it was a fun play on that). For the Crosstown Book Club the public librarian and I first started by picking a book. We decided to go with the Illinois high school award, the Abraham Lincoln, nominees. After we picked our title the public librarian checked out the books from their collection, as well as as many ILL copies they could get, to the high school. From there I hung up fliers with our title, went and talked to study halls, spread the word to the English teachers, and had announcements made in the morning. Kids that were interested came to the library and we kept track of which copy they were given (we also gave out the school library’s copies, but we did not have as many as the public library).

We started off with one meeting, which we had during a lunch hour/study hall. The kids were welcome to bring their lunches, and we also provided snacks, drinks, and dessert. We tried to include themed foods, for example our second book was Gabi, a Girl in Pieces and she loved Flaming Hot Cheetos, so we had those for part of their snack. We had over 30 kids attend our first meeting, as well as the principal! The public librarian and I took turns asking questions and moderating the discussion. We had many students come up to us after and tell us that they hadn’t read a book for fun in so long, and they loved that we sparked their interest again. They also liked that it was during the day, because many of them had other activities after school that would keep them from attending one later in the day.

For the next meeting we had them vote on some other of the Lincoln nominee titles. We also asked them, and others that were interested but couldn’t attend during that period, what periods would work best. We wound up expanding to two lunch/study hall periods and had a regular attendance of about 20 at each. This was a wonderful way for me to get to know the public librarian, as well as for the kids to get to know them, and a wonderful way for them to get into the school. The kids at the freshman/sophomore campus started asking to do the same thing.

Now that I am back in the public library I am collaborating with the school library of a high school (freshman – senior) on a new format for book club. I found that my high school book club at the library had very small numbers due to how busy the kids are. I started doing it quarterly, and calling it Popcorn & Paperbacks, where we watched the movie that went along with the book. This seemed easier for them as it wasn’t a monthly commitment, and they enjoyed having a fun afternoon. I told the school librarian about this and she had the wonderful idea to have her school book club read the same title, and have them attend. My attendance for that month was fantastic! I had over 15 kids.

When I talked with them more they said that they would be interested in coming every month, but weren’t sure if they would have time to read two books, one for the school book club and one for the library book club. I went to their school book club meeting (they meet weekly) and we came up with a plan there. We decided that we would read the same book & they would discuss up to the halfway point at their book club, and then come discuss the book in its entirety at the library book club. This way the kids from the school in our district have one title, but are also able to meet and discuss with kids from other schools that they might only see at the library.

We are still going to do a book with a movie quarterly and then the months in-between we will just do a book. This is such a fun way to work with the school librarian and the kids. By discussing in both places I will be able to go into the school and the school will come here. I look forward to seeing how this grows as we continue!

TAB Overhaul: Looking Out of the Library for a Fresh Take on Volunteering

A few months ago, I noticed that I was getting stale with ideas for my Teen Advisory Board. It seemed like every month, they showed up to eat their pizza, cut out some storytime supplies for the library, and go home. I was bored, and so were they. This fall, my supervisors encouraged me to look for ways to get the TAB more involved in the community beyond the library. Together with a revamp of the way I make their handouts, it’s revolutionized the way I do TAB, and brought a huge surge in numbers of enthusiastic teens!

First, the handouts: Instead of a laundry list of programs, volunteer opportunities, and questions about what they’d like to do at the library, each meeting now starts with two handouts. One is a color-coded calendar of teen events and volunteer opportunities, whipped up with a Publisher calendar template. Second, they get a short bullet list of talking points. Everything is now far more clear and conversation easier. Recognizing that some of my teen volunteers are not the type to talk in a group, I now give each person am index card and ask them to write on it a book they think I should read, a movie, TV show, podcast, game, or YouTube channel they think I should check out, and a community service project they’d like to do that has nothing to do with the library, plus a program idea if they have one. The ideas got flowing, and the teens are taking a whole new ownership in their library.

Then there are the community service projects. I brainstormed a list of things of things I’d like to do with them on my own, but the teens had some great ideas too. We’ve been doing their ideas, and will fall back on mine when their ideas run out (though I seriously doubt they will ever run out).

The Projects:

• October: TAB Picks! After multiple requests for a program where the teens could come in and “just read for fun,” I decided to make a TAB Picks bookmark. During the meeting, each teen took a bookmark (or several), and wrote on it the title of a book they enjoyed and a sentence about why they liked it. Then they went out into the library, found the book on the shelf, and left the bookmark in it. I now make these bookmarks available at every meeting and the teens can just fill one out if they have a new title to add, so TAB Picks are popping up all over the library, raising awareness of what the TAB does and hopefully getting new books into the hands of readers.
• November: Nursing Home Day Brightener! I put out some cardstock and markers to make cards for patients at a senior-living and long-term care facility near the library. We also used tissue paper and pipe cleaners to make flowers for the patients. We used this method to make the flowers in all kinds of color combinations and the next day I delivered a big bag of cards and flowers to the overjoyed patients.
• December: Winter Cheer for Heroes! This took some doing on my part, but the teens were so excited to do it, I had to make it happen. They wanted to provide holiday treats for our firefighters and first responders. While we were at it, I decided to have them make cookies for the staff at our Township Hall and senior center as well. I went to Gordon Food Service, purchased ready-made, frozen cookie dough, and baked it in the commercial oven at my parents’ church. Then I brought all those cookies to a TAB meeting, and the teens decorated them and packed them up in bakery boxes for delivery. They also signed cards for the staff at each site. The day after our meeting, I drove around to all of our fire stations, police stations, Township Hall, and senior center, and delivered boxes of holiday cheer to very grateful recipients. I made sure to take pictures at each location and then we posted them on the library’s social media.

Since we started doing outside community service projects, attendance at TAB has skyrocketed and it’s easier to get teens to come back to volunteer when we need help at children’s programs and other library events. And we’re just getting started! Here’s a sneak peek at what I have planned for the first few months of 2019.

• January: Cocoa and Compliments. Our January TAB meeting falls the weekend before our high schools have their midterm exams. We’ll be setting up a table in the lobby to pass out covered cups of instant hot chocolate to studying teens. Along with their cocoa, recipients will pick a compliment out of our compliment jar. Compliments will be things like “you look great today” and “there’s no one else in the world like you” to encourage them while they study.
• February: Blankets for Hospital Patients: I’ll take advantage of after-Christmas sales and craft store coupons and buy materials to make no-sew, fleece-tie blankets during our February TAB meeting. These blankets will either be donated to our local hospital or the Shriners’ Hospital for Children through our local Masons.
• March/April: Food Drive: In March, we will decorate boxes and put flyers in the library to start a food drive for our local food pantry. In April, the teens will help pack up the donations for delivery.
• May: Park Trash Clean-Up: Our library is located in the middle of a Township park. In May, weather permitting, we’ll head outside to pick up litter and make the world a greener place!

Do you have a favorite non-library project to do with your teen volunteers? Tell us about it in the comments!

It’s not rude to stay in your lane

Much critical discourse is held on social media. This is the only reality I’ve ever known, as a professional. It’s a vibrant marketplace of ideas, but at the same time, anyone can wander into a thread or a post about anything and begin holding forth on their own opinions. Marginalized authors, critics, librarians, and other bookish folk often speak of staying in one’s lane when it comes to writing, or critiquing, or conversing, but when that metaphor comes out, the white people in the room become Extremely Offended.

Stop.

Let’s think about this literally: you are driving 70mph down the freeway. As you pass another car, it begins to drift towards you. Perhaps the person inside is on their phone; perhaps they simply reason that they need to be in the left lane, so they’re going to go, regardless of whether there’s anyone in the way or not. Most likely, you’ll honk the horn and then proceed to make whatever emphatic gesture you deem appropriate. That person staying in their lane is extremely important–it’s a matter of life and death.

And yet, when it comes to conversations about privilege in the literary community, white folk feel that it’s rude for someone to ask them to be quiet and listen. The exchange that originally inspired me happened a month ago, but eleventy billion other conversations have happened since then–conversations that were derailed by privileged people running in and sharing their opinions. Before you say that this isn’t a matter of life and death, consider the teens who will read stories by someone who looks like them or loves like them or believes like them and who may feel less alone in the universe. Teens who are depressed or bullied or just so beaten down that they felt helpless find stories telling them that they aren’t alone. It’s no exaggeration to say that reading changes lives. It saves them, too.

Staying in your lane is not a complicated process. If you see an interesting conversation unfolding and feel the urge the jump in, stop a moment. Ask yourself if the conversation is truly for you, or if, by speaking, you make it about you. If it’s not for you, stay quiet. Listen. Note what others have to say, and then meditate on it. You don’t have to insert yourself or your voice to prove that you are paying attention. Learning is not performative. It’s much easier to learn and grow when the wisdom of others is not drowned out by our own voice.

Be safe online, and help others to be safe too. Stay in your lane.