Earlier this month I attended one day of the California Library Association annual conference. The panels that I attended were sort of hit-or-miss, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever attended a professional conference. My favorite panel of the day was presented by librarians from the County of Los Angeles Library; it discussed creating collections for younger teens and then using those collections as a starting point for services and outreach aimed specifically at that age group. As many of us who work with young people already know, lumping tweens/younger teens/middle schoolers/middler readers/whatever-you-want-to-call-them in with younger children or in with older teens is generally not an effective service strategy. It’s definitely an issue I’m considering as I brainstorm programs for the spring and summer.

I’ve had tween fiction on my mind anyway, since I’ll be leading a sixth grade class visit at my branch next week and need to plan booktalks.¹ So far my short list includes The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex; now I have to think of some non-speculative fiction choices. I do have booktalks already prepared for Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time and Millicent Min, Girl Genius, both by Lisa Yee, but they didn’t go over so well the last time I used them. So new booktalks are probably in order.

I’d love to booktalk After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson, but my system doesn’t own any copies. And most of the other great teen books that I’ve read this year skew rather older. I do have requests on various other candidates, like the first book in the STORM series by E. L. Young, which was mentioned to me as an Alex Rider read-alike. Do any of you have suggestions?

That’s all for now–I’m off to pack for my trip to LA for Thanksgiving. I hope all of you who celebrate have a lovely feast, and that everyone else has a lovely random November Thursday.

¹ For the non-librarians reading this post, booktalk = short pitch to introduce readers to potential books of interest. They usually work best with middle schoolers and up; younger crowds tend to respond better to reading aloud and storytelling.