Readers Advisory

During my practicum at a high school this semester, I have had the opportunity to interact with many students.  It has been especially helpful, because the past few months have been filled with reading Good Night Moon (or similar activities) with my young daughter.  Being a new mom has made it difficult to keep up with what is new in pop culture or YA literature. 

This week I had the opportunity to work with a student who genuinely wanted help finding a book.  He was interested in realistic fiction and teen issues.  I realized while I was helping him, how unprepared I am to help boys with readers advisory.  Obviously, many books appeal to both males and females, but a majority of the realistic fiction books I have read are more female centric.  I have read at least one book by many of the authors that are recommended for YA males, but the list is small. 

In addition, I realized that realistic fiction that deals with teen issues (drugs, pregnancy, suicide, gangs, etc) is not a strong area for me.  To be honest, I do not care for this genre because it can be depressing.  If I am going to do readers advisory, I need to get over my own preferences and widen the types of books I read. 

Reader’s advisory is not all about reading books in order to make recommendations.  I know I can cheat and read reviews, summaries, and get recommendations from others.  Yet, it is important for me to have a well-rounded reading list for myself.  For fun, I did a couple searches for readers advisory resources.  This ALA blog had a couple really helpful tips:

http://www.alaeditions.org/blog/163/tips-young-adult-readers-advisory

Most of the suggestions I am already doing, such as keeping a journal of what I read.  Instead of a paper journal, I keep track of what I have read on Shelfari, GoodReads and LibraryThing. 

One of my favorite suggestions on the blog was “admit your likes and dislikes when asked – be honest with your teens!” I sometimes forget that it is okay to admit what I personally like or do not like.  

Copyright and Fair Use

While volunteering at a high school library for my practicum, I observed a class doing a project on Spanish speaking countries.  Each student was required to chose a country and create a brochure on the country.  The brochure was to include demographic, historical, cultural information and images. 

The school librarian was in a meeting and not available for the class.  The teacher did not give the students much direction on how to find information – only the requirements for the project.  I observed as the class googled information and copied and pasted information from different websites.  There was no lesson on fair use, copyright, giving credit for content. 

I pulled the teacher aside and asked her if she wanted me to do a review with the students on these topics.  She told the class that they needed to have some type of bibliography to give credit for information.  It was good that she made this requirement, but it was disturbing that the students did not understand the legality issues with taking information especially images from the web.  (Of course, the students were using the content for educational purposes, but what if they were not.  Would they understand that they cannot steal from websites?)

This got me thinking about copyright and fair use – especially with images and photographs.  What role should the school librarian have in a school to help students understand these topics?   Should this content be in the curriculum?  Isn’t this information just as important to understand as math, English, social studies?

Book Trailers

My graduate degree requires students to complete a 100-hour practicum.  During the practicum, students spend 100 hours volunteering at a school library.  It also requires a special project.  I am completing my practicum at a high school library this semester.  Even though the library has an established program, the library had a very basic website.  The library director thought it would be very helpful, if I could put together a website for the library. 

The school district uses Google Sites for teacher webpages.  Google Sites is not a terribly flashy web creation tool, or at least I do not know how to make it flashy.  I did some research on using technology to promote books and came across the following article in Teacher Librarian. 

CHANCE, ROSEMARY, and TERI LESESNE. "Rethinking Reading Promotion." Teacher Librarian 39.5 (2012): 26-28. Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Sept. 2012.

The article discusses the use of technology to promote reading.  What interested me was the use of online book trailers.  One of the author’s is the creator of http://booktrailersforall.com, an online tool to share publisher, student or teacher created book trailers.  It allows educators or librarians to download the trailers for promotion.    

The article also has suggestions on how to create trailers. iMovie, Animoto and Movie Maker are mentioned as tools to create the trailers.  The best books for book trailers are high quality books that might not easily find an audience.  The trailers should be much like a book talk – succinct but conveys the setting, mood, characters and conflict of the story. 

Book trailers seem like a great way to hook readers.  It allows those who love a book to express their interpretations of it and share them with others.  My only hesitation with book trailers is that they could also impact the mental images a reader could develop from reading only. 

I am definitely going to utilize book trailers for my website project.  It will be a great way for me to liven up the website and help promote books in the high school library.   

Avoiding Gender Bias

I follow a few authors and illustrators on Twitter and Facebook.  Not only does it help me keep up to date on new books being published, but also they are generally intelligent and interesting people.  They post some of the most thought provoking links or comments in both of my feeds. 

A month ago Shannon Hale, Newberry honor award nominee and author of various children, young adult and adult books, posted about male readers and her books. 

http://oinks.squeetus.com/2012/08/why-boys-dont-read-girls-sometimes.html

She has observed that her book signings tend to be an all female audience with the occasional male fan.  When she has had the opportunity to talk to these boys, she has learned that they generally are homeschooled.  The question she poses on her blog is – why?  Why does she have so few male fans?  Is something happening in schools that make boys feel like they need to conform to specific gender roles?  Why should a boy not be encouraged to enjoy a book with a female protagonist?  Would a female be discouraged from reading a book that is generally considered more male centric like Ender’s Game or Hatchet?  My guess is no.  Why does a double standard exist? 

Gender roles and peer pressure is not a new topic.  In a couple of my education courses at UIUC, we discussed at length how young people form an identity and the impact their environment has on this development. 

Since this is a youth services library blog, I thought this topic was certainly appropriate.   It is something I need to consider in my future career.  How as a future school librarian can I make sure I am doing my do diligence to avoid making gender bias assumptions during readers advisory or on book displays or book talks?  It is something I need to continuously be mindful of so I do not contribute to the problem.  

Privacy Issues & Youth

In June 2012, Consumer Reports published an article about Facebook & Your Privacy.  The article included a section on children and Facebook.  Facebook has age restriction of 13 years and up, yet "some 5.6 million underage kids still have accounts."  According to the article, Facebook tries to police the rule and has closed 800,000 accounts.  The article goes on to say that while parents may be aware that their child is on Facebook, most have not had a conversation with them about online safety or privacy issues.  I think many individuals would agree that it is the parents’ responsibility to take on this role with their children.  However, librarians and school librarians have the background and skills to help teach young people these skills. 

The state of Illinois has created a mandatory K-12 Internet safety curriculum requirement for all schools.  In my experience, school librarians have taken on the role of teaching this curriculum.  There are many resources available to librarians or school librarians to help develop programming or lesson plans for young people. 

ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has created a website to spearhead a privacy revolution.  The website has a variety of tools that include videos, advocacy tips, promotional banners & icons. 

Common Sense Media has K-12 curriculum lesson plans correlated to standards, toolkits, a blog, professional development, videos, reproducible worksheets among other things to help educators and librarians teach about a variety of digital safety topics. 

CyberSmart! Curriculum has a whole host of lesson plans for every grade level related to online privacy and safety issues.