The Teen Readers’ Advisory Toolkit @ YALSA’s 2010 YA Lit Symposium

November 7, 2010

I attended the 2010 YA Lit Symposium in Albuquerque. This post is a summary of one of the preconferences that I attended. Check out other posts tagged yalsalit2010 for more session recaps.

My first preconference was the Teen Readers’ Advisory Toolkit, presented by Crystal Faris, Stephanie Squicciarini, and Jerene Battisti.

We started out with an overview of readers’ advisory (RA) for teens, drawing from Heather Booth’s Serving Teens Through Readers’ Advisory. When we do RA with teens, we need to use our active listening skills, be conversational, and make sure to use the right tone. Does the patron want us to be friendly, business-like, chatty, or sarcastic? Tailoring our delivery helps our teen patrons feel welcome and comfortable.

We also need to make sure to describe a book’s appeal (talking about setting, pacing, tone, characterization, and so on) rather than just saying, “oh man, this book was so good! You’ll love it.” Readers of fiction are less interested in what the book is about and more in how it makes them feel. If someone comes to you and gushes that they loved Twilight and want something exactly like it, it might not be vampires and werewolves that they’re looking for; they might want to read another story where the heroine is in constant peril, where the love is forbidden, and where you just can’t stop reading the next page and the next and the next to see what happens. Understanding appeal and being able to articulate it will help us find the right book for a reader.

Doing RA for teens is different than adults because there are three basic kinds of RA:

1. One-on-one RA: this is what we think of when we first think of RA. Either in person or online, you’re helping a reader find a book her or she will like. Since this kind of RA usually involves patrons coming to us, we need to look both authoritative and approachable. We can use Booth’s four “getting started” questions to get things rolling: Are you looking for something specific? Do you read a lot or not so much? What was the last book (or movie or game) you really liked? Have you read something recently that you really liked or hated?
2. Doing RA for teens via an adult: this is when a parent either comes in looking for books for their teen or does all of the talking with the teen standing next to them. When the teen patron is actually present, we want to make sure to address the adult’s concerns, but also to turn the conversation to the teen patron since he or she is the one we’re trying to help. And if a parent just wants their kid to read more, try high-action, fast-paced, dialogue-heavy books and audiobooks or downloadable books. Provide lots of options and tell the parents that if none of them work, to bring the teen him- or herself in.
3. Indirect RA: this includes booklists online or in the building and book displays. Consider what book stores are advertising and how they’re advertising them. Look at your library as a patron: what’s the first thing you see when you walk in? Keep in mind that displays are the responsibility of all staff members, even if they’re not officially YA. Provide a list or pile of materials to refill YA displays when you’re not around.

Some other RA suggestions were to try putting adult, teen, and children’s materials on the same subject all in one display together, to have book trailers playing on digital devices throughout the library, to have patron and staff recommendations on the shelves, and to be willing to suggest adult books to older teens to help guide them into adult reading. We also need to remember that teen RA can be very fiction-centric, but plenty of kids want “reality reading,” so we need to know our nonfiction and how to recommend it.

We next learned about listeners’ advisory, where we suggest audiobooks to teen readers. This part started off with a defense of audiobooks. While some adults (and kids!) feel like audiobooks are “cheating,” they’re not. They’re a great way to reach kids who might otherwise be non-readers (e.g., those with a visual impairment or dyslexia). They help readers connect with the story. They also help listeners learn to pronounce words and author names they’ve only seen in print. And teens are the fastest-growing segment of audiobook listeners, so we can’t ignore them. They can listen to audiobooks while doing chores or cleaning their rooms. (Mary Burkey is a great source for statistics and arguments in favor of audiobooks.)

When we’re doing listeners’ advisory, we need to consider more than just the appeal of the text. How is the narrator’s pacing, emotional distinction, and distinction between speakers? Are there flaws in production like background noise or being able to hear the narrator swallow? Can these flaws be overlooked because the story and delivery are so compelling? Does the narrator help make up for a boring story, pulling you through to the end? Are there additional features and benefits like bonus features at the beginning or end, author interviews, or historical notes?

We need to watch out for narrators who become so associated with a particular story that they become a character, because if that narrator does another book, it might feel like that character is in the story. Sometimes listeners need a cooling-off period between books or series by the same narrator. We also need to know if the narrator changes partway through a series. And having the author narrate their own books can be either awesome or awful, so make sure you give the story a listen or read a review to find out.

Swear words, sexual situations, and violent scenes all have more impact when they’re read aloud, so we need to be especially sensitive when suggesting audiobooks, especially if it’s intended to entertain on a family vacation with an intergenerational audience, or even just kids over a wide range of ages. You’ll also want to find out how long the family drive is so you can find an audiobook that’s an appropriate length.

The question of format came up. Audiobooks are available on cassette, CD, Playaway, and via download, and all of the formats have their various advantages and disadvantages. For examples, Playaways are expensive, but they don’t require additional hardware. The bottom line here is to know your community to know what format will be best for them. Audience members also recommended pooling resources with other libraries in your area and seeing if your state library can help. And as a great tip, since there aren’t ARCs of audiobooks, if you can get a gig reviewing them, you’ll be able to develop your library’s collection for free.

Beyond just doing listeners’ advisory, you could do a “read it, listen to it, watch it” program at your library where you have readers and listeners both enjoy a story and then watch a film adaptation and discuss it. It’ll be interesting to see what each group likes and dislikes in the adaptation, and it’ll provide a great discussion. You can also allow teen listeners to write reviews of audiobooks for your teen blog like you let readers review books. Teens are our best tools, after all!

In general, I think keeping up with what’s out there–in books, in audiobooks, in programming, everything–can be tough. We were given handouts (which should be available on the Ning soon) with recommended review sites and also directed to the Odyssey Award (given by the ALA) and the Audies (awarded by the Audio Publishers Association). Jon Scieszka’s Guys Read has also spun off the Guys Listen project to get boys listening to audiobooks.

During the break, we all selected books and used the “read a book in 10 minutes” guides in Booth’s book to get an idea of what the book is about, what the pacing and characterization and tone are like, and how the storyline unfolds by reading selectively and considering blurbs and summaries.

We also talked about the importance of keeping up with pop culture. It may be daunting to do so, but pop culture will shape demands on your collections and programs and you should be able to be proactive. You may want to have premium cable shows available when they come out on DVD. The songs and artists that are featured on Glee should influence your CD collection and displays. You can recreate popular shows (Survivor and Fear Factor before, Iron Chef and Minute to Win It now). Your summer reading program prizes should be desirable. And more and more YA books are being made into movies–and you should know about them.

To keep up with pop culture, the speakers recommended having pop magazines routed to you first before they go up to circulate so you can flip through them and see what’s going on. Check out the nominees and the winners of the Teen Choice Awards. Check Yahoo top stories to see who’s in the news. Read Pop Goes the Library (or get the book). And take VOYA‘s three-times-yearly pop culture quizzes.

During the Q&A session, a few other things were addressed.

• You don’t have to read fiction to be a reader.
• Reading manga is absolutely reading. You have to be able to decode the flow of the panels and text, and especially if the manga is right-to-left, you need real visual literacy skills to be able to read. If parents or teachers are dubious, have them try reading a manga.
• Having a nonfiction browsing section in your teen area is really great. It allows teens to read books on uncomfortable subjects without having to ask about them, and it gives you a place to put high-interest books for “non-readers” (who’ve fallen prey to the reading = fiction fallacy).

For the final part of the preconference, a lot of recent and upcoming titles from different genres were shared with us. Handouts and the recommended books should eventually be available on the Ning.

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Tags: audiobooks, conferences, guys read, professional development, readers advisory, speakers, teen services, ya lit, yalsalit2010