I’m about four months in to my first professional position and while I really love my library, my coworkers, my community, and my work–and while I’m very proud of some of the things I’ve done in those four months–I am definitely making plenty of mistakes along the way.
I started my job feeling excited to finally apply everything I’d learned, to finally put on all of the programs I’d been wanting to do, to finally do YA librarianship, but for all that enthusiasm and knowledge, I was approaching teen services the wrong way. I’m realizing that you can’t build a program from the top down; you need to develop relationships with patrons first, which gives you the foundation from which everything else will grow. I’m sure that’s a “duh” statement for a lot of you more seasoned librarians, but especially since I’m fresh out of grad school and building a program from scratch (not what I was anticipating with my first job!), it’s something I guess I had to learn myself.
I reflected on this in more detail at the YALSA blog. It’s mostly about how I’ve been doing things up until now, but I’m hoping to write more about my new strategy–which involves a lot more time on the desk–as I actually implement it in the months to come.
Angie started us off with a discussion of the general dehumanization of fat bodies in our society and the distorted view of what is normal and acceptable in body shape. She then introduced us to the Fat Acceptance movement (which I didn’t know has been around since the ’60s). Since more than half of 18- to 25-year-old girls would rather be hit by a truck than be fat, and two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid, we need to address body positivity and fat acceptance in YA lit. Teens are looking for themselves in the books they read, so Angie summarized how fat characters are (and aren’t) portrayed in YA lit.
She took us on a tour of books that positively portrayed fat characters, books that had good intentions but didn’t quite make it, and books that were problematic in their treatment of fat characters. The books on the “positive” list had multifaceted characters whose fatness usually wasn’t the primary issue in the story, or whose fatness was completely unrelated to the character’s struggle. The “good intentions” list included titles that seemed to want to treat fat characters fairly, but maybe had them lose weight to be happy or had covers with skinny characters on the front or occasionally used a character’s fatness as a crutch. The “problematic” books were problematic because they focused on weight loss rather than health, put everyone in fat camp and then totally fell apart, or conflated fatness with being a slob or some other character defect.
Angie also shared with us adult titles that treated fat characters positively that would appeal to teens and books that dealt with disordered eating in new ways. All of these booklists will be available on Angie’s blog, Fat Girl Reading, in the next few days.
After getting a taste of the good and bad in treatment of fat characters in YA lit, we talked a little bit about other fat acceptance resources and how to promote positive body image among library teens. One organization in particular that’s working for a broader range of body types is Delta Delta Delta through their Reflections Program. Every year at the end of October, they sponsor Fat Talk Free Week, which aims to eliminate “all of the statements made in everyday conversation that reinforce the thin ideal and contribute to women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies.” This includes things like “Do I look fat in this?” and “She’s too fat for that dress” and “I need to lose ten pounds.”
In your library, you can make a display or host a discussion group during Fat Talk Free Week. One audience member suggested bringing boys into the conversation and talking about what it means to be a man, since men are expected to adhere to restrictive body shape options as well. Angie also suggested using–with a little adaptation–the Reflection Project’s “Things Your Chapter Can Do to Promote Positive Body Image” with your library teens, too. She also said that Operation Beautiful has been popular among teens in her library. But above all, you should advocate and integrate by including fat lit in booklists, book talks, and book displays.
The second half of the session was an author panel with Megan Frazer (Secrets of Truth and Beauty), Madeleine George (Looks), Susan Vaught (Big Fat Manifesto), and Allen Zadoff (Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have). It was really interesting to hear from the authors what their motivation was in writing their books, what they hoped the books would convey to readers, readers’ reactions to their books, and some of the struggles they’d had in writing. Some of the themes I noticed running through their responses were:
feelings of being watched, being judged, and being acceptable
the “paradox of visibility” that Madeline especially talked about where being fat makes you both very visible and simultaneously completely invisible at times
books having alternate titles before being published: Big Fat Manifesto was originally titled Diary of a Big Fat Fat Girl, but marketing didn’t think that’d sell, and Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have was originally Invisible
covers not matching the contents of the book and publishers being unwilling to have fat characters on the covers of books
these books that didn’t stigmatize fatness weren’t about struggling with being fat: they were about finding where you fit, finding connection with other human beings, dealing with family relationships, handling change, and being lovable. Allen said of his protagonist, “it’s not his body that changes–it’s his eyes.”
a universal sense among all teens (and grownups, I think, if we’re being honest) of feeling different and unacceptable
This was one of my favorite sessions of the symposium. I thought it was a great introduction to fat acceptance and a good selection of good and problematic titles with excellent explanations of what makes for a positive or problematic story. And hearing from the authors about their motivations and why their books unfolded the way they did really reinforced a lot of what Angie had been telling us earlier. Themes of authenticity, visibility/invisibility, and moving beyond issue books also surfaced in later sessions.
Angie’s going to put handouts and booklists and resources on her blog in the next few days.
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:
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?
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.
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.
YALSA has a list of competencies for librarians serving young adults and when I first read it, I was kind of terrified. The list is long! And it touches on so many different skills! I was worried that I didn’t have–and wouldn’t ever have–all of the qualities and abilities that I’d need to do a good job of serving teen in the library.
But Sarah Flowers, the president-elect of YALSA, recently wrote Young Adults Deserve the Best: YALSA’s Competencies in Action, which expands on the competencies and talks about what kinds of specific things a librarian can do to develop or demonstrate those competencies. Reading the book made the list seem a lot less scary, the competencies a lot more practically achievable–and even more reassuring was her repeated statement that the competencies aren’t so much a list of qualities those in entry-level positions should have so much as a vision for YA services that librarians grow into throughout their careers. It’s okay that you can’t check off everything on that list: through on-the-job experience, professional development, and what you learn through networking, you can develop your skills over time. I still feel like I have a long way to go before I feel strong in all of the competency areas, but I do feel more confident in how to get there.
September’s drawing to a close, but there are still a few days left in the YALSA blog’s 30 Days of Back to School. My latest post is about working with non-YA librarians:
In my last post, I talked about my job search and mentioned that I had an interview the next day. I was lucky enough to be offered that job (yay!) and had my first week at work last week. The library where I’m now working has never had a dedicated YA librarian before and I’m excited about developing great teen services, but there’s only so much I can do as just one person. Many YA librarians find themselves on something of a team of one, the only professional at their libraries dedicated to serving teens. When we’re not at the desk or in the building, taking care of teens’ reference questions and readers’ advisory requests falls to non-YA staff members.
That’s right! I got a job! I’m now the Teen Services Librarian at the New Canaan Library in New Canaan, Connecticut. I think the library and I are a good match for one another, and I’m so excited to finally putting into practice everything I learned during my MLS and my work while I was a library student and all of the great ideas I’ve seen on listservs and blogs. And I’m looking forward to doing so in collaboration with my non-YA coworkers! Click through for my thoughts on the necessity of collaboration and working with librarians in adult services and children’s services.
Craft programs usually go over pretty well with teens and if you’re smart about where you get your supplies, they don’t have to be expensive events. A couple of projects have caught my eye recently and I thought I’d share them.
Henna programs (with permission slips if necessary) come up on the listservs every few months or so. Instructables user creativegirlz has detailed instructions and pictures.
James and Sylvia at Make show you how to make your own crazy putty. This one involves Borax and it might be a little ambitious, but for libraries with particularly crafty (or mad scientist-like!) teens, this could be a fun project.
Upcycling (using items you were planning to discard and transforming them into something new) is a great way to cut down on craft program costs. If you’ve done t-shirt surgery programs already and you’re looking for another way to put old t-shirts to use, Michelle, a first-year MFADT student at Parsons, shows you how you can turn an old t-shirt into a grocery bag (or a purse for teens).
I found most of these craft projects via the Craftzine blog. It’s kind of high-volume and some of what gets posted is too ambitious for libraries, but it’s a great source of ideas.
One of the characteristics of my MLS program that I enjoyed the most was the diversity in age and experience among my classmates. There were people like me who were (mostly) fresh out of college and whose library experience was fairly limited, but because of the recent changes in Indiana library certification (summary here), some of my classmates were department heads or branch managers or even library directors who had been in their positions for decades without an MLS and who were now in school to get their degrees so they could keep their jobs. This led to a wide range in opinions and experiences in the classroom, which made for great class discussions. It also meant that I got to hear a lot of stories about how things were done in different libraries, many of which had very different policies and procedures.
One of the most disturbing stories I heard during my degree was about a challenge to a book in the teen collection at a particular library. Just for storytelling purposes, I’ll call it the Anonymous Public Library (APL). Because of the worldview of a few board members, APL takes a very active role in deciding what’s appropriate for the library collection. They do not purchase or accept donations of R-rated movies, even if the movie has won awards or broken box office records. The board members who designed and uphold this policy think that APL shouldn’t carry “inappropriate” material like this because children might check it out. Staff members have tried to suggest having adult library cards and children’s cards and not allowing children to check out videos, freeing adults to watch movies for grownups, but the board members remain resolute.
Because of the generally conservative culture at APL, the teen section also comes under a lot of scrutiny. It does serve 6th-12th graders which is admittedly a very wide range, but I’m firmly of the opinion that if a parent is concerned about what his or her child is reading, that parent should be involved in the child’s selection of reading materials–in other words, it’s not the library’s job to be the parent. But APL’s policies differ from my personal philosophy, so no books in the teen collection may contain the F-word, and the board expects the teen librarian to read every book before she purchases it to make sure the forbidden word doesn’t appear and to screen for other “inappropriate” material and themes. If APL were a tiny public library with a tiny budget and few purchases, this might be feasible, but because of APL’s size and budget, there’s no way the teen librarian can possibly read everything before she orders it.
So one of the stories about APL that was told in class was this: a seventh grader checked out Julie Halpern’s GET WELL SOON, thinking from the cover that it would be like a Jerry Spinelli book. In fact, the story is about a girl named Anna Bloom whose parents send her to a residential mental health facility (a “loony bin,” as Anna puts it) to treat her depression. The young APL patron was surprised to find a number of swear words on the first page and showed the book to her mom. Her mom was very angry and brought the book back to the library to request its removal.
In most public libraries, a librarian would listen to the parent, try to assess and reflect back why the parent was upset, and to show the parent that her concerns were important to the library. Librarians usually also try to explain the value of diversity in the collection and the importance of helping kids select their reading material if subject matter is a concern. Then if the parent still wants to challenge the book, the librarian would have the parent fill out a request for reconsideration form. Depending on library policy, a group of librarians, managers, and maybe board members or members of the public would meet, review the book, and make a decision.
At APL, the book was immediately taken to the director, who looked at the first page, decided the book was inappropriate, and had it removed it from the collection. The book itself didn’t even go to the pile of general library discards that’s sold by the Friends of the Library as a fundraiser: it went into the dumpster. This all happened within an hour of the mom’s initial challenge to the book.
And the craziest part of this story is that while this was happening, the teen librarian was on vacation, and when she returned, no one from management told her it’d happened. In her absence, the book just disappeared. She only found out later when the checkout clerk who was the mom’s first point of contact told the teen librarian, which she wasn’t supposed to have done.
Obviously this is a really extreme version of how a challenge process can work in a public library, and it is, of course, up to the community to decide how their library is run. It just makes me sad that the board members who support these policies have such a limited view of intellectual freedom in general and, more specifically, of kids’ ability to choose their own reading material and to stop when they find something they don’t think is right for them, and it makes me sad that the librarians at APL can’t do more to call this out for the censorship that it is.
So it was with great joy that I read the news that the Fon Du Lac School District in Wisconsin had chosen to keep GET WELL SOON on the shelf at Theisen Middle School. Challenges in a school library are particularly tricky because unlike public libraries, the school is acting in loco parentis, so challenges are more likely to be successful. Another school district in the area had opted to put a sticker on another book (not GET WELL SOON) deemed inappropriate for middle schoolers and to require parental permission for students to check it out, so FDLSD’s decision is especially heartening. During the hearings, the media specialist defended the library’s diverse collection and said that if a student checked out GET WELL SOON and was uncomfortable reading it that she would help that student find something more appropriate. This is exactly the right way to handle challenges like this and I’m so pleased with how things turned out.
If a challenge doesn’t get much media attention, the author often never hears about the challenge or the outcome. But in this case, Julie Halpern saw an article about the decision (and noted that no one’d called her) and wrote a blog post about how the challenge affected her writing of the sequel and the role respect plays in reading, writing, and allowing kids to pick their own reading material.
I so enjoyed guest blogging for PLA during the PLA National Conference in March, so I’m excited to announce that I’ve been accepted as a regular contributor for the YALSA blog. Tonight I wrote my first post, Preservation Week: Think Digital.
Preservation Week started yesterday and continues through Saturday and while the official campaign focuses a lot on internal concerns about library materials and on community members’ physical artifacts, it’s important that we also take the opportunity to talk about preserving digital content with teens in the library. Check it out!
I’m one of the oldest of the Millennials, a generation characterized by our comfort and proficiency with computers and the Internet. And while I’m one of the oldest, my dad’s something of a computer nerd, so I grew up with a computer in the house and my dad introduced me to things like programming and BBSes and the DOS shell from an early age. I liked science and math and computers so I kept working with them, spending a lot of time on the Internet in middle school and taking elective science classes in high school. In college I majored in math and got a minor in computer science (and minors in religious studies and English, too, just to round things out) and now I continue to do Internetty things like blogging.
A few weeks ago my supervisor in interlibrary loan was telling me about how ILL worked before the department had computers and Internet access: they relied on print-based lists of what each library had and requests had to be sent out via the postal service. While I could intellectually understand the process, I couldn’t really emotionally comprehend how work and research would have been like then. I think that my familiarity with computers and basically not knowing about a world before the Internet has led to me scoffing at things like MARC records because I know that computers now can handle things like extraneous whitespace and keyword searching–and I want to see that reflected in our technology and standards. I’m not content to just see how far we’ve come; I want library technology and standards to feel current.
But I am one of the oldest of the Millennials and for the first time I’m starting to feel it. A few weeks ago the Pew Research Center published a report on teens and cell phones; one of the findings was that texting was the primary mode of communication teens use. While I, too, am a daily texter, I also rely heavily on email–something only 11% of teens use on a daily basis. Previous research has also found that teens don’t really use Twitter (just 8%, even fewer than use email on a daily basis), but Twitter is one of my top tools. So for the first time in my life I’m starting to feel like I’m old–or at least, older than the age group that I need to be interested in. And I’m only 25! I’m finally starting to understand what it’s like to look at teens and not really get it. And I finally can’t depend on my own experience to understand my patrons.
People who are 15 now are the youngest of the Millennials (depending on how you define the generational cut-offs, I guess). While the Millennials are just now starting to enter the workforce and be grownups and shape the world, we have a whole new generation that’s been even more immersed in technology growing up (I didn’t get a smartphone until I was 24–but the well-off among this emerging generation will practically start out on smartphones) who will be entering our libraries and schools soon. And they’ll be even more different than the younger people of my generation, who are already beginning to seem distant and different. (For a little fun, take the Pew Research Center’s “How Millennial Are You?” quiz. I got a 95, so I guess I’m safe for now!)
I’m going to need to develop new coping strategies to keep in touch with teen culture and to stay on top of emerging trends. I can’t just rely on myself and my peers and my cousins anymore, seeing myself in my teen patrons–and that’s new for me. I’m sure that once I’m working regularly with teens, especially if my future library has a Teen Advisory Board, I can use my patrons themselves to know what’s going on in their lives, but I’m also going to understand those lives as being more and more different from my own. I guess I’m finally starting to feel like a grownup now.
I’m not sure what it is, but I seem to really enjoy the early morning sessions. Today the first one I attended was “Pregnant/Parenting Teens: Promoting Library Services Among the Underserved” with Maryann Mori, the director of the Waukee Public Library in Waukee, Iowa. She addressed the needs of pregnant and parenting teens, what libraries already have for those teens, and what libraries can do to further their service to these patrons.
In some ways, the needs of pregnant and parenting teens are similar to a lot of public library patrons’ needs: they want help with their education, with finding a job, and with entertainment. But they also have more specific needs like learning parenting skills, being put in touch with other community organizations that can help them, and just having someone in their lives that they can trust. We can meet these needs with our usual materials and services that provide for the educational, informational, entertainment, and lifelong learning needs of all of our patrons, but we can also provide a friendly staff, contact names and addresses for community organizations, and storytimes that also teach parenting and reading skills–especially by using the Every Child Ready to Read framework.
With the principles of ECRR in mind, Maryann designed a four-session program that emphasizes the six aspects (print motivation, vocabulary, phonological awareness, print awareness, letter knowledge, and narrative skills) and also explains the general benefits of reading to your baby.
The first meeting is an introduction to ECRR and provides statistics about the benefits of reading to your baby. The second meeting focuses on children’s books, choosing books for your baby, and print motivation. The third meeting covers phonological awareness and vocabulary. The final meeting reviews the first three and touches on teen parents’ reading memories and provides encouragement for the future. Each session combines storytelling and songs and rhymes and fingerplays with parenting skills that include aspects of child development.
Maryann also spent a lot of time talking about partnering with other organizations in the community. Such a partnership might be something as simple as creating a bookmark with information about the classes and good books for babies in the stuff that gets sent home with moms when they leave the hospital, but it can be as much as going to shelters and group homes and correctional facilities to do the classes. There are so many other organizations you can partner with to make these programs a success including high schools, the local WIC agency, the crisis pregnancy center, churches, the department of health, even the grocery store (advertise in the formula aisle!).
Serving pregnant or parenting teens also exists at an interesting intersection of teen services and children’s services, so it can be an interesting collaboration between librarians or departments.
There are some barriers to library access that some of these teen patrons may have. They may be balancing school and work. They may be living in temporary housing. They may be totally dependent on welfare. They may not be strong readers. They may lack transportation. They may not know what good parenting looks like. They might not even be able to get a library card without a parent’s signature since they’re underage–and what if they’ve been kicked out? Does your library have a policy that would provide for them?
Despite these stumbling blocks, this is an important demographic to reach because as they see what’s available to them and their babies at the library, they’ll come back. And Maryann’s program works: she’s not only seen these teens come back for more library services, but they’re also more likely to graduate and more likely to start reading more themselves, and their children develop better reading and language skills through the program.
What does your library have now for pregnant or parenting teens? What more can we be doing to serve them?
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