At our store we’re heading into what’s usually a relatively quiet time, business-wise. (Note that it’s never quiet in our buyers’ office and rarely quiet in the world of event planning.)  Wellesley and the other surrounding towns tend to empty out in late July, as families head to Maine, Cape Cod, or places further afield. Until that happens, though, we are busy, busy as families come in to stock up on books for… SUMMER READING.

To accommodate this surge in business and the many, many requests we get for personalized recommendations at this time of year, our staff puts together wonderful booklets of summer reading suggestions that we hand out to all customers who walk through the door. We’ve got one booklet of recommendations for adults, and one for kids in 1st grade through high school. You can download the children’s booklet in pdf form right here, though it won’t actually look like a "booklet" until you copy the pages back-to-back and then fold them in half so that the front shows the cover and the lists progress chronologically by age.

Our children’s summer reading booklets have been a labor of love for me for many years now, and have become a tool that customers find useful long after the summer months have passed, which makes all the hard work that goes into making them seem that much more worthwhile. It’s a tremendous challenge each year to whittle our store favorites down to just 12 or 13 books for each of two grade levels (1st and 2nd grade, 3rd and 4th grade, and so on). I put a lot of time into the booklet’s design (yes, I do all that) and give it a new theme each year, because I want its overall appearance to reflect the quality of its contents. I try to make sure that each list in the booklet represents a good mix of books with appeal to boys, girls, historical fiction fans, contemporary fiction fans, fantasy fans, non-fiction fans, reluctant readers, eager readers, and so on. I include some hardcovers but mostly paperbacks, some older favorites but mostly new titles. Except in VERY rare cases, I will not put a book on the list that has already made an appearance there in the past two years. The only time I break this rule is when something was on the list in hardcover two years ago and now it’s out in paperback, AND it’s a book that’s not going to easily "sell itself," AND it’s a book that’s just so good that I can’t help myself. And there’s one more thing I take into account: I try very, very hard to make sure that each list includes at least one book that is NOT about "white kids."

The latter should not be difficult, but EVERY YEAR this one little step in my list-tweaking feels like a serious hurdle. ESPECIALLY when it comes to finding/choosing books for younger readers (say, first through fourth graders). The simple fact is this: we need more well-written, high quality beginning reader series and chapter book series with contemporary settings about (or at least including!) kids of color, mixed families, and mixed groups of kids. I love Ann Cameron’s books but I can’t put Julian, Huey, and Gloria titles on EVERY year’s summer reading list.

Publishers, please GO TO A BOOKSTORE. Look at the books in a store’s beginning reader and first chapter book sections. Notice the whitewash effect there. And do something about it. Not just something with an urban flavor, and NOT something that’s historical fiction, please! Just something well-written and entertaining about contemporary kids who happen to be something other than Caucasian — kids with whom anyone can relate and about whom anyone would want to read more. You do it all the time for books about white kids. It’s well past time to get some other kids in the mix too.

Anyone else see holes in the stacks that you’d liked to have filled? If so, shout out those requests! I look forward to seconding many of them.

(Oh, and curious about our store’s summer reading picks for adults? You can download the pdf of that booklet, compiled primarily by Lorna Ruby with much help and design work by Kym Havens, here.)

You know all those companies that have phone numbers that spell things, along the lines of 1-800-DIAL THIS (which I know has one too many digits, thank you very much)? Have you ever wondered if your own phone number spelled something?
 
You can figure this out on your own, of course, by simply writing down your phone number with the three-letters that correspond to it written over each number, then look for familiar words or word-letter combinations in the mix. OR, if puzzles of that sort aren’t your cup of tea, you can visit phonespell.org, which will do all the letter permutations for you and tell you whether or not your number spells something unique.

I once had a friend whose number (without the area code) spelled PLACEBO. I know someone else whose current digits are BIG THUG.

My own number contains too many 1’s and 0’s (numbers with no corresponding letters) to generate anything fun. Not even THIS 1 IS A 0, which I suppose would actually be a pretty insulting number to have…

I hope some of you out there have some doozies rather than duds. If so, unravel their mysteries for us here! (Without giving us the area code, you’re unlikely to get any crank calls from readers.)

I had planned to spend last Saturday being WILDLY productive — writing a few blog posts, spending at least four hours working on my book, and also (if possible) reading all the pictures books on Penguin’s spring list, in anticipation of my appointment with sales rep Biff Donovan. But on Friday evening I made the mistake of reading the first few chapters of The Year We Disappeared: A Father-Daughter Memoir by Cylin Busby and John Busby (Bloomsbury, August 2008), whose story is so completely, totally, and immediately enthralling that it made the better part of my Saturday disappear. It also made my adrenaline rise, made my heart race, and made me look pretty ridiculous. I know this because Gareth actually laughed at me, so incapable was I of successfully putting this book down and not going back to it again. At one point I even laughed at MYSELF (as I’m wont to do anyway), when I realized I was attempting to take food out of our refrigerator with my right hand without looking up from the pages of my ARC, splayed open in my left. I’ve gotten lost in the pages of a lot of books lately, but can honestly say that none of them (not even The Hunger Games) has been quite as un-put-downable or half so disturbing as this.

For those of you not already familiar with it, here’s what will appear on the flap copy of the finished book, to give you the gist:

When Cylin Busby was nine years old, she was obsessed with Izod clothing, the Muppets, and her pet box turtle. Then, in the space of a night, everything changed. Her police officer father, John, was driving to work when someone leveled a shotgun at his window. The blasts that followed left John’s jaw on the passenger seat of his car—literally. Overnight, the Busbys went from being the "family next door" to one under 24-hour armed guard, with police escorts to school, and no contact with friends. Worse, the shooter was still on the loose, and it seemed only a matter of time before he’d come after John—or someone else in the family—again. With their lives unraveling around them, and few choices remaining for a future that could never be secure, the Busby family left everything and everyone they had ever known…and simply disappeared.

As told by both father and daughter, this is a harrowing, and at times heartbreaking account of a shooting and its aftermath, even as it shows a young girl trying to make sense of the unthinkable, and the triumph of a family’s bravery in the face of crisis.

What this brief synopsis doesn’t tell you is that this book is also about politics: SERIOUSLY UGLY politics. In 1979, the year of John Busby’s shooting, the Falmouth, Massachusetts police department knowingly botched the investigation into John Busby’s attempted murder, and the sickening injustice of this is half of what makes John and Cylin’s account so riveting. John and his fellow officers had little doubt as to the identity of his shooter (or at least the person who ordered his death), but the powers-that-be (or rather, the-powers-that-then-were) were unwilling to take down a man as feared and well-connected as "Raymond Meyer" (a fake name, though any newspaper story recounting the event will reveal the real one). The town of Falmouth paid thousands and thousands of dollars for John’s medical bills during his remarkable recovery and for the 24-hour surveillance of his family, but the police department tried to make this particular crime just disappear, as they had done in previous cases of death and arsons to which "Ray" appeared to have been connected.

WHY? Fear. "Ray" (who is, yes, still alive) had managed to make plenty of people afraid of him (with good reason) and cozied up to enough people within the department to make everyone else squeamish about the possibility that any actions they took against him would come back to haunt them in the end. Which is exactly what happened to John Busby.

Reading this book I kept shaking my head to think that this is FALMOUTH we’re talking about. Corruption at this level and characters this large are things I associate with big cities and seedy towns. Not quiet (except maybe in the summer) Cape Cod communities. And that might just be the scariest thing about this book. In reading about this one scary person, and the effect his senseless brutality had on the police department of one small town, it’s hard not to wonder if corruption like this could be the norm for every community with a madman in its midst.

I love the structure of this book and the alternative points of view delivered by John and Cylin, who was nine at the time of her father’s shooting. John’s chapters open a window onto the anger he experienced as he struggled with a long, painful recovery and watched his department tiptoe around the issue of arresting the man responsible for his shooting. Cylin’s chapters reveal what it was like to be a child living through the horror of seeing your father missing half his face; being escorted to and through school by police officers; losing your friends because their parents won’t let them talk to you for fear something will then happen to them; losing, really, all sense of normalcy. Together these twin perspectives reveal what something like this does to a family. And they make you marvel at the fact that this particular family remained intact.

The events (and suspicions) described in the book are corroborated by newspaper reports of the time, leaving me with zero doubts as to the truth of the Busbys’ story. The statute of limitations on John Busby’s attempted murder has run out, so the best John, Cylin, and the rest of their family can hope for now is that other will read their story and take something positive from it. The question is, how are the residents of Falmouth likely to react? Carol Chittenden, whose bookstore Eight Cousins occupies a spot on the town’s Main Street, confessed to some nervousness about the book’s release in the Galley Talk she wrote for Children’s Bookshelf, for which I certainly don’t blame her. The wounds left by John’s shooting and "Ray’s" mishandling (or lack of handling) were never afforded any real opportunity to heal. A "Where Are They Now?" section at the back of the book explains what’s become of the story’s leading players, and a number of them are still alive and living in town. Who can guess how they’re going to receive it?

I think the average reader, though, is going to find this book completely absorbing. At our store, we plan to shelve it in both the adult and young adult sections of our store, because this is a book sure to have crossover appeal. And it’s sure to give EVERYONE something to talk about.

My first few glimpses of the spring 2009 lists have yielded a number of oohs and quite a few chuckles, several of them brought on by two forthcoming poetry books from Hyperion. Each of those books just HAPPENS to include a poem related to the topic of reading, I thought I’d feature each of those poems + one other here and in that way give you a taste of the good fun in store for you when you read these books in their entirety.

First, a reading-related poem from Food Hates You, Too and Other Poems written and illustrated by Robert Weinstock (Hyperion, April 2009) who is also the author/illustrator of the VERY entertaining Giant Meatball (Harcourt, June 2008).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

You may not know your brain is eating
Every word you’ve just been reading.
Its appetite is most exceeding.
Food for thought, worth oft repeating.

The other poems in this book generally (though not always!) tackle the subject of more "traditional" foods, though in VERY untraditional ways! For example, take the double-page spread on which Weinstock has recreated the Great Green Room of Goodnight Moon fame but replaced its loveable bunnies with praying mantids. As if that doesn’t skew things enough, here’s the poem that accompanies that scene:

MOM

I ate your father. Yes, it’s true.
That’s what we praying mantids do.
His last words to me were "Adieu.
If only I could eat you, too."

Admit it! You chuckled, didn’t you? Maybe even guffawed? I thought so.

Next up: two samples of fun from Orangutan Tongs: Poems to Tangle Your Tongue by Jon Agee (Hyperion, March 2009), who is also the author/illustrator of the VERY entertaining The Retired Kid (Hyperion, June 2008) and many, many other books that provide entertainment for ALL ages. Truly.

The key here: READ THESE POEMS OUT LOUD. Seriously. Who cares if anyone hears you? You work in children’s books, right? You’re supposed to be weird.

ROTTEN WRITING

Reading writing
When it’s written really rotten
Can cause your eyes and intellect to strain.
When it’s written really rotten,
Writing’s really rotten reading.
Yes, reading rotten written writing really is a pain.

Aced that one, did you? Well then here’s a REAL challenge for you:

WRISTWATCHES

I have a new Swiss wristwatch.
So does my old pal Mitch.
If you switched his wristwatch
With my new Swiss wristwatch,
Could you tell which wristwatch was which?

Yes, sexy. I don’t know if that’s what the BBC had in mind when they hired Richard Armitage to record a series of bedtime stories for their CBeebies channel, but… Well, to read the comments from YouTube viewers, that is exactly what they got! One commenter remarked that Richard’s "Night night. Sleep tight." following a reading of Gorky Paul’s Winnie in Winter is the sexiest thing she’s ever heard. Do you agree? If not, who would you most like to see reading and (while we’re having fun with this) what BOOK should he or she be reading from?

Today’s entertainment comes by way of Red Zinny at Café Press, who will happily sell you a t-shirt sporting this slogan, which made me laugh out loud!

Gareth and I live just a stone’s throw from one of my favorite spots in the Boston area: the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. When out-of-town guests come a-calling and I mention that I can’t wait to take them to my favorite cemetery they look at me askance, until they experience the place for themselves — then they invariably want to go back again.

Founded in 1831, Mount Auburn was the first large-scale designed landscape open to the public in the United States. The cemetery’s website explains its origins this way:

"Our founders believed that burying and commemorating the dead was best done in a tranquil and beautiful natural setting at a short distance from the city center. They also believed that the Cemetery should be a place for the living, ’embellishing’ the natural landscape with ornamental plantings, monuments, fences, fountains and chapels. This inspired concept was copied widely throughout the United States, giving birth to the rural cemetery movement and the tradition of garden cemeteries. Their popularity led, in turn, to the establishment of America’s public parks."

Today Mount Auburn is this lush oasis in the city, filled as it is with towering trees, flowering bushes, and (of course) the remains of many famous New Englanders. I have been there in every season, and can attest to its year-round beauty. AND the enormity of its size. AND the beauty of its plants and flowers, like these Bluebells.

Only living plant specimens are allowed here, unless you count those carved or in relief, like these roses:

Each time I visit Mount Auburn I discover something I hadn’t noticed before, and quite often my discoveries are tied, in some way, to BOOKS.

The carved headstone above is one I discovered on a recent afternoon visit, during which I also took a couple shots of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‘s grave to share with all of you.

Longfellow is just one of the many, many famous people buried in Mount Auburn, many of whom were writers and poets. AND publishers, as it turns out. Just seconds after I took this shot, below…

I turned around, mounted a step, and came upon this sad scene, of decapitated tombstones…

and this explanation for it, below. (Clicking on the photos will take you to images large enough for you to read.)

Yep. Gareth and I had stumbled right onto the burying place of Charles C. Little and James C. Brown, of Little, Brown fame. As the signs explain, a large tree branch fell on this the spot during a wind storm in March, doing significant damage to the Brown lot…

and slight damage to the Little lot.

Conservators are currently working on repairs and restorations to both. (And they’re more than happy to accept donations toward those efforts.) If you are ever in the Boston area (or already are), I recommend heading over to Mount Auburn to check on their progress AND (more importantly) to just enjoy the beauty of scenes like this…

and plants like this (Lilly of the Valley).

The illustrators among you might enjoy making a sketch or two of spots like this (which is exactly what Gareth’s doing below).

The designers among you would probably appreciate the artistry of patterns like this:

And you typographers are in for a few treats too. As are those of you in search of names for book characters.

Of course, if that’s not enough for you, there’s always the option of visiting the graves of Winslow Homer, Nathaniel Bowditch, Fannie Farmer, and Isabella Stewart Gardner (below), just to name a few.

(All of the photos in this post have been saved to my ShelfTalker Flickr page, where you can view them larger if you’d like.)

Have you got a favorite cemetery near you? If so, please share. If not, please make a point of visiting this one so you won’t feel left out.

I’m very entertained by the idea of this temporary tattoo booklet from PatinaStores.com. You can view a close-up of one of these beauties at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories or click on the photo below to see smaller versions of all the tats to be found in this booklet.

Most of the tattoos in this booklet, though, aren’t half as interesting or entertaining as the real-world booklover tattoos I’ve seen. Max from Where the Wild Things Are brandishes a fork on my friend Tim Scarlett’s ankle. My pal Janet Potter has a beatiful ampersand on her hip. As I mentioned once before, lexicographer/editor Steve Kleineder has the phonetic alphabet chart tattooed on his back. (Not that I’ve seen it, mind you.)

A search for "tattoos" and "book" on Flickr yields a clever Vonnegut salute, and (holy cow!) a winner in the Connect-the-Dots category. There’s also an open book, splayed pages, books on a shelf, a fiery typewriter, a reference to To Kill a Mockingbird, a tribute to Snape, Harriet the Spy (!), an ant traveling by tesseract, another ampersand fan, and (my favorite) an image adapted from the cover of Ann Fadiman’s Ex Libris.

We book lovers are so attached to the objects of our passion that it make sense to me that some of us would want to wear those objects in a literal, permanent fashion. Are you one of those folks? Or do you WISH you were brave enough to be? If so tell us about your real-life book tattoos, dream-life book tattoos, or book tattoo sightings. 

If you’re a big Abe Lincoln fan, then this could be your year. February of 2009 will mark the 200th year since old Abe’s birth, prompting towns all over the U.S. to host Lincoln Bicentennial celebrations and publishers to roll out the Lincoln lore like there’s no tomorrow.

Think I’m exaggerating? Pasted below are the covers (where I could find them) of just THIRTEEN of the many, many NEW trade books on Abraham Lincoln that will be published between now and this February. These are in addition to the many, many new library edition books that will be appearing this fall, and the many, many former hardcovers about Lincoln that will soon be appearing in paperback for the first time, OR the paperbacks long out of print that will soon be reissued. There are even at least 3 new Little Dover Books ($1.50 each) coming out this December as part of the Lincoln craze.

Most (if not all) of these thirteen books featured below ones I’ve purchased for our store (or will be purchasing for our store), because most are by well-known authors and most will get a great deal of publicity. But as much as I’d like to believe that every customer in town will come racing in the door to buy Lincoln books, I don’t. And even if MOST of them came racing in the door, what are the odds of them needing 13 different new hardcover books to choose from? What are the odds of them (unless they’re teachers focusing on Civil War-era history) buying up more than 1 or 2 titles? Is there anyone out there who will actually be buying all 13 of these books? VERY doubtful.

It’s not like Lincoln is a new subject for books. Lincoln’s birthday comes around every year in February, and I’ve yet to see a true "run" on Lincoln books yet. It’s not like we’ve suddenly "discovered" a hidden treasure box of information about the guy, either, or that libraries are completely lacking in Lincoln-themed titles.

BUT, so it goes. And I’m not knocking the quality of the books that are forthcoming, as WOW. A lot of them are fantastic. And there’s quite a variety here. But I do worry that having so many Lincolns could mean a lot of publishers lose Washingtons, as there’s just too much competition in the mix.

Here you go: THIRTEEN forthcoming Lincoln titles, in order of publication month. Which of these are your favorites? Which older titles Lincoln titles do you think stand out from the pack? What forthcoming books have I missed here that you think are worth noting? Post a comment and let us all know.

Coming from Henry Holt Books for Young Readers in August 2008, Abraham Lincoln Comes Home written by Robert Burleigh and illustrated by Wendell Minor.

Coming from Albert Whitman in August 2008, Abe Lincoln Loved Animals written by Ellen Jackson and illustrated by Doris Ettlinger.

Coming from Viking Children’s Books in September 2008, Mr. Lincoln’s Boys written by Staton Rabin and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline.

Coming from Henry Holt Books for Young Readers in September 2008, Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship written by Nikki Giovanni and illustrated by Bryan Collier.

Coming from Feiwel and Friends in September 2008, Lincoln Shot: A President’s Life Remembered written by Barry Denenberg and illustrated by Christopher Bing.

Coming from Walker and Company in September 2008, Lincoln Through the Lens: How Photography Revealed and Shaped an Extraordinary Life by Martin W. Sandler.

Coming from Schwartz & Wade Books in September 2008, Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek: A Tall, Thin Tale (Introducing His Forgotten Frontier Friend) written by Deborah Hopkinson and illustrated by John Hendrix. (Of the titles listed here, this one has the least to offer in the way of factual information, but I give it the highest rating for sheer entertainment value. What a FUN, funny book!)

Coming from Schwartz & Wade Books in October 2008, The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary by Candace Fleming.

Coming from Hyperion in October 2008, Abe’s Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln written by Doreen Rappoport and illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

Coming from Scholastic/Blue Sky Press in February 2009, Our Abe Lincoln by Jim Aylesworth, illustrated by Barbara McClintock.

Coming from Scholastic Press in February 2009, Chasing Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson.

I couldn’t find cover images for the following titles. For now you’ll have to use your imaginations!

Coming from National Geographic Children’s Books in December 2008, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker: The Unlikely Friendship of Elizabeth Keckley and Mary Todd Lincoln by Lynda Jones.

Coming from Collins in December 2008, What Lincoln Said written by Sarah L. Thompson and illustrated by James E. Ransome.

Coming from Simon & Schuster in January 2009, My Brother Abe: Sally Lincoln’s Story written by Harry Mazer.

Last week I blogged about my appreciation for the summer reading list assembled by the English department of local Weston High School. Several readers of that post correctly observed (with dismay) that the Weston list is lacking in young adult literature. Sadly, this is not unusual and I agree that it’s a disappointment. Unfortunately that’s the norm with MOST of the school lists that I see, especially the lists created by a school’s English department. (Often those created with the input of a school librarian have a more YA-inclusive mix.)

As much as those of us in the book business might like to think otherwise, a LOT of high school English teachers are still tied to the mind-set that YA books are not true "literature." (I recently had a school turn down an offer for a free school visit with a VERY prominent, beloved, talented young adult author for pretty much this very reason.) The teachers who have this mind-set rarely use YA literature in their classroom teaching except in cases where they are working with students who are "reluctant" readers or students reading below grade level.

Of course there are plenty of teachers who know, love, and are current with their knowledge of young adult books. But many of them are stuck in departments with the aforementioned way of thinking and/or unable to find many ways to work anything into their curriculum that isn’t going to appear on the standardized tests they’re so often expected to "teach to" nowadays.

But it’s summer! Summer reading is supposed to be fun, right? Shouldn’t that negate the whole "are these books literature?" debate? That depends on whom you ask. Many teachers and librarians have been moving toward the notion that summer reading should, above all else, be designed to keep kids reading (Period.) and that it should therefore be less about educational value than about sheer pleasure. But others believe the intent of summer reading is to keep kids in "learning mode" or keep them "working" throughout the summer, so that the transition back to the work of the school year comes as less of a shock.

I’m forever surprised to note that parents often appear split along the same line. Many of those who consider their teenagers especially "gifted" (which as any bookseller will tell you, is MOST customers) often turn up their noses at high school reading lists that include a large number of young adult novels, on the assumption that those books are not "challenging" enough for their oh-so-smart progeny.

Also, whether they think their kids are brilliant or not, I’ve heard many a parent express frustration with school lists on which they recognize few or none of the titles being assigned. There is apparently comfort for these folks in seeing the same titles they once slogged through (or in some cases genuinely enjoyed) appear on the lists that their kids are now being asked to read. A lack of familiar or "classic" titles often prompts remarks about the "dumbing down" of education these days, or the lack of commitment to "serious literature." As for how teenagers generally respond to this? I have seen many a teen roll their eyes when Mom or Dad tells them the story of how The Red Badge of Courage, say, was a life-changing book for them when THEY had to read it in high school. Sometimes the kid can be persuaded, but more often than not, a parent has just marked that book for the "miss list."

The best summer reading lists, I believe, should include a solid mix of books published for young adult readers and books published for adults, with an emphasis on ENJOYING reading. I think lists should include books that will appeal to reluctant readers AND books that will catch the eye of those kids who genuinely seek a challenge (or who just want to impress college admissions counselors). A list NEEDS to include newer books and (really, truly) the lists need to include a brief summary and/or review. (With the exception of the bit about including young adult novels, the Weston High School list hit all of these marks, which is why I thought it a good list to highlight last week.) 

Why the need for NEW books: No teen wants to be assigned the exact same list of books that his older brother was assigned five years earlier, no matter how good all the books on that old list may have been. Static lists send the message that reading is static — that books get old, that time never marches forward (which is how many kids feel when they sit through a less-than-engaging class and watch that minute hand move at a snail’s pace). Static lists also have another pitfall: they often contain multiple books that are now out of print. Parents hate this. Kids hate this. Booksellers hate this. I haven’t polled librarians on this matter, but my guess is they aren’t overjoyed, either. After all, what are the odds of their having enough copies of the one out-of-print book on that recommended (or worse — required!) list to actually satisfy the hundreds of students at X high school?

Why the need for a summary and/or review: Try looking over a list of 50+ titles many of the lists of recommendations I see are at least that long), on which maybe 10 titles are ones you’ve actually heard of and just 2 of those have ever sounded appealing, then figure out which books YOU want to read. You can’t do it, can you? SO, your next options as follows:

1. Go online with that school reading list and look up EVERY SINGLE TITLE to read what they’re about and THEN choose a couple that appeal to you.

2. Go to your local library or bookstore and ask a librarian or bookseller to show you the books on that list. WORST case scenario here: The librarian or bookseller you’re speaking to isn’t familiar with or fond of any of the books on your list, meaning you are in for a LONG afternoon of browsing and choosing from the books that are on hand (which may not be many if you’ve got an outdated list of suggestions or if the rest of your school has beaten you to the punch). BEST case scenario here: You are blessed with the assistance of a librarian or bookseller who glances at your long list and says, "OOH! I love this one! And this one!" then steers you in the direction of a handful of appealing-sounding choices, providing you with synopses and reviews along the way.

In EITHER of these scenarios the process of choosing books feels like WORK, which certainly doesn’t send a very positive message. Even in the best case scenario above, a teenager often feels frustrated (at least before they’ve been given assistance) because they feel helpless. They’re adrift in a sea of embarrassing cluelessness and (horror of horrors!) they have to ASK FOR HELP.

If, however, a teenager is given a list with an enticing mix of new titles and familiar classics on which each title is accompanied by some enticing synopsis or plug, they have then been armed with information that makes it possible for them to choose for themselves. They can still, of course, ask a bookseller or librarian, "Which of these would you recommend?" but that feels a lot less scary than asking, "Can you help me find these 50 books and do you know anything about them?"

But back to the topic that began this post — the lack of YA books appearing on high school reading lists. I’d love to hear how others think we can reverse this trend.

The best ways I know of, personally, to accomplish this are 1) to educate teachers and school librarians about the best quality YA books out there and then trust that they’ll want to use those books wit
h
their students or at least recommend that their students read them, and 2) introduce high school students to great YA books, encourage them to tell their teachers about them, and hope for a sort of "trickle up" approach. Working on such an individual level, though, is obviously going to bring about change in a very slow fashion. Anyone have any ideas that would accomplish things at a faster pace or at least reach a broader audience? If so, please comment.