"Rainbow Party" Article

A New York Times article (login may be required) takes a look at whether teenage oral sex parties are for real or simply a media phenomenon. The controversy over the book has apparently sparked concerns. Opinions are mixed -- many teens say they've heard the term and know of someone (hmm, sounds like one of those "friend-of-a-friend" things, which makes me think it's an urban legend)who has gone to one. Of all the things out there for parents to panic about, this seems like it should be low on the list of worries. Maybe the book will spark some discussions between parents and their teens about whether oral sex is "real" sex, though. . .could be a good thing.

70 Books Challenged in Arkansas

We almost expect to hear about a book challenge here and there, but 70 titles at one time? That's how many "inappropriate" books a parent claims she found in Fayetteville school libraries. Those books include Judy Blume's "Forever" as well as some more recent titles, such as "The Homo Handbook: Getting in Touch with Your Inner Homo" by Judy Carter, "The Other Woman" by Eric J. Dickey, "Rainbow Boys" by Alex Sanchez, "Doing It" by Melvin Burgess, "Choke" by Chuck Palahniuk, and "GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Queer and Questioning Teens" by Kelly Huegel. Most are located in the high school library.

Unfortunately, the school district already has a history of letting this parent censor what students read. A previous challenge resulted in three challenged titles being placed on a restricted shelf. Now, with the new challenge, let's hope they don't have to make more -- lots more -- room on that shelf.

YA Authors Cafe

If you're interested in books for teens, be sure to check out this site. Chat with authors or with others interested in YA lit! Scroll down for the Summer 2005 schedule.

YoungAdultARCs Blog

Here's a great site, originated by posters at the YALSA-BK listserv, where you can get on the list to get advanced readomg copies of YA novels. You put your name down for a book, and the person before you mails it to you when they're done. Then you read it and mail it to the next person on the list. Read the instructions first if you're interested.

Wall Street Journal Article

The Wall Street Journal has a June 24th article on YA lit, mainly a warning to parents that some of the themes are not for the faint of heart. An excerpt:

"Hilary Armstrong was happy to see her 12-year-old daughter Katherine reading at the kitchen table one afternoon -- until, that is, she glanced at the back of the book jacket. 'I was mortified,' says Mrs. Armstrong. The book, which her daughter got from a friend, had a blurb on the back that read, 'After all, no one really wants to go to college a virgin.' The San Francisco mom allowed Katherine to finish the novel, one of the popular 'Gossip Girl' series, but started keeping closer tabs on her daughter's reading material. She wishes the book business would help out. 'It would be nice if they had a big rating on it, like at the movies,' Mrs. Armstrong says."

Though the article is focused on alerting parents, I found it fairly balanced, as the reporter quotes an independent bookseller who carries the controversial title "Rainbow Party" and also the publisher of that title, who says he would be happy to have his 13-year-old daughter read it. Besides, I think it's fine for parents to be concerned and aware of what their own children are reading. The problem is when they decide to police what other people's children read.

The article also includes reviews of new teen titles.

New Web Site Features

Lately, I've been looking into some exciting new ideas to make this website more useful. I just added an RSS feed, which allows readers to "subscribe" to the site and have new headlines delivered to their news aggregators (also called RSS readers) -- I use MyYahoo to read the blogs I'm interested in as well as headlines from the New York Times, etc. To subscribe to the teenlibrarian.com blog, use this URL:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Teenlibrarian.

You can also read my FAQ about RSS.

In addition, I'm using a free service called RSS Digest to add the three most recent headlines from my blog to the front page of teenlibrarian.com. This is a wonderful site that makes it easy -- it's all automated, so after I update my blog, readers will see the new headline on the front page. All you do is enter your feed URL, website URL, and e-mail address. Next, you cut and paste some code into your web site HTML and it's done. My thanks to the site developer, Peter Cooper.

Slate Article Slams YA Lit

A June 17 article in Slate criticizes young adult literature for its "saccharine simplicity" and calls it "the melodramatic fictional equivalent of an Afterschool Special", though it isn't quite clear which teen books writer Ann Hulbert has actually read -- possibly "The Buffalo Tree" by Adam Rapp, and definitely not Printz winner "how i live now", which she refers to in the article as "The Way I Live Now". Luckily, the discussion of the article includes some spirited responses, including one from YA author Alex Flinn, and some excellent rebuttals on the YALSA-BK listserv as well.