Teen Read Week

Teen Read Week

October 18-24, 2015 is Teen Read Week in the US, a literacy initiative created by the Young Adult Library Services Association. This year’s theme is Get Away @ your library.

Now, down here in Australia we don’t usually celebrate Teen Read Week. We have recently celebrated the CBCA Book Week, which is for all ages, but I love the idea of specifically targeting teenage reading audiences. And really, what librarian wouldn’t another excuse to decorate the library and celebrate the fabulousness of young adult books.

This year’s Teen Read Week theme conjures images of summer reads (holding onto the last summer rays for those in the Northern Hemisphere, while awaiting the coming warmth in the Southern), holiday destinations and, of course, the epic Road Trip.

While our library won’t be celebrating Teen Read Week as such, it is certainly timely for inspiring some teen-related displays, activities and book lists.


Display Ideas

ROAD TRIP

Epic USoYA3

Plenty of black cardboard with white chalk lines… What better conjures the road trip theme. Throw in some beautiful images of grand landscapes or road signs, and we are good to go.

Epic Reads has some awesome maps made from YA book covers. There is a map for Europe, Canada and Greenland, the US and Oceania, and each comes with a list of the book titles used. Personally, I think you could further break Australia down into its States and Territories.

EpicReads_PlanetYA_Oceania

These maps would look amazing in the library in large-scale, whether that’s on a huge window, a display board or an entire wall. You might also want to switch the titles used to reflect the books you have in your library. Epic Reads also has a Open Road Reading infographic, listing 12 great YA books for the open road.

License Plates

I also love the idea of using license plates to link between the road, states/countries and great books. They could be printed to use as frames for book titles or recommendations, or used to decorate the road trip display. The US state license plates offer a particularly colourful range to use.

Books Rule License Plate

ACME has a fantastic interactive license plate maker, where you can input text onto any of the US state license plates.

GET AWAY … TO ANOTHER WORLD
Fairytale Display - 2Introducing fantasy and sci-fi. What better way to ‘get away’. I have created a fairytale retelling fantasy display, as there are so many fantastic new books in this category.

Of course, the possibilities for a fantasy or sci-fi display are endless.

LITERARY SIGNPOST

Literary SignpostA literary signpost is a great way to celebrate all the different worlds and places books help readers ‘get away’ to.  My full Literary Signpost post can be found here.

 


Activities

READING BINGO

YA-Reading-Bingo-Challenge-2014There are plenty of reading bingo templates available. This one is from Retreat by Random House Canada. It would be easy to adapt the bingo squares to reflect the Get Away theme, with plenty of road trip/summer reads/destination books/fantasy references.

Teens might like to complete solo or in teams.

BOOK QUEST SCAVENGER HUNTS

During this years’s Book Week, our library ran a Quote Quest, where students were asked to complete a range of questions about quotes (displayed in the library on posters) and tasks with the aim to get students into the library and engaging with texts. This was a huge success. The favourite question was definitely ‘How many books are in the entire library collection?’, with answers ranging from the hundreds to the millions (unfortunately our budget doesn’t extend quite that far). Suggested questions for a ‘Get Away’ themed hunt might include:

  • Find a book set in Japan.
  • Complete the quote “Besides the alternate universe offered by a book, the quiet space of a museum was my favorite place to go. My mom said I was an escapist at heart . . . that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one. It’s true that I’ve always been able to…” ― Amy Plum, Die for Me.
  • What is the Dewey Decimal number for geography and travel?
  • Name the title of a book about a road trip?
  • Which famous author said: “I think that pretty much every form of fiction (I’d include fantasy, obviously) can actually be a real escape from places where you feel bad, and from bad places. It can be a safe place you go, like going on holiday, and it can be somewhere that, while you’ve escaped, actually teaches you things you need to know when you go back, that gives you knowledge and armour and tools to change the bad place you were in. So no, they’re not escapist. They’re escape.”