Teens & Reading

Teens & Reading

Some teenagers like to read. Others don’t. It’s that simple. Or is it?

As adults, we know that reading is important and we obviously want to make sure that the teenagers in our lives grow into adulthood with all the skills they need to succeed. But how can we encourage them…safely?

Before we list ways to encourage teen reading that may work, here are a few tactics that likely will not.

Try to avoid…

• Pressuring, nagging, or bribing. Encourage, don't hound.
• Criticizing what they choose to read. Forbid as little as possible- accept differences of opinion.
• Lavishing too much praise. Show interest, but don't make a big deal out of it. They'll see right through you.

Ways to encourage teens to read...

• Set an example. Let teens see you reading for pleasure.
• Make reading materials available. Leave books, magazines, and newspapers around.
• Acknowledge their mature interests. Suggest some adult reading you think they can handle or that may interest them.

What can teens get out of reading? They have to get something out of it, right? Through reading they can:

• Become an expert. An expert on any subject they like—from sports statistics to spelunking, coins to carburetors, ballerinas to barbecues, or anything in between.
• Live dangerously. Through reading teens can share the challenges, fears, thrills, and achievements of those they are reading about - without the risk.
• Have a few laughs. Many teens will enjoy sitting down with a book by their favorite comedian or a collection of jokes or cartoons.
• See the world. Without leaving town, teens can visit places that fascinate them.
• Travel through time. Historical fiction and science fiction can move a reader back and forth in time.
• Use their brains. Teens may enjoy solving a mystery, outwitting a crafty villain, or thinking through a perilous situation.
• Get some free advice. Lots of novels feature teenage characters that have problems and pressures common to many teens, believe it or not.
• Discover new interests. Through reading, teens may develop an interest in something they knew nothing about before.
• Find a cause. Teens can get smart on an issue that matters to them.
• Escape. Teens can escape noise, tension, or boredom by escaping into a book.

Teen Read Week is October 18-24, 2015. The purpose of Teen Read Week, created in 1998, is to encourage teens to be regular readers and library users.

In recognition of Teen Read Week, the Independence Public Library is hosting an after-hours Teen Read-In for those students in 6^th grade and up. Activities will include mish-mash book skits, telling ghost stories, book character charades, scavenger hunts, building forts, reading, snacks, and more! Join us after hours from 7:00-10:00 pm. The event is free. Please call the library to sign up @ 319-334-2470.

iTAB and Teen Programs

iTAB is the Independence (Public Library) Teen Advisory Board and is open to 6^th-12^th graders.  iTAB is designed to energize teen programming and services as well as allow teens a greater voice at the library. iTAB shows teens they’re important and that they can contribute in a meaningful way. In addition, iTAB helps give library staff the teen perspective. iTAB meets on  a monthly basis throughout the school year. The iTAB Members contribute valuable ideas for teen programming and collection development and have opportunities for volunteering.

Dark YA

Many adults share a concern that the current trend of intense dark YA novels—which sometimes deal with issues like self-harm and addiction and abuse and even death—could irrevocably damage the fragile minds of our youth.

What makes a book “dark” in the first place? Are dark books the ones that allegorically explore serious subject matter, like warfare (The Hunger Games) or the human capacity for destruction (Grasshopper Jungle)? Or are they the ones that reflect our actual world, including the capacity for human cruelty and kindness (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) or the messy stuff of human mortality (The Fault In Our Stars)?

Hey, aren’t these the same subjects young people are encouraged to engage in at school, by reading the newspaper, or classical texts like The Iliad (warfare) or Macbeth (the capacity for self-destruction) or To Kill A Mockingbird (kindness and cruelty) or A Farwell to Arms, all Emily Dickinson poetry (that messy morality business)?

Adolescence is a time when teens are statistically more likely to come into harm’s way and thus more likely to witness harm among their peers. Is it any wonder that they want books to help process what they’re experiencing around them, often for the first time?

We just need to remember that books don’t create behaviors. It is possible that they reinforce existing behaviors, but those behaviors are already present, not created by a novel. A novel won’t turn a bookish drama geek or popular star athlete into a promiscuous drug abuser any more than it will turn a promiscuous drug abuser into a bookish drama geek or popular star athlete, unless the seeds of those transformations were already planted.

What books can do, however, is reflect an experience and show a way out of difficult, isolating times. It’s why Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak has become so popular, giving young women a voice to speak about sexual abuse, or Sherman Alexie’s Diary of a Part-Time Indian has been a life raft for young people who can’t see their way out of existences straight-jacketed by addiction and deprivation. 

I suspect that most teens who read and love “dark” YA have little in common with the struggling characters they relate to. Teenagers say they are drawn to dark books because the appeal is seeing an ordinary teen forced into an extraordinary circumstance. 

Reading about everyday fictional teens rising to the occasion allows actual teens to imagine themselves doing the same. This is empowering, and hopeful. These “dark” books may seem to be about death, about illness, about pain, but really they are about life.And kids get that.