I feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog the last month. I took a continuing education class through YALSA on critically evaluating young adult literature, which was a great refresher for critical literary analysis and an overview of how YALSA awards committees work, and really helpful. But it meant I was doing discussion posts and writing book annotations and reading notes like a committee member rather than blogging here. ‘ll share my thoughts on what I read for the course in my reading recap and our discussion raised lots of issues for me to ponder that I’m still working up for a blog post.
I’m also taking a course for library school on children’s literature and programming, and that’s taking up a bit of my normal blogging time, but has made for interesting reading. There’s so much to the world of children’s literature, and I feel like we’re just scratching the surface and I want to read more picture books through middle grade.
Here’s what I did post on the blog this month:
Just one book review! And it was one I’d had in my drafts for months. I loved Beware the Wild by Natalie C. Parker and I don’t want you to miss it.
I’ve been making more YA Like–>Try–>Why posts! Here are the two I shared this month, both for contemporary YA, but more genres are in the works.
I rounded up more LGBTQ YA coming out in 2015.
While I didn’t have any teen programs that I ran this month, I am excited about two we’re planning for summer reading: a Sherlock-inspired murder mystery “scavenger/puzzle” hunt and our first 12 hour lock-in. I did write a bit about teen programming, though, in response to the Teen Services Underground prompt about fandom and teen programming.
And my most recent blog post this month was a look at the 2014 NYT YA bestseller lists by gender, which was really interesting.
I made this Breakfast Club booklist for each character, and I’m rather pleased how it turned out.
I’m not going to lie: this month on social media and the bookish internet was kind of depressing, which is perhaps another reason why I didn’t participate as much. So, just two thought-provoking links. I loved this article about how your twitter friends are real (I love my twitter friends!) and look forward to meeting more IRL. And this analysis of fandom culture was spot on.
I plan on being back with more book reviews, more readers’ advisory lists, and more cheer in April!
How was the month of March for you? What did I miss? What have you been reading? Let me know in the comments!
wrapped up in books 