LIBR 262-02
Resources for Young Adults
Spring 2005

Instructor: Joni Richards Bodart
Associate Adjunct Professor
San Jose State University
9015 E. Girard Ave., #25
Denver, CO 80231
303-668-0360
E-mail

GREENSHEET

| Instructional Materials | Course Meetings | Course Requirements | Course Outline |

Course Description

Materials for adolescents and pre-adolescents and methods for incorporating these materials into library programs. Collection development, needs assessment, and programming will be featured. Information services for young adults in a variety of settings will also be addressed.

Course Objectives

Students successfully completing this course will be able to:

• Evaluate selection tools, and use appropriate resources to develop a young adult collection including all appropriate formats.
• Apply information on adolescent development, psychology, sociology and popular culture to plan appropriate programming and services for teens.
• Understand and articulate their own philosophy of intellectual freedom and the importance of protecting this right when working with materials for young adults in any appropriate format.
• Understand and appreciate literature for young adults, including both the historical perspective and the current trends in the field.
• Understand the current reading, viewing and listening habits of teens, using this knowledge in program planning and collection development.
• Set up a school visiting program and do booktalks.

This course also supports the following SLIS objectives:

Information transfer; information management, including the selection, organization, storage, retrieval, dissemination and utilization of information resources; one or more specialized aspects of information management.

Instructional Materials

Required
Marc Aaronson. Exploding the Myths: The Truth about Teenagers and Reading. Scarecrow, 2001.
Joni Richards Bodart. Radical Reads: 101 YA Novels on the Edge. Scarecrow, 2002.
Diana Tixier Herald. Teen Genreflecting, 2 nd edition. Libraries Unlimited, 2003.
Patrick Jones. Connecting Young Adults and Libraries, 3 rd edition. Neal-Schuman, Publishers, 2003.

Optional or recommended
Joni Bodart. Booktalk!2 Booktalking and School Visiting for all Ages and Audiences. H.W. Wilson, 1985.
Eliza Dresang. Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age. H.W. Wilson, 1999.
Patrick Jones and Joel Shoemaker. Do It Right: Best Practices for Serving Young Adults in School and Public Libraries. Neal-Schumann, 2001.

Other titles you might find useful
Sheila B. Anderson. Serving Older Teens. Libraries Unlimited, 2003.
Lesley S. J. Farmer. Digital Inclusion, Teens and your Library. Libraries Unlimited, 3/05.
Carole D. Fiore. Fiore's Summer Library Reading Program Handbook. Neal-Schuman, 2005.
Roger Leslie and Patricia Wilson. Igniting the Spark: Library Programs that Inspire High School Patrons. Libraries Unlimited, 2001.
C. Allen Nichols. Thinking Outside the Book: Alternatives for Today’s Teen Library Collections. Libraries Unlimited, 2004.
Mary Anne Nichols. Merchandising Library Materials to Young Adults. Libraries Unlimited, 2002.

Scarecrow, Libraries Unlimited and Neal-Schuman have many more YA titles, so be sure to check out their catalogs and Web sites.

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Course Meetings

ALL FACE TO FACE CLASSES ARE REQUIRED!

All f2f classes run from 9:00am until 4:00. Please arrive promptly. There will be an hour and a quarter break for lunch each day. I will be available after class to talk with students individually. Topics for these classes include:

• Introductions—who I am and who you are
• Discussion of and explanation of syllabus and assignments
• History of YA lit and YA services
• Classics of YA lit
• Top authors
• Book Discussions on required and individually selected titles
• Programming Tips and Techniques
• Radical Reads
• Censorship and Intellectual Freedom
• Booktalking Demo/Tips
• Student booktalking
• Sharing your 12 month plans
• Other topics and/or questions brought up by class members

More information on these classes is on the Blackboard site.

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Course Requirements

1. Read texts as assigned and discuss interesting points with with the class, posting at least two comments per week to the discussion board. Sign up for and participate in YALSA-BK and YALSA-YAAC. Instructions are on the ALA/YALSA Web page. Participation means posting messages with your questions and responding to posts when you know the answer. Since I am a member of both groups, I will know whether you are participating or just lurking. Please don't be afraid to post -- these folks are real people, with experience and knowledge you can profit from. There is one exception to that, and I will warn you if he pokes his head out to make trouble, as he is wont to do.
   
   
2. Read at least 50 books and prepare a database of them. You may use any format you choose to, but must include the following information: complete bibliographic information, summary, evaluation, readers’ 1-2 sentence annotation, usefulness, genre or subject, and why you chose it. You may also want to include booktalk ideas, similar titles, or other information to help you remember the book for class discussion and for the future. All the classic titles in the lists below are required, and will be discussed in class and on the discussion board. We will also discuss titles on the recent titles list, and you are required to read at least 15 of those.

   For the other titles, please look at Radical Reads, Teen Genreflecting, the awards lists posted in the YALSA area of the ALA Web page, Richie’s Picks by Richie Partington (http://richiespicks.com/) and at the various lists and titles I will be mentioning during the class. You can also take a look at any (or all) of my own books for ideas on good titles. The selection of these titles is up to you, but I encourage you not to waste time reading books that are not recommended somewhere. In addition, you should take a look at some of the popular YA paperback series. I will post of list of some of these series, and I encourage you to add other series that you are familiar with. It’s not required, although it is recommended that you also include up to 10 items in a nonprint format, including but not limited to videos, DVDs, CDs, computer games, e-books, and so on. Books on tape or CD are acceptable ONLY when they are unabridged, and do not count toward your 10 nonprint items.

   PLEASE NOTE: You will be expected to discuss appropriate titles during the discussion board sessions that focus on literature and during the f2f classes, so it would be wise to have available the notes you have made on these titles, so that you will be able to comment on their quality and usefulness in various situations.

   If you begin reading before the semester starts, make sure you take lots of notes on each of the titles you read, so you can quickly and easily remember them in some detail when you actually start working on your database and discussing them in class. This is definitely a case of more being very much better.

   Required Titles

   • Classic Titles: (read all of these)
     • Weetzie Bat - Francesca Lia Block MR
     • The Chocolate War, I am the Cheese - Robert Cormier R
     • Chinese Handcuffs - Chris Crutcher R
     • The Outsiders - S.E. Hinton R/H
     • Fallen Angels - Walter Dean Myers R/H
   • Recent Titles: (choose at least 15 of these, and you may read all of them if you want to)
     • Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson R
     • Feed - M.T. Anderson SF
     • Tangerine - Edward Bloor R
     • Smack - Marvin Burgess R
     • King of the Mild Frontier - Chris Crutcher NF
     • Whale Talk - Chris Crutcher R
     • Dreamland - Sarah Dessen R
     • Breathing Underwater - Alex Flinn R
     • Sickened: the Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood - Julie Gregory NF
     • Out of the Dust, Witness - Karen Hesse V
     • Target - Kathleen Jeffrey Johnson R
     • Stoner and Spaz - Ron Koertge R
     • Boy Meets Boy - David Levithan R
     • Monster - Walter Dean Myers R
     • Sabriel - Garth Nix F
     • What Happened to Lani Garver? - Carol Plum-Ucci R
     • Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents - Terry Prachett F
     • The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman F
     • Buried Onions - Gary Soto R
     • Rats Saw God - Rob Thomas R
     • Blankets - Craig Thompson G
     • Sandman series - Neil Gaiman G
     • Stuck in Neutral - Terry Trueman R
     • Izzy Willy Nilly - Cynthia Voigt R
     • Claws - Will Weaver R
     • Double Helix - Nancy Werlin R
     • Rita Garcia Williams - No Laughter Here R
     • Make Lemonade - Virginia Euer Wolff V
     • If you come Softly - Jacqueline Woodson R
     • Fighting Ruben Wolfe - Markus Zusak R

   Genre codes:
   F - fantasy
   MR - magical reality
   R - realistic fiction
   NF - nonfiction
   SF - science fiction
   V - verse novel
   G - graphic novel
   H - historical fiction
   

3. Examine at least 10 print and nonprint review sources or selection guides, evaluating them on their currency, scope, and reliability. Write an analysis and evaluation of each source. (Print edition Voice of Youth Advocates, Booklist, and School Library Journal plus Amazon.com (Teens) are required.) Length: about one half page single spaced per item.
   
   
4. Spend 15 hours during the first seven weeks of the course learning about the ways YAs use all kinds of media for recreation and information. These include, but are not limited to, movies, TV, radio, music, www, computer games, and videos. Keep a log of what you do, when you do it, and your reaction to it. Be aware of how your reactions change or don’t change during the course of the semester. This may be done in an informal or colloquial style if you prefer. Spend part of this time visiting the places where teens are—shopping malls, pizza places, etc, and observe different groups and how they are alike and different. If you know of a library that teens go to, by all means, include that. Compare the stereotypes to the reality, and compare teens today to yourself when you were a teen. PLEASE NOTE: You can fit this in with your daily routine, i.e., listening to the radio while commuting, changing TV habits to include teen-oriented shows or MTV, watching videos or movies that are made for teens, etc.
   
   
5. Write a one-year plan for setting up and running a YA area. Include budget, collection development, programming, school visits, summer reading program, and setting up a teen advisory board, making your plan as realistic and detailed as possible. More details on this will be given in class. You may base your plan on an actual library, and work with a librarian if you choose to do so.
   
   
6. Write four booktalks on titles you have read for this class, two each for two different presentations, and post them on the class Blackboard site. Also post with your talks brief paragraphs describing the two groups you’d do these talks for, the purpose of the visits, and a list of the other titles you would include in your presentations. You will be asked to perform two of these talks during the second week of f2f classes.
   
   
7. At the end of the semester, write a brief informal paper describing how your perceptions have changed regarding adolescents, their literature, their information needs and seeking, their culture, and the library services that help meet those varied needs. How have your perceptions of yourself been affected by these ideas or changes in thinking? If you have not changed your thinking or perception, then I need to know why not. How did you define being a young adult librarian when this class began, and how do you define it now? What is your professional philosophy about YA librarianship?

Assignments 2 and 5 will each be worth 25% of your final grade. The other assignments will count equally toward the other 50%.

Read the SJSU Academic Integrity Policy
http://www2.sjsu.edu/senate/S04-12.pdf

Reasonable Accommodation of Disabilities
Students who need accommodation due to a disability must register with SJSU's Disability Resource Center (DRC) during the first three weeks of the semester. The Center will work with the students to determine the disability, document it, and determine the services and accommodations necessary for student success. Then, the DRC will contact the faculty member to determine the types of consideration necessary.

Students attending the Fullerton campus should first contact the Disability Resource Center in San Jose since they are SJSU students. The DRC will then direct the students to supporting resources on the Fullerton campus.

The DRC Web site: http://www.drc.sjsu.edu/

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Course Outline

Introduction to YA literature
During this section of the course, you need to read the appropriate chapters in Herald. Bodart includes many titles you will want to include in your database, and you will find more ideas in your other texts.

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