Hey everybody, we are back and I'm here with a new friend and I'm very excited. Christina Chatelle, thank you for being here with us and I'm very excited to hear about how you're doing what you're doing and you've actually got some really cool other stuff. In addition to doing what you're doing, I'm getting way ahead of myself so I'm gonna just back up and I will say welcome and why don't you take a second to tell us where you're at and what you do. Thank you so much for inviting me.
I'm really excited to be here, too. So, my name is Christina Chatelle. I am the Media Specialist at Boland Park and Smith Middle Schools in Troy, Michigan. We're just up I-75 from Detroit. I am in my, gosh, 12th year as a Media Specialist, and for 10 years prior to that, I taught high school English and yearbook, of all things. And then... Yes, yes, when this position came open, I was almost done with my degree at Wayne State in Library and Information Science.
And I loved what I was doing at the high school level, but you know that sometimes, librarian positions in your school district are hard to come by. So it was like, now or never. So luckily I was able to... know, quickly finish up my program over the summer and then start at the middle school in the fall. And I don't think middle school was in my plan, but I am sure glad that I ended up in middle school. I think this is the place that I need to be.
And I know you as a middle school librarian, you know that we're just like, we're a rare breed, middle school teachers are, and we just love that age group and the building and what we do. I had sort of a similar trajectory. I started out in high school and then accidentally ended up in a middle school when I needed a position in an area and there happened to be one. So was like, we'll do this for a little while and just fell in love with being in the middle school.
Just those kids, you never know what you're get every day. The same kid can come in and it can be a completely different human being inside of that body. They're a lot of fun and we get to be the fun ones, right? We get to rile them up and then send them back to the classroom. And we don't have to grade papers or anything. mean, compared to what I was doing before, you know, I come home and read, which I I love. That's the extra work. absolutely. Yeah, no, it's the best.
It's absolutely the best. So we're here to talk about the Troy berries that you do at your school. And so I was looking at some of the information you shared here. And I'm I'm kind of curious because you said you've been working in the middle school for about 12 years. This program looks like it's been going on for quite a while with some adjustments here and there. So I'm kind of curious, like, do you have any background you can share about sort of where this came from or or?
sort of how you took it over when it was handed to you. Sure. So back in 2000, we had four media specialists in the school district. So one for each school. And they decided that they wanted a reading program where the kids are choosing, not the adults. The kids are choosing the award winner. And so they called it Newberry, or sorry, they called it Troyberry, as you could tell. It's related to the Newberry program. But again, kids are the ones who are making the choices.
So they started off with just 10 books every year and had the kids read them and vote on them. And then they had this wonderful ceremony, live ceremony at the board office where they would announce the winners. So lucky 30 students from every school would be bused in. All of the local dignitaries would be there and then they would broadcast it live in the school district. So everyone back at the buildings could watch it. That's awesome. it was an amazing, amazing, it is an amazing program.
And so when I was hired to come into this position, that was one of the first things that the other librarian asked me. She was like, are you sure you want to keep doing Troyberry? And of course I said yes, not knowing the scale of work that this program entails. But especially since now we're down to two media specialists. So there's two of us who share. two buildings, unfortunately, two buildings each.
So as that other media specialist, Kathy Locke, and I kind of took over the program, we made some changes based on what we saw in terms of student interest and what teachers were looking for. And so we changed, that's okay. I think that's really important to sort of just mention that sometimes we get these legacy programs and everybody's like, well, you have to keep doing the legacy program. And if you make any changes, it's not the same thing.
And it's like, but the students change, the school changes, the community changes. So we've got to make some kinds of changes to our programs over time. So I appreciate that you were willing to sort of explore that as a. maybe we need to think about are there other ways we can go about this. So sorry to have interrupted, but I just, know some people kind of, I hate to say saddled, but some people seem like they get saddled with things that they feel like they have to do.
So I'm glad you're kind of opening it up to, maybe we don't have to do it exactly that way. And I think we had to live within the system for a few years to understand the system and why they did certain things the way that they did. And then we started questioning that and figuring what we needed to do for our students. So we have a bigger list now so that we could have more options so that we have something for all different kinds of readers.
Yeah. because when you've got four schools, and I'm assuming that's your four different sets of grade levels, and you've got 10 books, how do you represent all of the students with that selection? So that's interesting. I'm glad that you kind of were thinking about how do we get more of our students engaged and involved with this? And so we're six to eight in our buildings. And yes, the Troy Berry program is very popular with the sixth graders. And then seventh graders, somewhat still.
And then eighth graders, you know how eighth graders are. So we've been trying to include some titles that are interesting to eighth graders. But it is hard to find things that are interesting to eighth graders that are also interesting to sixth graders. Yes. And I think our Troy Berry winner last year really nailed that. It was Ruta Sopetis, I Must Betray You. And everyone from sixth through eighth grade just loved that book. So those are the types of books that win the program.
Yeah. that totally makes sense. mean, I can, it just absolutely. Man. So it sounds like the, there's a lot of, mean, clearly you're putting a lot of thought into how this goes together. with a little bit of background of how it's worked, maybe you can kind of walk us through some of the specifics of how you run the TroyBurys as opposed to what it used to be. Sure. We have stopped doing that live ceremony. And that was partly because of COVID, right?
We couldn't in 2020. And then in 2021, we were afraid to get large groups of people together in one building. So we started doing a prerecorded video and we release it on a day in May. And so we have the students really are the ones who are the stars of the video. So they're the ones counting it down. We record one kid from each school. So we do, you know, third runner up, second runner up, first runner up, Troy Berry winner. We feature student artwork in the video.
We have the video tech classes, go and interview kids on their favorite Troy Berry books. So then now we ask the ELA teachers to show it to their classes all day that day of the release. versus before when it was live and broadcast. It was only at one time of the day. And if your teacher didn't tune in, and I'm not gonna name any names, but if your teacher didn't tune in, you didn't get to see the Troy Berry ceremony.
So we wanted to make sure everyone had access and now everyone is able to see it. Yes, and especially. the video production of it or is that? They create videos for it and then the other media specialists and I put it all together. If I maybe wasn't a person who wanted to have their hands on everything, maybe I could let the kids do it one year. But I feel like we have it down to a science now and we have our slides and we like, know we can slot it in in iMovie and we've figured it out now.
yeah. to do it ourselves pretty quickly. That's nice. That's one of those things. Once you've done it a couple of times, you kind of pick up those skills. But when you're doing something once a year, I imagine it takes a little longer to kind of, that's right. Last time we did this. Now, how do we do that again? And I would say for anyone who wants to take on a program like this, like save everything.
We save our emails to Word documents and just like it's so easy to be able to pull up and be like, what was that email we sent to the staff last year about Troy Berry? here it is, change the dates, go. Or save your letter to the PTO or the PTA, you know, the letter requesting the funds. And that's really how we are able to afford this because we purchase. five copies each of 20 to 30 books at each of our middle schools.
And then we purchase copies on Sora where the kids can get eBooks and audio books. So we have funds, you know, since this is a 25 year program, we've established that we will get funds from PTO. Each PTO will give us some money. The Troy Women's Association is always so generous and gives us money. And then we actually have a budget. So the school district budgets for our program, for us to be able to do this.
And so this has happened because of our work over the years in establishing this program and that the community loves it and supports it. The public library loves it and supports it. So it really is, it's a big thing when the list is revealed. I mean, it used to be like the kids would stand outside the media center and it would kind of be like those old commercials where people were like open, open, like they were waiting on Black Friday, waiting for the media center to open.
So yeah, so we do, the kids vote usually in March and April to vote our big lists. So our list usually ends up being around 20 to 30 titles. Then they vote it down to their top 10. which is kind of a nod to the original like Troy Berry 10 that they did in the past. And then... of getting that 20 or 30 that you're starting with, is there a particular way you kind of choose those titles or is it sort of like, this is some really great stuff we've read recently?
I'm just, I'm kind of curious what your process is. Each year I feel like we do it a little differently. We are a year behind. So these books on our list are from 2023. And I think that makes us, it makes it easier for us because we can look at the Newberry winners. We could look at the best books of the year lists and come up with what we want to do. We've done Troyberry committees where we've had kids meet like after school during lunch to give us opinions and read books.
This year we had kids vote. We just showed them titles of the books and we sent out a survey to every kid in the district and we actually got a lot of responses and they voted on which ones looked most interesting to them. And then we kind of focused on those. And then this year we had seventh grade focus groups. So the ELA teachers let us take two class periods of their time and we had the kids book taste. ones that we were thinking about for Troy Berry.
And then they came into the media center the next day and I did a lesson with them. We talked about book selection and then they put their top 10 to 15, what they think should have been in Troy Berry. And then we rewarded the kids who've correctly predicted. Like if their list matched the final list, they got to be the first to check out books too. So that was really fun. Yeah. That's great. we may base a lot of our decisions this year on what that seventh grade focus group said.
of using sort of being a year behind. mean, you're not really a year behind, but like that's such a wise way to be able to take advantage of the resources that exist out there because I feel like a lot of book awards in schools when you try and focus on the latest, just getting copies sometimes can be a problem. But if you know that it's been out for a little bit, it gives you time to not only get the resources, but to kind of see what have people said.
Like you said, I mean, that's boy, that is a, that is a pro tip right there. Set your reward for books at least one year behind. Okay. And when there were four librarians, they did the current year. So when I came into the program, we were furiously reading things in October, because there's so many things released in October, trying to figure out what we were going to put into Troy Berry. And then COVID came, and we kind of took a break for a year.
And when we came back to it, we said, well, maybe we should be a year behind, because we missed some books. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. this is gonna be easier on ourselves. So that was a recent change that I think really helped us. I think it makes a lot of sense and thinking it through even more, like I bet it's better for the students too, because they're more likely to have read titles that have been around rather than necessarily reading the latest.
Cause some of our readers we know are not necessarily picking up the newest book that they can get their hands on. We've got some that will, but at least when you're giving them that sort of almost like a grace period to have exposure to those titles, that's a really great way to help them take part and engage with what's going on. And then they feel like, well, I've already read a couple of those on that list. I could read a few more. So we don't have any barriers to voting either.
Like we just put out, we're a Microsoft school, so we put out a Microsoft form and anybody can vote. In the old system, they actually made the kids register because the thought was they're registering to vote. We're training them to be voters. Mm-hmm. But if a kid forgot to register to vote in the beginning, then he couldn't vote in the end. So we just kind of removed that barrier. I don't care if a kid is voting and they haven't actually read the book. They're voting on the hype of the book.
And it must be a popular book if that's the one that they're like, well, everybody said this one's good, so I'm going to vote for it. And maybe they're more likely to pick it up when they hear all the chat going on. absolutely. The more barriers we can get out of the way, the better. Love it. So sorry, I distracted you earlier. You were telling us how you started from your 20 to 30, then you get it down to 10 with student choice and student voice leading us into the 10.
And then where do we go from there? And so then they vote out of those 10 for the Troy Berry winner. So we take a look at that. And there were around 600 kids who voted last year in that final vote. So we do have a large amount, like I said, a large amount of kids across the school district participating, which is really cool. Yeah. like roughly what's your student body size at one of the schools, just to help get a frame of reference.
So my one school, I think is 650, and the other one is over 800. Okay. So you got, I mean, roughly a quarter of your students voting in this. That's an amazing bunch of buy-in from students, especially middle school students. So that's really something to be proud of. That's amazing, huh? Thanks. And they come in as sixth graders knowing what Troy Berry is. They've heard about it from the elementary librarians. And so they're excited to be a part of it. That's so cool.
It's when you can get a program that is kind of spread out through the district that people are sort of hearing about and the kids come in excited about, you know, now that I'm old enough to take part in this, always such a great way to drive some of that, engagement with the project, but also with the books that are hopefully going to be, you know, they're going to be picking up to see, yeah, what's this about?
I'm sure your circulation statistics must go through the roof when it comes to getting close to voting time and just after the vote. Like it must be. awesome to see all the books going out. Yeah, it is. And one of the authors who is part of our program was tweeting about Troy, or sorry, not tweeting. Try this again. One of the authors who's part of our program, Kale Feigley, author of Strikers, which is a graphic novel.
And it's actually, set in Michigan in the 1980s in Flint, and it's about a junior league hockey team. He was posting on Blue Sky. about the Troy Berry because he's going to be part of our Troy Berry author Blitz this year. And he was saying that he was nervous that he is going after Gary Schmidt. And so I wanted to reassure him. So I went into my Overdrive marketplace to see what the checkouts were for the labors of Hercules Beale versus Strikers.
I commented to him on Blue Sky, I said, Well, just to make you feel better, Gary Schmidt has, you know, probably like 30 checkouts of his book across our school district and your book has had 215 checkouts since November. So that is a testament to how much students like your book and also the fact it's a graphic novel. They love the graphic novels. yes. I love pushing graphic novels because they're so, they appeal to so many different kinds of readers and there's so many ways to get into them.
Man, that's awesome. I'm gonna have to check that book out. So you had mentioned an author blitz. What's the author blitz? so this is a new thing that Cathy and I added. So when we were doing those live ceremonies, we always either invited an author or we talked to authors via Skype or Zoom, whatever the thing was at the moment. And so once we stopped doing that live ceremony, we were bummed that we weren't offering kids access to authors. Mmm. so I had this crazy idea in 2021.
I was like, Kathy, what if we offered an author visit every single hour of the school day? And then students would have access to an author visit, at least just in their English class, if their English teacher was the only one who tuned in. And Kathy goes along with my crazy ideas. I love it about her. And so we started in December just emailing. all the authors from our list from that year. And I think everybody was not busy because it was 21, 22, not a lot of live visits.
So we got a great response from authors. And so Kathy and I are like, how are we gonna structure this? Our schools are late start and early start. So how are we gonna schedule this? So at its first hour at both the early and the late schools, so we had to kind of figure out a schedule. Mm-hmm. how to fit all these authors in. And we had to figure out how to advertise it. We did ended up doing it on a day that it was perfect. It was the day after parent teacher conferences.
And so teachers had been at school until 8 p.m. Uh-huh. the previous night. And so we emailed teachers and we said, let your librarian do your lesson plans for the day. We are going to offer a half an hour author visit. You just have 25 more minutes to fill. Your students could silent read. They could work on a Troyberry project to turn into for the ceremony. They could come check out a book in the library. So we didn't really know what we were doing that first year.
And it went off without a hitch. Nice! It was an amazing day and the teachers afterwards were like, are you doing that again next year? This was amazing. And the cool thing was is that it wasn't just ELA teachers who tuned in. We saw some science teachers, we saw some math, we saw some social studies electives, and each year we see more and more of other subject areas. And each year the other subject areas are asking us, are you guys going to do this again? That's great.
I imagine that they're seeing a lot of great stuff coming out of this, but I can imagine feeling some pressure from your students and from your colleagues like, hey, we're doing this thing. Why aren't you doing it? So I imagine you're getting to that critical momentum to kind of pull everybody on board, but that's awesome. We're getting to a point where it's probably 50 classrooms on average in our Zooms for these. So yeah, it is. And so we set it up.
We asked the authors to talk for about five or 10 minutes about their book. And we say, you know, a lot of kids will have read your book, but some of them might not have had a chance to read your book yet. So give us a little book talk. We say you can try to sell the kids on your book and motivate them to vote for you. So we had Rebecca E.F.
Barone last year, author of Unbreakable, which is a fantastic nonfiction book about codebreakers during World War II at Bletchley Park, Enigma Machine, all that good stuff. And she is actually from Michigan. And so she came up with a list of the top 10 reasons why you should vote for Unbreakable. And she was an amazing, I would highly recommend, if anybody's looking for an author visit, she was an amazing author visit. That book still is checked out all the time from the media center.
She came in second place. We have never had a nonfiction book come in second place in Troy Berry in the past 25 years. So it's fun when the authors try to bribe the kids. So one author was like, I will feed my dog a hot dog and record it if I win. So that's, yes. kids. Hey, that's what it works, great. We'll do it. So then after the author's talk, then we do questions. And so we have classrooms, submit them ahead of time.
And Kathy and I have a script that we have everything typed in and we have the questions typed in and everything. So we can be the MC of the event. You gotta be on the whole time. You are hosting all day, lots of people watching you. So... We have those questions, we call on those classrooms, we unmute them, you know, all the things that you have in Zoom to keep everything in line and professional. And then from there, we learn to use the Q &A function in Zoom.
So any other questions need to come through Q &A, and we will call on classrooms, and then those teachers will unmute, and the kid will be at the screen to ask the question. And so usually we have way more questions then we have time, it just flies right by, there's usually not any dead air.
We were worried at first because we only had like maybe three questions submitted for each author, but like once one classroom asks a question, then there's a barrage of questions from all the other classrooms. yeah. You only need that one person that's gonna break the seal on the silence and then off to the races. Wow. So that is a really impressive accomplishment. mean, just doing that author blitz alone would be an amazing event in that you're tying it in with your Troyberry Awards.
That's so great, man. I mean, I know lots of people do different book awards and one of the things I love is even if all I did for the rest of all my episodes was talk to people who did a book award, everybody still has their own twist, their own spin, their own thing that makes it that special something for their school. And we can all learn something from that and kind of build onto it. So my brain is spinning out with all the possibilities here. Holy smokes.
Boy, I'm just trying to process it all. we've hosted over, so when we have our one in April this year, we will have hosted 30 authors live over the past four years, because this is our fourth annual one, and then eight pre-recorded. Some authors weren't available, but were willing for us to send them some student questions, and then they recorded themselves. And so that's part of the day because I'm gonna give everybody advice.
If you're gonna try doing this, you have to schedule a lunch break for yourself. We did not schedule lunch breaks for herself the first year and it was kind of rough. But when you have that lunch break, that's when everybody can watch the prerecorded videos. So pro tip, next pro tip, don't plan it for March if you live in the... northeastern part of our country. Our second annual Troy Berry Author Blitz was canceled because of a snow day.
So we knew the snow was coming and we were able to email the authors ahead of time and be like, we're probably going to have a snow day. We'll let you know at 6 a.m. when they tell us. And we did. So luckily, most of the authors were able to reschedule, but it really kind of ruined the momentum of the event because we were doing like three author visits one day and then three visits another day and then two visits another and so we lost the audience interest I think that year.
So we scheduled in April this year. So let's hope we don't have a snow day on April 4th. climate is gonna agree with us. That's funny. It's just not something that would have occurred to me. Like, yeah, we need to take that into account when bringing people in from outside that are not gonna be on the same schedule as us. Like, just cause we're gonna miss a day. Like we're ready to go in the next day and just, okay, we're gonna pick up where we left off.
But when you're bringing in guests, that's a whole other kettle of fish. Hmm. yes, but the good thing ended up being we got an extra author visit. So I would suggest to everyone, make sure that you're posting at authors, you're talking to them on social media. So every time I post something on social media about Troy Berry, I try to do at the authors. And that's how I've gotten a lot of these author visits is they've messaged me from this. That's awesome.
Alex London, author of Battle Dragons, City of Thieves, which was part of Troy Berry two years ago, he saw my post about the top 10 for Troy Berry. And then he started, this was on X, he started tweeting at the other top 10 authors and they were all like saying stuff at each other. So Megan Freeman, author of Alone, Lisa Phipps, author of Starfish. Ha They were all like talking smack to each other on X about Troy Berry and who was gonna win. It was amazing.
But then he actually made a short video for us and posted it on X about why students should vote for him because there's dragons in his book. And then he contacted me, he's like, hey, I wanna give you guys a free author visit. And that was one of the most amazing author visits. The kids just loved him. It was awesome. So make sure that you're out there on social media promoting your event because you might get some connections with authors. Yeah, man.
mean, I sometimes find myself in conversations with authors when I like say something about, I try to at authors when I write about their books, especially when I love something, I want them to know like somebody out there appreciates what you're doing and definitely have gotten into those conversations with them. And it's funny because I sometimes forget that authors are people too.
Like I think of them as like these celestial beings that send down from on high these great works for us to enjoy, but they... sometimes just love to chat and get into stuff. And that's such a great tip. mean, I, cause I was never a social media person for the longest time until I was kind of forced into it by one of my grad classes, but it's been such an interesting world to get into and make so many connections with authors, but with school librarians and all sorts of other amazing folks.
So that's a great tip to up your social media game a little bit and see, you know, you're to get some responses back from somebody. So might as well get it out there. Hmm. Man, I have to imagine that your students just find this absolutely fascinating every year. It sounds like they are just, they're coming to your school preloaded with like, can't wait to take part in this. So is there any particular kind of feedback that you've gotten lately? I guess you haven't done this year.
So from last year, is there anything that stands out as like, yeah, these students were really jazzed about a particular thing. I'm trying to think. Let me think for a moment. I what stood out last year was our visit with Ruta Sopetis. I think the kids just raved about her and talking to her. so another, she's another person from Michigan. And we felt such a kinship with her.
She just kept saying stuff to us like, guys, my publisher's not gonna want me to tell you this, but I'm gonna tell you this anyway. And so. That really, I think, inspired students. I feel like the kids always ask the authors questions about writing, and everything they say is always so inspiring.
I sit there and I take notes on what the authors are saying, and I usually try to tweet out something afterwards as a thank you to the author, but also to show what we've learned from the author from these visits. Yeah. I think with Ruta Sopetti's, it was right before they announced the Bletchley Riddle. And so she gave us like the inside scoop on the Bletchley Riddle before. It was officially out there.
So I think that was really fun being part of, you know, secret knowledge about what was going on in the publishing industry. Well, so clearly your students love this, your staff loves this, that they are all jumping on board and you've got all the different subject areas getting into it. Your community loves this because they are continuing to support this. Your administration loves this because they're budgeting for it.
I mean, this is clearly a program that has some real strong roots in your school community. That's so wonderful when we can build those kinds of projects and transform them and add to them and make them really relevant for our students. now as well as in the past. That's really great. And when they got to the high school, the kids asked the high school librarians, well, what do you guys do?
And so the high school, I think it's been probably over 10 years, they have been doing a Battle of the Books program because they felt like the kids were asking, well, what do you guys do? We just did Troyberry. So they do an awesome Battle of the Books program. And then they saw our author blitz. and they are now doing it. They're in their third year of doing the, or sorry, second year of doing the author bullets. So they were inspired by us.
And so the tradition is continuing and the kids at the high school then are also getting the same experience of being able to talk to authors. That's awesome. Man, ugh, this program, just there's so many great elements to this.
And I mean, I usually ask about how you might adapt something for different kinds of students, but I feel like this kind of lends itself to all different kinds of readers and levels and abilities and skills because they're able to sort of explore it at their own pace, on their own time, and kind of take part in the social aspects too that you had mentioned that, you know, sometimes they will hear what somebody else is talking about and...
wanna jump on board and even if they don't read the book, they've at least got some of the knowledge of that book in their head from people just talking about it. So, boy. It's nice in classroom teachers too. We'll do a read aloud of one of the Troy Berry titles. The ELL teachers always try to choose one to read with their students. We always keep that in mind. We want to make sure we have things for students at all interest levels and inability levels to read.
Then all the way up to this year, we have Thieves Gambit by Kavion Lewis in our list this year, which is more of a YA title. Mm-hmm. But that one we were really hoping to kind of catch the eighth grade crowd with. But that's been popular six through eight with our students.
And I imagine too, you probably are able to get different kinds of ELL, maybe see what kind of languages your ELL students are speaking and try and find some resources for them to be able to, it may be translations or other ways of them being able to access the titles in addition to just reading the text. Yes, and then offering the audiobooks to via via Sora to them. awesome.
That's something I always forget that I need to make sure that I'm getting the audio versions because for some of our students that's such an important method of access for the material. And think a lot of them enjoy using the audiobooks as well.
And it's such a great, even if they're not necessarily just listening, I mean, they can just listen, but some students really find it beneficial to read along as somebody's reading it to them and it helps them, know, multimodally take in what the text is saying. So that's a really good tip. Putting that on my short list of things I need to make sure I don't forget anymore. So this is an amazing program.
I mean, this is there, you're doing such amazing stuff for your students and it's wonderful that you've got a partner in crime to help. pull this all off. So this is so great. I really appreciate you sharing it. We are going to switch over now into our book break. So for the book break, you can share any title you like. It can be personal, professional, anything you like that's going to that you think people might want to know about. So what's something that we might want to know?
Well, I would love to talk about Perfectly Parvene by Olivia Abdehi. And the reason I want to talk about that one is because I think it's a great example of the kind of books that we need publishers to make more of. So Steve, I am part of a, guess you would call it an advocacy group, a movement for young teen lit. So Marsha Koshell and I, Marsha is a Georgia middle school librarian. She and I have teamed up on this effort.
We really feel that the publishing industry needs to create a new category for ages 12 to 15. We feel like there's not being enough published for them. And I wrote an article in Teen Librarian Toolbox, So Did She, which was then printed in School Library Journal in the fall. We were both on Amy Herman's podcast, School Librarians United. And we connected after that and we just, we feel the same on so many levels about this.
And we sat down and decided that we needed a name for this category and we needed some criteria for it. And we want to show the publishers some examples of books that we feel like fit in that category. And I'm sure you can agree that the books that we're seeing are reviewed by professional publications. as middle grade are reviewed as grades three and up or four and up. And then YA is grades nine and 10 and up. So where are the books for grades six to nine? Where are they? Where are they?
If you look in school library journal, we usually have a page. Like there is a page for middle school and there's like maybe like five or six books on that page each time. So we feel like this is a category that needs to be developed because we are losing out on readers. These kids have so many other things that are pulling their attention. And then I think we're still dealing with effects from the pandemic and we need engaging texts for them. So I'm gonna talk about, yeah, go ahead.
so many great books out there, but like I find myself sometimes reading something and going, I want to add this to my collection, but it's about like a 10 year old and my middle school students, even though the story may be amazing, they're going to have a hard time picking up a book about a 10 year old. So it doesn't matter how good the story is. And then like you were saying, the other end of the spectrum is high school students or college students.
And it's like, well, yeah, but Where are my middles? I cannot agree with you more about this. This is such an important category that seems to sometimes get skipped over by a lot of the major publishers. So, sorry, I didn't mean to jump in, but boy, I'm right there with you. I'm fired up. And Marsha and I have been talking to some booksellers. We've talked to the book interest study group, or sorry, book industry study group. And one bookseller put it really well.
She said that these teens are being co-opted into YA. So they are really interested in the YA books, but maybe they're not developmentally ready for them yet, nor were these books written for. 12, 13, 14. So let's talk about my criteria and perfectly parvene. So the first thing that we're looking for in Young Teen Lit is that these books are written for ages 12 to 15. We do feel like they can deal with things that are complex and edgy, but we want main characters to be in eighth to 10th grade.
I don't know about you, but I'm sick of the seventh grade narrator. Every single middle grade book has a seventh grade narrator. it's so true. I hadn't thought of it, but you're saying it and I'm going through the list in my head. I'm like, that's seventh grade. Yes. there's hardly any eighth grade characters. And I feel like our seventh and eighth graders want a window into what high school is going to be like. And the YA books, most of them are juniors or seniors in high school.
So that's not helpful. So we want books that are reviewed for grade six and up. We do not want those grade three, four, or five books in this category. So, Let me finally get back to the book perfectly, Parveen. So, Parveen is 14. She is just starting freshman year of high school. She's really excited because she has her first boyfriend. She's had her first kiss. Romance in this book is PG, which is what we're asking for too.
But on that first day of school, she is devastated when this boy dumps her after she meets his friends. Now, Parveen is Iranian American, so her father is from Iran, her mother is white American, and Wesley has a lot of waspy friends. That's what Parveen calls his friends. So he basically tells her she's too loud, and that's why he dumps her on that first day of school. She decides that she wants to become like one of those rom-com characters that she sees in her favorite movies.
And so she's going to change herself. She's going to make herself smaller and quieter and try to find the perfect homecoming date to get back at Wesley. For doing this, doing this to her. So. can totally see a middle school, high school student sliding right into that mindset of I need to change myself instead of finding the person that fits me. But yes, okay. I'm feeling bad for Parvin already, but I please continue.
So on top of this, she's very close with her aunt who lives in Iran, and she's very excited that her aunt is going to finally come visit. They video chat all the time, she gives her advice. And then Parvin goes to Farsi school, and there's a boy there who she's paired up with who's supposed to tutor her, who she can be herself with. And she looks at him as a friend, but is he interested in a little bit more? She's a little blind to that.
So there's some drama later in the book with her aunt coming to visit and being stopped at the airport and being sent back. And so we have that edgy, know, that thought provoking issue for the kids in that book too. So my second criteria. I should say our second criteria is that we want to build upon the work of we need diverse books. So we definitely want the books in this category to be windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors for our students. And then we also need books in certain genres.
Kids are clamoring for horror, mystery, romance, sports, action, adventure, humor. Yes. So this book's got the romance, definitely, but also has the humor. Parveen is hilarious. Seriously, if you listen to the audiobook, you will be laughing out loud. This book, it's just, it's adorable. Our third criteria is that we would like the books to be between 180 to 300 pages. I really feel like book length. is a struggle and that was what my article in Teen Library and Toolbox was about.
I have so many kids coming into the media center asking for short books. Actually just this week I was book talking to a young man and I thought you know I had the perfect book for him and he came up and he checked out a different one which I had also book talked him but I said why'd you end up with that one and he's like well it was shorter and I mean I'm sure you're hearing that every day from your students they come in and ask me for where's the short book section. yep, yep, 100%.
And it's funny because I was literally just having a conversation with my wife. I was reading a book and as I'm reading it, I'm going, I'm at page 250 of this book and it's got at least 120 more pages. But the story should be done here. Like, I feel like that happens. And this was not a YA book, but I feel like sometimes there are books that might be better served with maybe breaking them into two different. books or just installments. I don't know. I don't know exactly what the answer is.
Cause some stories you do need the space to kind of tell the background of stuff, but I can't agree more that so many of my kids are coming in and saying, well, what short books do you have? And I'll go down the shelf and like try and pull stuff off. But those are a lot more rare than you know, what they want. And it's not really meeting all their interests.
So, Hmm. Yeah. the short ones right now have the elementary school looking cover, which is my fourth criteria here, is that we want books without cartoon covers. The kids will not touch those. They look too elementary, they look too young.
So, Perfectly Parvene, it is a little bit over 300 pages, so it doesn't fit exactly in that part of the category, but it does have... a cute cover, it has a realistic young lady on the cover, and the font is modern and more YA looking than some of the other middle grade books. And then lastly, we're looking for books to be written in a variety of formats. So we definitely want the graphic novels. Students love verse novels in my schools.
And that's a great way to get a kid into a big book like Megan Freeman's alone looks huge but you open it up and you're like but look at all the white space on the page yeah, or Canyon's Edge by Dusty Bowling is another great one. Like it looks like a big book, but once you get into it, there's hardly any words. Yeah. That's how we got to sell it. I also think it's really important that these books are written in how kids communicate. So we should see text messaging or social media posts.
And I think an amazing example of this is Game Changer by Tommy Greenwald. My students love that book. It is written in verse. It is written in text message. It is written in social media posts, news articles. interviews, it's multi-genre, or multi-format, I should say. And so we're looking for things like that. And in Perfectly Parveen, there's no chapters. So it is by day. So it'll say Saturday, and then it'll say 12.30 p.m., Parveen's house. And it's broken up into short sections like that.
So that makes it more digestible for kids in that they're only reading a shorter section instead of an entire chapter. Mm-hmm. Also mixed in are text messages, text message conversations, emojis, she has lists. So I think the varied format helps to break it up for them and makes it easier for them to read and digest. Yeah, hmm. There's a book by Avi called Nothing But the Truth that was listed as a documentary novel.
And when I try to explain to students what that is, they kind of look at me weird, but that sounds like it fits sort of a format that might be really accessible to the students. And that was written in the 80s, I think. So a lot of it was transcripts of phone conversations. But now it lends itself to text messaging, like you're saying, or social media posts where people are writing back and forth. And that's a format that the students would be more maybe inclined to believe.
I don't know if believe is the right word, but certainly, you know, they're used to reading text messages. They're used to reading social media posts. So maybe that helps them read a book that contains those things. Yeah. Huh. That's great. so that's perfectly Parveen. Definitely suggest if you're an audiobook reader to listen to the audiobook. But if you have any more interest in Young Teen Lit, we have a website, youngteenlit.com. You also can find us on Blue Sky and on Instagram.
which is how I found you on Blue Sky. And I'm glad that we connected because this has been such a great conversation. And I love that you're sharing these resources. And we are working on a list right now to show publishers of what young teen lit looks like. So we have something posted on there now, a graphic that people could use. So we have a list of titles. There are some oldie but goodies in there. And then there are some newer ones that we found on the list.
But we're working on expanding that list. And we're hoping to get ideas from people about what else we could include on the list, like what works well in their libraries. Absolutely. We also have an article coming out on February 6th on Teen Library and Toolbox explaining what Young Teen Lit is, what we're doing, and where we want to go from here. So I hope everybody checks that out when that drops on February 6th. yeah, I hope they don't only check it out.
I hope they then respond to their book reps and their publishers and say, hey, this is something we need and really get the word out there. Cause I am right there with you. Like this is definitely, I feel like part of the issue is like you were saying with the pandemic has sort of caused some different reading habits over the years. And I feel like I'm not seeing the same level of reading that I saw from students previous. And so we need to make adjustments.
Like we can't just keep saying, here's what's worked in the past, just like with your tri-berries. Sometimes we've got to make an adjustment and say, this worked in the past, but let's look at what we've got right in front of us right now. And how do we make sure we're meeting that group where they are? So, hmm, I really appreciate these suggestions that you've thrown out there. These are really important thoughts.
We need publishers to meet students, teachers, and librarians where we are and what we need. Absolutely. man, I love it. Well, you've shared where people can find you on for teen reads, which is awesome. Any other place that they might want to go looking for you if they want to get more great ideas? I do still post things on X, so I am at Media Logger there. Otherwise they could find me on Blue Sky, same thing, at Media Logger. Awesome. I'm a big Blue Sky fan, as I think you know, so.
Yes, I'm really getting into it. I'm enjoying it too. glad you are. mean, the community seems to really be starting to build up, which is awesome, because that was the best thing about X was just knowing that there were amazing people there that I would always be getting new ideas from. starting to see that develop on Blue Sky too, which is great. But thank you so much.
I greatly appreciate you taking the time to come and talk about these amazing programs you're doing and get us thinking about the fact that we need to meet our students where they are, not necessarily where we want them to be. So thank you so much. really appreciate it. Thanks for inviting me.