STAC it up: Teen Advisory Councils

I have touched on my experiences with my former library's TAG group on this blog before but I never realized how much work my predecessor had to put in to create the group in the first place. Upon starting at Suffern, I've found this massive library that has all kinds of programs and groups does not have an advisory council of any sort in place. Well OBVIOUSLY I need to correct that, and thus the Suffern Teen Advisory Council was born (STAC for short).

Recently WebYA posted a fabulous list for someone looking to start a teen advisory group (and by recent, I mean it was March 2010 so recent enough). I've done a lot of research on these groups in the past year (Tuccillo's book Library Teen Advisory Groups, YALSA's TAG resources* and then there's always the TAGAD-L listserv) and I have to say I really like this list a lot! It's succinct and yet every detail is important for someone starting a TAG. It even has ideas that I didn't come across in any of those numerous resources. Check it out if you are starting a TAG or even if you've just celebrated the 4th anniversary of your library's group.

*Which could use work, to be honest with you. Some links are dead and many of the "Still in development" sections were in development when I looked at them last summer

Booktalks

What book do you find yourself booktalking over and over again? Why that particular book? For me it's The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I just booktalked it for the third time this week and I only got in to work 15 minutes ago.

I'm looking to build up the short list of my go-to books as they're all getting checked out slowly but surely. What will I do when they're all off the shelf? Rely on you, that's what! Leave a message in the comments about which books you think should be included because only one book on the list below is checked in.

The List (thus far, as I remember it):

• The Hunger Games -- Suzanne Collins (duh)
• Marcello in the Real World -- Francisco X. Stork
• Alice, I Think -- Susan Juby
• The Mortal Instruments series -- Cassandra Clare
• All Alone in the Universe -- Lynne Rae Perkins
• Ordinary Ghosts -- Eireann Corrigan
• Hold Still -- Nina LaCour

The list also includes books that sell themselves due to popularity amongst teens or their connection to a movie (such as Inkheart).

Teen Tech Week: Facebook fanpage flyer

Teen Tech Week just so happened to land on my first full week at my new job. I'm torn between wanting to do something for TTW and trying to figure out how to place holds on books with a new system. Something that I've been able to do with spare moments at the refdesk with no problem was to create a facebook fanpage for my new library.

So in honor of Teen Tech Week I have a large format jpeg of the promotional flyer I made up for the fanpage (sans library name, of course!):

Thaw out!

We're going to do something a bit different today. A little while ago I decided to enter the Blogsplash for a novel entitled Thaw by Fiona Robyn. Essentially, myself and many other bloggers get to publish the first page of the novel on the first of March as a neat form of 2.0 viral marketing. I may not be an Amazong Associate, but I sure like me some 2.0 swag and with all the e-book controversy going on I can't help but appreciate an author putting it out there for free. As today is the first of March, it's ready and raring to go. Below is the email sent to me by the author in it's entirety. Enjoy! -Kristi(e)-

Meet Ruth. She doesn't know if she wants to carry on living or not, and she gives herself three months to decide. Her diary is my novel, Thaw, and you can read it for FREE, beginning today.

Why am I giving a novel away for free? Because I am a writer, and I want to share my characters and their stories with as many people as possible. And maybe, if you enjoy it, you might want to read more of my books.

Become a follower of the blog page now. Follow on Twitter. Join the Facebook page. Forward this email to your novel-reading friends. Thank you.

Over to Ruth.

*

These hands are ninety-three years old. They belong to Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. She was so frail that her grand-daughter had to carry her onto the set to take this photo. It's a close-up. Her emaciated arms emerge from the top corners of the photo and the background is black, maybe velvet, as if we're being protected from seeing the strings. One wrist rests on the other, and her fingers hang loose, close together, a pair of folded wings. And you can see her insides.

The bones of her knuckles bulge out of the skin, which sags like plastic that has melted in the sun and is dripping off her, wrinkling and folding. Her veins look as though they're stuck to the outside of her hands. They're a colour that's difficult to describe: blue, but also silver, green; her blood runs through them, close to the surface. The book says she died shortly after they took this picture. Did she even get to see it? Maybe it was the last beautiful thing she left in the world.

I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to carry on living. I'm giving myself three months of this journal to decide. You might think that sounds melodramatic, but I don't think I'm alone in wondering whether it's all worth it. I've seen the look in people's eyes. Stiff suits travelling to work, morning after morning, on the cramped and humid tube. Tarted-up girls and gangs of boys reeking of aftershave, reeling on the pavements on a Friday night, trying to mop up the dreariness of their week with one desperate, fake-happy night. I've heard the weary grief in my dad's voice.

So where do I start with all this? What do you want to know about me? I'm Ruth White, thirty-two years old, going on a hundred. I live alone with no boyfriend and no cat in a tiny flat in central London. In fact, I had a non-relationship with a man at work, Dan, for seven years. I'm sitting in my bedroom-cum-living room right now, looking up every so often at the thin rain slanting across a flat grey sky. I work in a city hospital lab as a microbiologist. My dad is an accountant and lives with his sensible second wife Julie, in a sensible second home. Mother finished dying when I was fourteen, three years after her first diagnosis. What else? What else is there?

Charlotte Marie Bradley Miller. I looked at her hands for twelve minutes. It was odd describing what I was seeing in words. Usually the picture just sits inside my head and I swish it around like tasting wine. I have huge books all over my flat - books you have to take in both hands to lift. I've had the photo habit for years. Mother bought me my first book, black and white landscapes by Ansel Adams. When she got really ill, I used to take it to bed with me and look at it for hours, concentrating on the huge trees, the still water, the never-ending skies. I suppose it helped me think about something other than what was happening. I learned to focus on one photo at a time rather than flicking from scene to scene in search of something to hold me. If I concentrate, then everything stands still. Although I use them to escape the world, I also think they bring me closer to it. I've still got that book. When I take it out, I handle the pages as though they might flake into dust.

Mother used to write a journal. When I was small, I sat by her bed in the early mornings on a hard chair and looked at her face as her pen spat out sentences in short bursts. I imagined what she might have been writing about - princesses dressed in star-patterned silk, talking horses, adventures with pirates. More likely she was writing about what she was going to cook for dinner and how irritating Dad's snoring was.

I've always wanted to write my own journal, and this is my chance. Maybe my last chance. The idea is that every night for three months, I'll take one of these heavy sheets of pure white paper, rough under my fingertips, and fill it up on both sides. If my suicide note is nearly a hundred pages long, then no-one can accuse me of not thinking it through. No-one can say, 'It makes no sense; she was a polite, cheerful girl, had everything to live for,' before adding that I did keep myself to myself. It'll all be here. I'm using a silver fountain pen with purple ink. A bit flamboyant for me, I know. I need these idiosyncratic rituals; they hold things in place. Like the way I make tea, squeezing the tea-bag three times, the exact amount of milk, seven stirs. My writing is small and neat; I'm striping the paper. I'm near the bottom of the page now. Only ninety-one more days to go before I'm allowed to make my decision. That's it for today. It's begun.

Continue reading here. Follow on Twitter. Join the Facebook page.

----------------------
Warmest wishes,
Fiona Robyn
--------------
www.fionarobyn.com
www.plantingwords.com