Text Messages: Recommendations for Adolescent Readers

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Episode 11 — A Guide to Teen Book Awards

Every year at the end of January, the American Library Association announces the winners of its awards for excellence in children’s and young adult literature.  This episode will introduce you to the newest winning titles as well as to ways of thinking about book awards as tools for navigating the world of books for teens.

Recommendations in this episode include

• Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta (HarperTeen, 2008)
• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves by M. T. Anderson (Candlewick, 2008)
• Nation by Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins, 2008)
• Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (Knopf, 2008)
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart (Hyperion, 2008)
  
  
• We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson (Hyperion, 2008)
• Graceling by Kristin Cashore (Harcourt, 2008)
  
  
• What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell (Scholastic, 2008)
• The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp (Knopf, 2008)
• The Underneath by Kathi Appelt (Atheneum, 2008)
• Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (Simon & Schuster, 2008)

Published February 4, 2009

About the Host

Jennifer Buehler taught English for ten years before earning a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan’s Joint Program in English and Education. As a high school teacher, she developed an 800-book classroom library designed to engage and inspire her ninth grade students as readers. Watching students select reading materials led Jennifer to expand her own reading accordingly, allowing her to match books successfully with teens’ wide-ranging tastes and interests.

As a teacher consultant with the Eastern Michigan Writing Project, Jennifer regularly led workshops on young adult literature for parents, area teachers, and students in university methods classes. Now Assistant Professor of English Education at Saint Louis University, Jennifer teaches classes on English methods and young adult literature. She is an active member of NCTE's Assembly on Literature for Adolescents (ALAN), and she served on ALAN’s first Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award Committee.