Bad News for Library Media in GA

Our Coordinator of Library Media Services and Literacy Support at the Georgia Department of Education is a wonderful woman named Judy Serritella.  I've had the pleasure of meeting her at a few conferences and she's always been supportive, enthusiastic and complimentary.

She's retiring effective October 31 and while this would normally be a post congratulating her and and thanking her for her service, it has to be a bit more sad than that.

Not only is this wonderful woman in an important position for our state retiring, but for some unknown reason she is not being replaced.  I fear what this means for school media specialists and school media centers in the state of Georgia and all of the important work we do for the students in our state.

In the meantime, all we can do is the best job we can.  In her email notifying us of her departure, Judy sent along a list of 101 pieces of advice she's collected or written down over the years.  Some of it is specific to GA educators, but all of it is wise.  I'll attach it here.

Thanks Judy!

"Get a library card

Use your library card

Use sun block

Join GLMA, GLA, GAIT, AASL, AAL

Don’t just join—participate

Conduct Professional Learning

Don’t sit quietly thinking someone else will speak up for what you believe, what you think is right, what you think is wrong

Learn something from everyone—including children

If you say you will do it, do it.  Be reliable.

Nobody likes a know-it-all

Don’t save everything

Promote GALILEO to students

Promote GALILEO to teachers

Promote GALILEO to administrators

Promote GALILEO to legislators

Promote GALILEO to parents

Don’t buy a lot of stuff, and only buy the stuff you really love

Always remember those who helped you. Deliver two or three times as much value back.

Learn to really listen

Participate in Professional Learning

Stand up for what you believe in, but make sure you really believe it

Find your voice

Give people compliments…but make sure you are sincere

Find mentors and use them

Become a mentor to someone

Learn the name of the maintenance workers, custodians, bag boy.  If they speak a different language than you, learn a few words in their language.

Go to concerts

Be visible

Go to museums

Write a white paper on your Library Media Program.  Give it to your administrator

Go for a walk…without your cell phone

Tell the people you love, that you love them

Go on a picnic

Write an article for your local paper on your Library Media Program

Realize that students are our first priority

Having a passion for teaching builds a passion for learning.

Make your Library Media Center welcoming to all

Openness, honesty, and integrity are fundamental.

Be kind

When someone asks what you do, say “teach”.  When they ask what do you teach, reply “everything”.

Collaborate

Attend grade level/curriculum area meetings.  Bring food and ideas

Take a first year teacher under your wing

Take a first year Library Media Specialist under your wing

Smile…a lot.

Laugh…even more

Encourage

Start a book club

Vote

Pay the toll for the person behind you

Don’t be a “secret” weapon in the Library Media Center for the Common Core….why are we keeping it a secret?

Don’t criticize or complain without offering a possible solution

Be tolerant

Be respectful

Be indispensable

Be honest

Be happy with simple pleasures

Go to professional conferences

Go back to your school and share what you learned at professional conferences

Make parents your allies

Use blogs, twitter, Facebook to promote your Library Media program

Promote GALILEO to students

Promote GALILEO to teachers

Promote GALILEO to administrators

Promote GALILEO to legislators

Promote GALILEO to parents

Volunteer

Be in a book club

Have a focus

Don’t think someone else is going to toot your horn…you need to show your value.

Treat everyone with dignity

Be a team player

Publish….in a professional journal, your local paper, the school newsletter

Thank a former teacher

Manage your time well

Read banned books

Practice patience…even with yourself

Eat breakfast

Practice tact

Be grateful

Tip well

Participate in the Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl

Wear your seatbelt

Be visible

Say yes as often as possible

Facilitate thinking

Engage minds

Listen to questions

Ask questions

Encourage risk

Cultivate dreams

Learn everyday

Stay true to your vision

Always know what is going on

Be professional at all times

Know that our business is a people business

Be authentic

Don’t hold a grudge

Leave a legacy

 Remember we are here for the kids

 Make your own list"

Are School Libraries Obsolete?

"Are school libraries obsolete? 
Sent to the Los Angeles Times (May 24)

Those who think school libraries are obsolete might consider the results of a Scholastic-Gates Foundation poll, given to 40,000 teachers, published in March, 2010. One question was: Where do your students get books for their independent reading most often? Select all that apply.

The winner: School libraries. Teachers reported that 80% of high school students, the group least dependent on school libraries, get reading material from school libraries. In contrast, 35% get books from retailers and 46% from public libraries.

Will e-books take over? To compete with the library as a source of books, e-book readers and e-books need to get cheap enough for everyone to be able to buy, use, and replace. Kindles now cost over $100, e-books about $10, and there are restrictions on sharing. Little wonder that only 7% of adults read e-books (NY Times, 10/14/10) and they are an affluent group (Mediamark, 12/1/2009).

Stephen Krashen"

Sign up for his newsletter here.

Morning Linkage

Jenny, one of the most insightful classroom teacher bloggers you'll ever read at Elementary, My Dear, or Far From It generously opened up her classroom for this series of short videos on how she is using VoiceThread with her first graders!  Wow.

When I used to run the children's section at a big box bookstore I would often have parents come in and actually consider dropping eighty to a hundred bucks on nonfiction books on like Lewis and Clark for a report their kid had to do over the weekend.  I'd ask, um, what about the public library? Often they would smack themselves on the forehead V-8 style.  I don't know what it is about people forgetting about the public library, but Linda Homes over at NPRs Monkey See blog has a great post up about rediscovering the joys of the library.

Roger Ebert has really found his writing voice since losing his physical one.  Here's a TED talk that was just released about his experiences.  He "talks" about how social media has saved his sanity because it's a kind of conversation he can still participate in.  He has even "met" many other disabled people who connect this way. He mentions one blog in particular that if you can laugh with a politically incorrect disabled person that calls his blog Smart Ass Cripple, than you'll love it. Enjoy!

And did you see that if you don't mind ads on your screensavers, you can now get a Kindle for $114!?  I read a theory online (sorry, didn't keep the link) that if their price decreases keep going the way they have since the Kindle first debuted that it'll be basically free with some bundled package of ebooks or Amazon Prime by November.  Nothing surprises me anymore.

Check out the "News & Blogs" stuff I share in the right column for more continually updated fun and interesting links.

Professional Meetings & Retro Journal Fun

We had another all-day meeting of Media Specialists in our large district at the vast and sprawling mothership of a head office.  It was a pleasant, if sobering day.

The bad news is of course all the cutbacks.  But it's more of a freezing than a cutting at this point.  There was only one retirement, but that position had been filled already.  I just got word that a middle school position is opening up, but there are a few "displaced" people floating around that will surely snap that up quickly.

We were asked to look carefully at the lists of things the county provides and rank them.  Right now they provide us all with subscriptions to Booklist, Library Media Connection, and School Library Journal.  It seemed from my informal polling that School Library Journal remains at the top of the list, even though I talked up LMC.  We can read SLJ online but some people prefer an actual magazine when their on their workout machines.

Our state is debating funding for Galileo (which includes favorites Britannica and NoveList).  We can't control that, but we were asked to rank the other online resources provided by the district.  Of course the World Book offerings were at the top of the list.

An interesting discussion we got into in one of the breakout sessions I attended was all those book study professional books administrator's always seem to find the money for.  You know what I mean.  A copy of something like one of those How Full Is Your Bucket? books for every staff member that was passed out with great enthusiasm in 2005 and is now collecting dust in a storage closet somewhere.  Stuff like that.

We were trying to figure out if they should all at least be barcoded so we could see what we have and other schools could look them up for ILL sharing.  There was talk of sending them all to our central Professional Library, but since some of these book studies are spread out over a full year, that doesn't seem feasible.

I was actually in the Professional Library for this discussion.  A couple of my friends and I stuck around after and pulled out the oldest crate of School Library Journals they had in stock.  1972!  I loved the ads for the new card catalog furniture the best.  Nice stuff.

Freshening Up

out with the old

in with the new

Yeah, I know it's my first year as the school librarian and all and I'm not supposed to make too radical of changes, but I think you can see why I went ahead and got rid of that thousand year old dust-collecting furniture at the top and used book fair money to get the more kid-friendly stuff.

The original furniture was u, g, l, y it didn't have no alibi, it was ugly!  My clerk, super-volunteer and most of the media committee agreed that it looked like it should be in the lobby of an old folks home, not in a 21st century school library.  

I realize the bean bag chairs are not a permanent solution.  I think the cool rug will last much longer.  But if those chairs last just a couple of years they'll give me time to save up for something a little more sturdy.

I have been asked why I don't solicit parents for some furniture donations.  Um, because while I might get something cool, I tend to doubt it.  It'd probably look like the top picture or, worse, wicker.  I have a colleague who had a fire marshall tell her that she'd have to get rid of the kindling she had in the middle of her library (a/k/a old wicker furniture) and was delighted to be rid of it.*   Problem was, before she could replace it some well-meaning folks had gone out and replaced it all with new, just as ugly, fire retardant wicker furniture.  Sigh.

So I'd rather shop around on my own if you don't mind and present the choices to the media committee for final input.

I just got it all Friday afternoon, so only a small handful of students have had a chance to try them out but the first ones to see it mouthed "Wow," before their jaws went slack.   They couldn't believe it and were happy to be my first testers.  A pregnant parapro plopped herself in one and I was afraid she'd never get up out of that thing!  (She was fine.)

*We librarians always crack up at fire marshall regulations because we have, you know, 20,000 or so books in our library.  Made of paper!  So we're not that worried about the wicker or whatever it is they're giving us the eye about.  But any excuse to get rid of ugly stuff!

Details

Kathy Martin asks, "How many students and what grades will you be working with?  Fixed or flexible schedule?  Just media or technology too?  Details, please."

Ah, fellow librarians.  We love us some details.  I gave a few when I first mentioned the new job, but here they are again more in depth for those that care:

I currently work in Gwinnnett County, GA at an elementary school with about 1500 elementary students.  It's about a half hour drive for me.

The new elementary school is also in Gwinnett and it's current enrollment is around 800.  But they've just built a new school in the area and it's taking away a big chunk of the students and staff so next year's enrollment is projected to be less than 500.  Yes, less than 500.  Oh, and it's only about a fifteen minute drive for me.

The schedule is mixed.  It has added "Library" to the Specials in the past year rotation but that's just two classes a day with the rest open for sign-up.  Right now it's on a six day rotation of specials with three ten-week rotations of grade levels.  I don't know if it'll still be six days next year, but I think the ten-week thing will stay.  I know that right now they have the 4th and 5th grades in the last ten week rotation but want to change them to the middle ten to get them ready for spring testing season.

I'm imagining that even tough the enrollment is going down, the class sizes might go up.  Right now I have 24 student computer stations but I'll have to keep in mind that some of the upper grades might have more students than that.

All Gwinnett County schools have at least one librarian and two tech people.  I'll have a clerk, but next year she'll sadly be only half-time library and half-time office help.

Having two tech peolple is not to say I won't be engaging in technology, of course.  I'll be running the morning broadcast with our funky little studio as well as using the computers for lessons, updating the library web site, and various projectors, interactive white boards and what not.

There won't  be much money for new books and I can see that I'll be doing a lot of weeding and replacing of older titles my first year.

But the school is nice, the people are friendly and for some reason they're letting me run their library which is kinda like letting your kids run your candy store.

I think I'll be having me some fun.

Trust me, there will be plenty of more details later.

(image cc flickr)

My New Library!

Haven't been blogging much because I'm in the middle of shifting a lot of gears.  Being finished with grad school has been a strange experience.  I thrived on it and while I'm extremely pleased to be finished, I'm already missing it in some ways.

But I've enjoyed the last week with these two people I've been told are my family.  Nice to get to know them again!

I think the transition from my grad school self to my librarian self is best summed up by My Lovely Bride who has changed my nickname.  While in grad school I mentioned how I seemed to always have my hand up and have something to say in class, so she called me Hermione.

Now it's Marion, Madam Librarian.

Nice.  (I guess it's just as well she hasn't seen this clip!)

The video above is a brief glimpse at the library I'm inheriting.  I could go on at length about what I see here, but I won't (for now).  Feel free to add any comments or suggestions!

I do, however, want to go on at a bit of length at the wonderfulness of my predecessor.  Leanette Spencer graduated from the same program at UGA I am graduating from and has worked incredibly hard to make some vast improvements in access and teaching in this little library.  She's moving on to open up a beautiful new facility in the same district and I'm so happy to have her as a colleague and new friend.  She is doing amazing things to ensure a smooth transition and I know not everyone is as lucky as I am to have someone like this making such a great effort.  She's even offered to meet me over the summer in the library to help me in any way I may need!  Our principals gave us permission to spend the day together yesterday and it was, to this nerd, much like when Picard got to hang out with Kirk.  Two captains of the Enterprise geeking out over the opportunities and unique challenges afforded only to them.  It's been a pleasure getting to know her and will be an honor following her example.

Jacquie Henry On Paperwork

I received some great comments on my previous post on paperwork. I haven't had much time to comment or post as this is crunch time for my FINAL project for grad school. Luckily it's a team project and my team is doing all the heavy lifting while I mostly add the jokes. (Get it, heavy lifting. Broken wrist? Ah, never mind...)

Anyway, the always amazing Jacquie Henry has been doing a series of posts in which she is basically mentoring librarian noobs such as myself. So she bravely took on the task of answering my question about librarian paperwork in a full on post of her own!

She gives this warning, however:

Warning! Reading the above post might cause extreme drowsiness. Do not read if you plan to operate heavy equipment.

But seriously, it's great. I love what she says about never forgetting how hard it is to be a classroom teacher. Like the great George Clinton sings, "Teachers work harder than you do. No matter what you do."

(Oh, and I got the cast off but man does it ever still hurt. I start physical therapy this afternoon. Fun, I'm sure.)

Paperwork?

My wife's elementary school does something brilliant. Yesterday was the final day of their state-given standardized testing and they had a huge "Family Fun Night" to blow off some steam in the evening. DJs, face painting, inflatable playground thingees, and pizza. They even had a "Power Shower" where the kids could pay to throw balls at a target and get a chance to hose down staff members (including the principal) with freezing cold water. My daughter had the biggest smile on her face I've seen since Disney.

I got the chance, however briefly, to meet and chat with a couple of my fellow bloggers. They are brilliant and interesting and I only wish we'd had more time (and that I could hear better in an environment like that). While chatting with one of them, we were discussing the possible perks of my new job. "There will be less paperwork!"

I wondered aloud if that was true and was accused by my lovely bride of being a nattering nabob of negativism. Since she's always right, it has gotten me thinking. Is there really less paperwork? Or at least less of the onerous kind?

In my current job I have some grading but a whole lot of persnickety data entry and checking. I have to work on "modification plans" with teachers on all these students and create and maintaing "testing accommodation plans" and have everything signed and double checked and signed again and checked again and again. I also have to "code tests" which means canceling classes and spending an afternoon in the prison-like testing room bubbling in just the right mix of information on pain of losing my job if not correct.

So I'm thinking that once again, my lovely bride is right. I imagine being the librarian will have a lot of paperwork related to the ordering, but I've done that as a special orders person at a chain bookstore and I've even been the bookkeeper at such a bookstore. So that part doesn't seem too bad.

I'll be teaching two classes a day so will still have lesson planning but if I understand the schedule correctly, it'll basically be two lessons a week replayed five times, so that's not too bad. I don't know how much grading will be involved.

What other paperwork is involved in being a school librarian?

image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/practicalowl/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Jacquie Henry Looks to the Future

In this post on ebooks for students, I was responding to the great Jacquie Henry's post on ebooks for students. Here is her thoughtful response.

When I wrote my ebook post - I was thinking mostly in terms of non-fiction books, not text books. I have a library full of great non-fiction that our kids ignore for the most part. If our non-fiction books were in ebook format, and as easy to use as a web site - they might have a chance with the net generation. If they were in ebook format and searchable via the computer, I wouldn't have a student coming the the desk saying - "you don't have any books on "Albrecht Durer". We actually DO have MANY books with lengthy chapters on Albrecht, which is what this student really needed. What if the catalog could have led that student to the books and allowed him to look at the various chapters and then decide which one of our many books about Renaissance artists he wanted to take out? That would be great.

As for novels...I have a lot of avid readers and they want no part of ebooks. However, I also have several friends with Kindles who love it, and now tend to avoid print books. To each his own. I've tried both and still prefer a real book. That said, I need to really know where my kids are if I am going to provide them with resources they will USE.

As for textbooks - they are just plain boring. Not sure if ebooks can help with that. The content is the same - whether read in ebook or print form. Still - maybe some clickable pictures that would bring up a video, along with a "read to" feature might help the net gen or struggling readers trudge through the material with a little less pain.

She's been adding articles like the ones mentioned to a list she calls The Future of Reading. Do check it out.

Her comments on the catalog go along with this post, Catalog Companies - Can You Hear Me Now? which describes a kind of Net Generation library catalog with features she'd like to see. They definitely need to step up the searching in this Google Era, but I don't know about printing chapters. Seeing excerpts a la Google Books would be a great feature though.

What do you think?

I GOT A JOB!

I've just found out that next year I will be an actual school librarian at a lovely little elementary school here in the Atlanta suburbs. A Title I school with a 530 or so enrollment with a mixed schedule and no AR.

It's going to be quite an adventure.

So much to do...

So much to learn...

Where to begin?

Whew!

This Will Haunt Your Dreams

Alien vs. Pooh! (via Baby Got Books)

I shared this with a friend and she said: "Poor Pooh and friends! I will have nightmares....the worst is that because my oldest was OBSESSED with Pooh I probably logged a million hours of video time with Pooh adventures. So, as I read that charming little story I was reading it hearing their voices!"

Enjoy!

Ok, here's some nicer things:

This is the parking deck for the Kansas City Public Library. Niiiiice.

It's nice to know procrastination is not such a bad thing.

And if you've followed my blog for a while you know I think Daylight Savings Time is a crock. For the uninitiated, here's more evidence that not only does this whole "spring ahead" nonsense make me grumpy, it's costing us money!

Now that we've passed health care, can we look into axing DST?

Have a good weekend!

Library Under Water

You've heard about the freak storm battering Perth, Australia right? Well, it's freaky. And not only that, but the intrepid blogger/educator/reporter Kylie Sturgess is sharing video and pictures of the seriously water-damaged UWA library there. It's all on her PodBlack Cat blog.

I'm sure as soon as the worst is over they'll be needing donations. Just looking at those shelves in the upper left hand corner of the photo suffering from the deluge makes me cringe. According to Kylie, these are the books on education, art, and architecture.

What a loss.

Keep them in your thoughts and I'll keep you up to date when I hear more.

School Libraries Head for the Edge

I got a treat in the mail a couple of weeks back and I'm ready to give you a full report. For some unknown reason, Doug Johnson asked his publisher to send copies of his new book to about a dozen school library bloggers to review. Well, the reason is pretty obvious but why I was included on a list with some of the top names in the school library field remains unknown to me. I'll just have to step up and try to give it a good whack and see what happens.

The book is called School Libraries Head for the Edge: Rants, Recommendations, and Reflections put out by Linworth Publishing. It's a collection of his essays originally printed in Linworth's own Library Media Connection magazine (and it's predecessor, Technology Connection).

Now the first and most obvious question any reviewer will have to answer about a book like this is, "Why should I pay for this when most, if not all, of these essays are available for free on Doug's own website?"

I'll give you three reasons:

First of all, not everyone will read the essays online. Not all of them. Second, you'll have the best of his stuff all in one place and you won't even need batteries to take it down and read. Third, you'll want to underline, markup and sticky note your copy. Trust me.

I mean just check out the table of contents! The book is divided up into seven chapters, or themes and the articles are in chronological order in each theme.

Ch. 1: On Libraries and Education in Transition

Ch. 2: On Professional Skills and Dispositions

Ch. 3: On Reading, Research, and Technology Skills

Ch. 4: On Technology in Libraries

Ch. 5: On Technology in Education

Ch. 6: On Managing Good

Ch. 7: On Determining Our Values

An amazing breadth of topics! Okay, I'd probably change the "managing good" title, but the book is a great meditation on nearly every aspect of the field. This is your "other" book, after you've read about collection management and instructional design and selection and cataloging and all the rest from your professors, you still need another book that tells it like it is from an insiders point of view after you read all those dry texts. This is that book.

He has a great attitude toward technology, running your program and keeping your focus. This book will keep you grounded. With good humor, the ideas that we must share our knowledge and see opportunities in problems (and no whining!) Johnson is a perfect guide to the profession.

You won't always agree with him and I'm sure he would joke that it as a sign of good taste if you don't. He's unafraid, and even relishes, going after sacred cows. But our job, as he likes to say, is not to make you believe but to think and this is certainly something he does with this collection.

There are only a few caveats. Even though he doesn't include every article he's written and he has gone through and updated these, there are still some dated passages. This is a minor quibble; especially in comparison to the massive amount of hard-earned wisdom that packs this slim volume. No, the only major defect in the book lies with Linworth. They must have rushed this into print without the slightest copyediting. These were magazine articles written on a deadline so of course there would be typos. In a collection such as this, they shouldn't pop up with the frequency the do. I hope this is corrected in future editions because the book deserves better.*

Johnson really does cover all the biggest topics. The importance of embracing change, of having a positive attitude, of keeping our teaching relevant and meaningful, how changes in technology are making us rethink our roles, how we can help our fellow teachers make sense of new digital tools, the importance of being an effective manager (vs. an inefective "leader"), and--most importantly, I think--how to help us make choices based on what he (and I) consider to be our core values:

"...understanding the concepts of intellectual freedom; being aware that most moral judgments center around privacy, property, and appropriate use; and believing that individuals should act out of awareness, not ignorance..."

All the best stuff. But the absolute best thing? The most important and motivating thing of all?

He's having fun doing it.

Thanks Doug!

*(Doug has something to say about this, natch.)

Accelerated Evil

Last week I summarized a much more complete post by Mark Pennington which more completely summarized some of the main criticisms of the Accelerated Reading program used in many schools.

Today, thanks to a fellow list-maker who took the time to compile a list which exemplifies the problem with number four on the list (explained here by Mr. Pennington):

4. Using AR tends to encourage some students to read books that most teachers and parents would consider inappropriate for certain age levels. Although Renaissance Learning is careful to throw the burden of book approval onto the shoulders of teachers and parents, students get more points for reading and passing quizzes on higher reading levels and longer books. Although an interest level is provided as is a brief synopsis/cautionary warning on the AR site, students often simply select books by the title, cover, availability, or point value. Thus, a fourth grader might wind up “reading” Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (4.7 ATOS readability level) and a sixth grader might plow through Camus’ The Stranger (6.2 ATOS readability level). Hardly appropriate reading material for these grade levels! Content is not considered in the AR point system and students are, of course, reading for those points.

The list-maker, I must confess, also came up with the witty title of this blog post and emailed the whole thing to me because it was felt mine was a grubbier venue for this tawdry exercise. No, that wasn't it. Wait. Oh, never mind.

Now not everything in these books, oh say like human sexuality, is actually evil. And while I hardly think school and by extension the library should be a reality-free zone and that everyone should be able to read pretty much whatever they want to, I think you'll agree that many people would question the validity of recommending this list of books to 11-13 year olds. I like many of the books on the list and there may indeed be readers of those ages perfectly suited to reading some of them. Hell, I read Forever in middle school and didn't need AR points for motivation!

The argument may be made that Renaissance Learning, Inc. (the producers of AR) are not necessarily recommending these titles for middle schoolers. Bah! Read again what Mr. Pennington points out above. They induce children to read for points, not content. If a kid that's an avid AR point scrounger comes across a book "on their level" with a nice point spread, they'll read it. If it has sex, drugs, and rock and roll in it? All the better! Look at this list and Mr. Pennigton's point is made clear. (All information is from renlearn.com):

All the Way Behrens, Andy Level 4.3 Points 7

Hoping to have sex for the first time with a girl he has met on the Internet, seventeen-year-old Ian drives with his two best friends from Illinois to South Carolina.

Anatomy of a Boyfriend Snadowsky, Daria Level 5.0 Points 9

Text contains sexual situations throughout.

Boy Toy Lyga, Barry Level 4.5 Points 15

The plot contains profanity and graphic sexual references.

Claiming Georgia Tate Amateau, Gigi EN 5.0 UG 6

Twelve-year-old Georgia Tate feels loved and safe living with Nana and Granddaddy, until her sexually abusive father tries to win custody of her. This plot contains sexual situations.

Crank Hopkins, Ellen Level 4.3 Points 5

Visiting her absentee father, Kristina's life turns upside-down when he introduces her to the dark world of crank, or crystal meth. The story, told in jagged free verse, contains profanity, explicit sexual situations and blatant descriptions of drug use.

The Da Vinci Code Brown, Dan Level 6.4 Points 23

Doing It Burgess, Melvin Level 4.4 Points 12

Three teenage friends, Dino, Jonathon, and Ben, confront the confusions, fears, and joys of adolescent male sexuality.

Forever Blume, Judy Level 4.1 Points 5

A graphic novel of a teenage senior-year love affair based primarily on sexual attraction.

Gluttony Wasserman, Robin Level 5.2 Points 9

The plot contains adult language and sexual activity. Book #6 (Oddly, the book Lust doesn’t have an AR test, but others in the series do.)

The Lovely Bones Sebold, Alice Level 6.0 Points 16

Nineteen Minutes Picoult, Jodi Level6.0 Points 29

Residents of Sterling, NH, are affected after a shooting at the high school leaves ten people dead and the judge presiding over the trial tries to remain unbiased, even though her daughter is a witness. The plot contains sexual references and violence

Nothing Can Keep Us Together: A Gossip Girl Novel von Ziegesar, Cecily Level 6.8 Points 10

The plot contains profanity, sexual situations, alcohol and drug use.

Punkzilla Rapp, Adam Level 6.2 Points 9

A runaway teenager, having overcome an addiction to meth, travels across the country to reconnect with his dying brother and meets a colorful cast of characters along the way. The plot contains sexual situations and profanity.

Push Sapphire Level 4.0 Points 5

The plot contains adult themes including graphic sexual situations and violence. The movie Precious is based off this.

Smack Burgess, Melvin Level 4.6 Points 13

Two English teenagers share their stories of being runaways and becoming heroin addicts.

Weetzie Bat Block, Francesca Lia Level 5.0 Points 2

This story follows the wild adventures of Weetzie Bat and her Los Angeles friends, Dirk, Duck, and My-Secret-Agent-Lover-Man. The plot contains profanity and sexual situations.