For+Young+Adults

It is crucial to continue to encourage reading once children or students reach high school. It is easy for them to become so overwhelmed with all their school work, their sporting commitments, their social life and/or their work obligations, that they wonder where reading fits in. Parents, teachers and librarians can still promote a range of exciting texts to young adults so they want to make the time to read.

On this page, we offer 5 recommended reads that never go out of fashion, and a whole range of links to capture that very discerning or fussy reader.

Blogs are an exciting interactive tool with which to engage your students. Whether they are reading them, commenting on them, or even creating their own, there are numerous possible outcomes. There is no better time to get up-and-close to authors who are making use of social networking sites, such as facebook, twitter and youtube to let readers know about their writing, and their reading.

This Cacoo diagram offers some suggestions after reading //Twilight//. Have you others you can add that have been successful with your Twi-obsessed readers? Add them. We at weSTILLread understand the problems with //Twilight//, and this is why we try to find other options for them (particularly the girls) to move on to.

Another exciting innovation and use of the web 2.0 technologies has been the development of the book trailer. Just as with a film, the book trailer teases readers and shows a glimpse of what an upcoming book will be about *no spoilers*. The uses of these in English, Drama, and Media classes are enormous. This is the book trailer for Neil Gaiman's //The Graveyard Book//, narrated by the author (youtube, 2009). The book was published in 2009 to critical acclaim and high book sales. It has since won many literary awards, including the Newberry Medal and the Booktrust Teenage Fiction Prize. **UPDATE** (as of April 24), //The Graveyard Book// has just been shortlisted for both the 2010 Kate Greenaway Medal and the 2010 Carnegie Medal: A very rare occurance. (Just as an aside. How amazing is technology that the day before an assignment is due, a new fact can be added? It speaks to the very immedicacy of web 2.0 tools!)

media type="youtube" key="P_UUVwTaemk" height="344" width="431" align="left" This is a great link to lots of examples of book trailers and a range of other resources all on the one page.

On this page, there are several more examples of worthy book trailers, as well as other inspirational, or humourous, or insightful videos about reading which you may find useful. I have also added some author blogs and websites, as well as other sites that advocate for good literacy.

Of course, it would be very remiss not to mention the power of the wiki. Wikis seem to work best in a short intense time period. They most certainly are excellent for creating online collabarative communities. Here is one that will bring students from different schools together. A readers cup competition is just that: yet this is an opportunity to allow students to 'meet' and talk about their common interest. Since all students read the same books, they can share their ideas.