Fort Bend County Libraries will joint with the American Library Association in celebrating the 11th annual Teen Read Week, October 12-18.
Throughout next week, the library will give special recognition to the county’s growing teen population and their role in establishing new library programs and services reflecting the changing literary dimensions of this new population.
Library officials said the rapid growth in the teen-reader population around the country is reflected in the rising number of young adult programs and book collections at Fort Bend County Libraries.
Teen Advisory Councils throughout the library system are also making an impact by suggesting library programs and popular books and authors they would like to have included in the young adult area of the library.
Teen programs at Fort Bend County Libraries range from book clubs and DDR tournaments to knitting circles, cake-decorating classes and “Guitar Hero” challenges. Game nights and movie nights are also popular teen activities.
In anticipation of the release of the movie sequel to “Sisterhood of the Travelin’ Pants,” teens in the libraries’ Summer Reading Club circulated a pair of jeans throughout the library system with each branch decorating a different section of the jeans.
“The popularity of the Harry Potter series whetted the appetites of young readers, and now that they have discovered that reading can actually be fun, they are chomping at the bit to see what else is out there that is new and exciting to read,” said Susan King, youth services coordinator at Fort Bend County Libraries.
While the technologically-savvy generation of “millenials” – the 10- to 20-year-old population second in size only to the Baby Boomers – seems to be embracing literature, literacy continues to be a topic of national concern, and falling test scores and lower graduation rates among teens today remain a serious issue. Writers and publishing companies are being challenged to generate increasingly-sophisticated materials for this age group to retain their interest and anticipate future trends.
A 2008 article in Newsweek noted that teen book sales have increased more than 25 percent in recent years, more than any other segment of the population.
Rather than falling by the wayside in an increasingly electronic world, books are being integrated into the entertainment industry, as the stories segue into television series, movies, videogames, cartoons and the Internet. Some authors are even creating MySpace pages for themselves and their books, encouraging more interactivity between themselves and their audience and amongst the teens as well.
Teen Read Week is the national adolescent literacy initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association, the fastest-growing division of the American Library Association.
