KNOW YOUR LIBRARY!

Special edition………………………….May 2014…………written by Joanne Forman………..

 

     “We want to give the teens their own special place where they can not only read and use computers but also socialize. With the new technology, they need a place where they can see each other face to face. Social skills are just as important as technological.”

     So says Head Librarian Shirley Fernandez about the attractive new Teen Room at the Taos Public Library.

     There’s a whole roomful of books for teens—and even one we found by a teen: the novel, Isamu Fukui’s TRUANCY, published when the New Yorker was only 15. Under cover (barely) of a dystopian future, TRUANCY is a cry from the heart about how many teens feel. “His days are filled with sadistic teachers, unrelenting schoolwork and indifferent parents: “Our parents, our teachers…tell us that we have no rights..if we argue, we are disciplined…we’re driven into the classrooms to obey.” “Your test grades tell how obedient you’ve been,” says one teacher.

     If this isn’t the whole story about being a teen today, it’s certainly a part of it. This writer is haunted by a teen saying, at a meeting long ago, “We’d listen, if you didn’t lie so to us.”

     This writer has read a number of “teen” novels, and is struck by how they, rather than many of their “adult” counterparts, deal with the real, social problems of the day.

      For example, KISSING THE RAIN by Kevin Books, starts out with “the teasing, the shoving, the name-calling”—things only too prevalent nowadays; “He must decide between truth and lies, loyalty and loneliness, justice and retribution.” A tall order for any age.

      Today’s non-fiction for teens is, above all, more open, more honest, more useful than heretofore: Bronwen Pardes DOING IT RIGHT is the kind of book that didn’t exist when this writer was a teen: a forthright, no-sniggering book about every aspect of sexuality. Since humankind is the animal that is always in season, and many parents still can’t face That Discussion, this book does it all.

     The most famous history text of our times is the late Howard Zinn’s “A Peoples’ History of the United States.” It’s a sizeable tome, and it has been adapted for readers. One of the most poignant errors of so much of high school education is that teens come away with the notion that history is boring. Not so!    

  There is a lighter side to the new Teen Room. We found a delightful romp with CALVIN & HOBBES, the brilliant comic characters created by Bill Waterson. Even those far, far past the teen years will love this one.