Playlists For Young Adult Novels

We are knee deep in "Read To The Rhythm" our music and rhythm themed Summer Reading Club theme. And though here in California the school year begins in the middle of summer, I'm going to ride the summer wave all the way into September, when it remains hot as hell with only the distant cool breezes of Halloween at night to remind us that we do indeed have an autumn around here.

This year's Summer Reading Club theme is the jackpot for this Mama (that's me in the third person, as I'm due with the second kid any moment now).  It combines my love of discovering new tunes with my love of young adult literature.

And I discovered my favorite way to combine my love of both is to create (and beg my teen patrons to join me in creating) music playlists inspired by young adult novels! You can take your playlists in any direction you like.

I chose to create Ipod inspired playlists like these. But you could use simple clip art of boomboxes or paste a list with the book image onto a CD painted black (to resemble an old school lp) or print song/artist titles onto music notes, cut them out and paste them onto the books themselves.

Point is, you've got options.







What's the appeal for our contingent of Reluctant YA Librarians, you ask? On the face of it, this requires way too much initiate and effort. True. BUT. Apparently I'm not alone in my love for book-inspired playlists because there are a bevy of Young Adult Authors who have created and posted their own playlists comprised of songs that inspired them while they were writing their novels.

Samples of author-created playlists 

AUTHOR-CREATED PLAYLISTS

Book Riot's (always a great, underappreciated resource) February, 2015 list of some pretty hot authors and links to their playlists.

Francesca Lia Block created a soundtrack for her groundbreaking Weetzie Bat.

Kirstin Conn-Mills created a playlist for her music-themed book "Beautiful Music For Ugly Children" on playlist.net, a site that's all about creating personal playlists.

Over at "The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club" (I'm still trying to digest the name of the site) they have the motherlode of author-created playlists.

And over at epicreads.com they have kindly culled all the music references from Michelle Falkoff's 2015 novel "Playlist For The Dead".

Displays for the Reluctant Librarian: "By The Book" Display Courtesy of the NY Times Review of Books

In my second installment of Displays For the Reluctant Librarian I'd like to nominate "By The Book" a weekly installment that appears in the The New York Sunday Times Book Review. Each week a different author or celebrity (usually someone who has a new book out or has been in the news of late) answers a series of questions that revolve around reading that always include a number of authors and titles they're either reading or recommending.

Almost all libraries subscribe to the New York Times. And if your's happens to not, you can always download and print the weekly column from the website. You can search the database of past featured guests or print the most current installment. After that it's just a matter of searching your catalog for titles written by the featured guest and titles said guest either mentions by title or author. Like thus:

It doesn't require you create signage, it promotes titles that may not have circulated recently and it can be constantly refreshed as you either run out of books to display or choose to change every week (we change ours weekly with every new edition of the Book Review).

Most weeks I can not only find a minimum of three books mentioned in the article that we own in our library collection to display but I also see at least one of those books circulate as a result.

Displays For The Reluctant Librarian: Upcoming Movies Based on Young Adult Novels

I work in a very large library system.

We have well over fifty branches, all of which we are fortunate enough to have a position for a Young Adult Librarian. We're very lucky. Not every library system has a designated Young Adult Librarian, much less at every branch. But like many library systems not every librarian feels a strong vocation for their assigned audience. Some are older, don't relate a ton to teens and teen literature and that's alright.

When presenting program ideas to my fellow Young Adult Librarians recently I tried to pitch program ideas related to my specific theme with this target audience of Reluctant Librarians in mind. I stressed the easy aspect. Easy to learn, easy to program, easy to demonstrate to kids and teens. Easy.

Which then got me to thinking about other easy displays and programs for the Reluctant Librarian. Thus my new label.

In today's first installment of displays and programs for the Reluctant Librarian I present: Upcoming Movies Based on Young Adult Novels.

We are so lucky that with the success of young adult novel-to-film adaptations we have an ongoing list of titles with which to throw up an easy display. And as we all know whenever any book-to-film adaptation nears release, whether that be children's, young adult or adult fiction, we always see an uptick in circulation of that title. At the same time, I was surprised to discover I couldn't find a resource online that listed only Young Adult novel-to-film adaptations with their release dates.

So I'm going for it.

UPCOMING YOUNG ADULT NOVELS-TO-MOVIES SPRING 2015 EDITION:
                         

Me, Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews     

June 6

Paper Towns by John Green                                  

July 24

Fallen by Lauren Kate                                                                               

July 30  

Scorch Trials by James Dashner                                                                 

September 18

Viktor Frankenstein by Mary Shelley                                                     

(A new take on Frankenstein from Igor's perspective. And Igor is played by Harry Potter!)

October 2

Mockingjay Part 2 by Suzanne Collins                                                        

November 20

The Martian by Andy Weir

(Alex Award winner)                                                                    

November 25                    

5^th Wave by Rick Yancey                                                                          

January 29

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs          

March 4

Batman vs. Superman                                                   

March 25

FOR REAL (POST-PRODUCTION OR COMPLETED) BUT WITHOUT RELEASE DATES

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith

Room by Emma Donoghue (Alex Award winner)

Sold by Patricia McCormick