Not yet fully young adults, but—as they are quick to tell you—no longer “little kids,” these nine-to-fourteen-year-olds are at a stage where every day brings new emotions and physical growth, when habits become ingrained, and when tastes are established.

For teachers, the tween years can be the best and worst of times. While some fourth-to-ninth-graders come to see books as a lifeline for understanding a changing world, too many experience “the fourth-grade slump”—a marked decline in interest and achievement in reading. Without help, many become middle and high school students who have stopped reading for pleasure, and only slog through what is assigned.

Teri draws on her extensive experience as a teacher and consultant to examine ways that educators can help interest kids in books and keep them reading during this crucial period. She looks at:<ul><li>developmental attributes of tweens;<li>emerging interests for tweens;<li>themes and plots tweens find most engaging;<li>annotations for scores of children's and YA literature most appropriate for tweens;<li>practical classroom activities for sparking tween engagement in reading.

As in her previous book, Making the Match, Naked Reading is loaded with specific titles to help you connect kids with books that will interest them the most.

In Making the Match she focuses on three distinct areas that will assist teachers and librarians in steering students to the literature they love:<UL><LI>Knowing the readers: discussion of important theories in the development of adolescents (mentally, physically, morally, socially) and how that information helps educators to reach these kids with books. This background information is brought home through the book's “snapshots” which profile many of the adolescents the author has worked with. <LI>Knowing the books: examination of the various forms, formats, and genres that YA literature has to offer, as well as what special challenges educators face when selecting quality nonfiction or realistic fiction, and the role picture books can play in this process.<LI>Knowing the strategies: an overview of concrete ideas for motivating students to read as well as follow-up activities for post-reading assessment. Strategies discussed include reading aloud, booktalking, alternatives to traditional book reports, and literature circles.

A delightful feature of the book that will help inspire teachers and students alike—as well as underscore the concepts contained in the text—is a series of vignettes by popular, award-winning YA authors that offer glimpses into their own feelings and memories of books and reading. Authors include: Sharon Creech, Jack Gantos, Chris Crutcher, Mel Glenn, Paul Janeczko, and others.

The book concludes with an invaluable set of appendices providing an FAQ on YA literature, bibliographies of professional materials, books by the vignette authors, and over twenty booklists with hundreds of books organized by genre or topic, all with suggested grade levels.