A Year of Programs for Teens

by Amy J. Alessio, Kimberly A. Patton

Planning teen programming is a lot of work, so why offer programs that teens don't want? Teens need especially exciting and dynamic programs to encourage them to use the library and its resources. In A Year of Programs for Teens, two young adult specialists take teen services to a new level with step-by-step instructions for planning teen programs. Each chapter covers one month of the year and includes four to five program ideas appropriate to the season, as well as suggestions for games, passive programs, and book displays. All programs included in this collection have been tested in real libraries with live teens and offer Following the practical suggestions laid out here, young adult librarians in public libraries, school library media specialists, and adult and young adult services staff serving teens can easily build a core teen audience and help attract new members to programs and to the library.

Genres: Nonfiction, Library Science

159 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2006

Reviews

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 is a bit more accurate but that is mostly because the book has some dated ideas. Lots of this program revolves around food and even cooking. Umm...that isn't happening at most libraries where I have ever been. Snacks maybe but even that pushes is these days. I work in a school library and a lot of these there is no way we could do there. Yet some ideas are doable and others were good reminders. I was able to take note of a few ideas, both larger and more passive, to see how I might tweak them for today's youth and then see if they might be feasible.I liked how it tied things into different months. While some months are easily interchangeable, some themes go better in certain months and this book helped me start a month-to-month list of future ideas. Having never done a program before I will take what I can, and see what might work with a more modern spin!

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite this book being published 11 years ago, it still feels more outdated.
This book has ideas and while it only goes into the details of planning, prepping, and presenting these programs (as well as ideas for display items, display books, and passive programming), which is nice, the programs themselves, while some creative, fail to mention anything about budgeting for the program, whether or not the ideas themselves have worked, OR if the teens had any say in it.
The passive programs and some of the programs themselves feel as though they were compiled by an OLD-SCHOOL librarian, meaning, they did things their way or were trying too hard to be the cool librarian while still doing mostly the same stuff a middle school teacher would have done back in my day, to appear both cool, and educational. That's just an opinion, but it definitely comes across as trying to be more educational, motherly and less fun, serving less as an enrichment and more as a teacher trying to be contemporary. Also nowhere in the book does it touch on the importance of listening to the teens. It talks briefly about keeping up with the trends, though nothing in this book follows any (even for its publication year, 2006-Tie-Dye is one, seriously!!?!) and instead keeps it very generic.

[Talia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good ideas with easy to follow instructions

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teen programming ideas

[Wendelle]

Interesting but not a lot of the programs are book-affiliated or library resources-affiliated, many suggestions are of cooking etc.