YALSA!! Books with Beat!

It’s Teen Read Week™ (October 17-23) and the theme this year is Books with Beat @ your library®, encouraging teens to read and listen to poetry, audiobooks, and books about music. Librarians and educators across the country are celebrating this week with a variety of events and programs, many offering free reading materials, to promote teen reading for enjoyment.

How can you participate in Teen Reading Week in your own classroom? Check out the Mirrors & Windows Audio Program on the Internet Resource center at http://www.mirrorsandwindows.com/ to find audio recordings of poems about music such Billy Collins’ “Man Listening to Disc” and “The Blues” (grade 11 American Tradition), and traditional and contemporary songs such as “John Henry Blues” (grade 8), “Go Down, Moses” and Lucy Kaplansky’s “Land of the Living” (grade 10), and “Bonny Barbara Allen” and Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” (grade 12 British Tradition).

Teen Read Week is an initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), started in 1998. Visit their site for additional program planning ideas, resources, or planning tools. You can even find a Books with Beat@ your library reading list in Spanish!