CANCELLED: No Rules, Just Rights: Revolutionize Reading for Young Adults

This session will demonstrate how Library staff serving young adults can transform their customers’ expectations by teaching and demonstrating “Readers’ Rights” that empower young people to make choices that foster the joy of reading for pleasure, and turn non-readers into avid readers.

Many young adults identify as non-readers, believing they dislike or even loathe reading because they have internalized a rigid set of rules about what, why and how to read. Middle and High School curriculums reinforce those rules by emphasizing Lexile level and the canonical classics of Western Literature; teen patrons expect us to share these values and enforce these rules.

A panel of expert librarians, authors, and publishing professionals will discuss how to subvert the old “rules'' into radical “rights,” thus transforming teens’ expectations of library services and attitudes towards reading while also broadening their world through diverse literature that serves as windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. Actual teens’ honest opinions and attitudes about the rules and rights of reading will be shown through video interviews presented during the discussion.

Participants will leave with a new perspective on how to talk with teens about their rights as readers, and practical tips for communicating these revolutionary rights during readers advisory interactions and through passive programs, collection development, and displays.