Rachel L. Wadham

There is grave concern that the Common Core standards are another run at politicizing education in a way that will make learning significantly dependent on testing. This book makes a valiant effort to involve both standards' issues and young adult literature. It works to integrate reading into the standards in meaningful ways for young adults. Analysis of young adult literature is discussed in depth, from its connections to standards' work to understanding various qualitative aspects of the literature. It offers examples of how to tie this literature to standards' work. While this publication is about HOW to face the integration of standards and literature and then what to do with the issue, it isn't a compendium necessarily of titles to use for this work (although there are some good examples). Easily the templates and examples can be seen as just that - examples - which can be used with literature that is deemed useful for your students. Recommended.… (mere)

It is good to see a supplement such as this is to the 9th edition of the same title. It is a continuation of what that edition offers. This publication serves as a significant collection development tool for elementary and early elementary readers/pre-readers. While there is subject categorization in this supplement, there is little mentioned about subject organization in a school library. It does cover both e-book format and audio book format, as well as looking at what won what award. The only caution is to realize how quickly this type of book will date. Remember to have relevant, cutting-edge literature for reading always in the library! If this type of list of titles helps do that, just keep watch on what needs to come and go with the students’ interests. Recommended… (mere)

This compilation of recent realistic fiction for teens may have an advantage over automated selection lists because the automated lists may not be categorized and tagged sufficiently to pull up. The hundreds of books in this list are categorized first by topics such as falling in and out of love, living in a family, going to school, getting a job, seeing the world, exploring spirituality and many more. For each title, there is a citation and a brief annotation. The list is valuable to fill in holes of popular topics with your teens. So, for those frank discussions in literary form, this is recommended.… (mere)