Last week I happened to see a small notice at the bottom of the weekly Illinois State Librarian newsletter about the latest annual Read for a Lifetime teen reading list. Just to see what is recommended for teens these days, I checked the list and was astounded to see that I have read 6 of the 25 books fairly recently as a card-carrying adult. And I've been wanting to read most of the others. So, this list is definitely not limited to "young adult" books, thank heaven!
After I saw a few of my favorites there, like Persepolis and A Thousand Splendid Suns, I decided to read the whole list myself. First up - the graphic novel version of The 9/11 Commission Report. After I saw how thick the original version was, I couldn't bring myself to wade through the 567 pages, but the 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon was another matter. I couldn't say it was enjoyable to read, but I was fascinated by the presentation and appalled at the conclusions drawn.
Next up - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, one of my favorite authors. If you saw the movie, Smoke Signals, it was adapted from his book, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. The Absolutely True book is from my library's teen collection and when the teen librarian saw that I was reading it, she raved that it was the "funniest and saddest" book she had read in a long time.
The list even has a book about Lincoln, so that was the clincher. Stay tuned as I read my way through the list, blogging all the way.
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If you read any funny/uplifting books in this collection, I'd be interested in them. - H
ReplyDeleteI also love reading, but the teen reading list for this house would be so short. The last teenager,like his brothers before him just doesn't read books. I tried and tried to get them interested in reading but it never "took". *sigh*
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