How Did YA Become YA?

This post by Mulberry Street Library Supervising Librarian Anne Rouyer originally appeared on the New York Public Library blog on 4/20/15.

“Why is it called YA anyway? And who decided what was YA and what wasn’t?”

Not too long ago, during an author panel on Young Adult literature at the most recent Teen Author Festival, YA author Scott Westerfeld asked, “Why is it called YA anyway? And who decided what was YA and what wasn’t?” The answer of course is: librarians. More specifically you can thank New York Public Library librarians. Not only did they pioneer library services to teens, an NYPL librarian popularized the term “young adult.” However, before we get to all that we have to start at the beginning and it all starts with a young, passionate, pioneering children’s librarian named Anne Carroll Moore.

In 1906, Anne Carroll Moore became the Director of Work with Children for The New York Public Library. As she was busy revolutionizing services to children and children’s rooms all over the city, she knew that there had to be a way to keep children, who weren’t quite adults yet, coming to the public library and not let all her hard work for children be for naught. It’s for these reasons, in 1914 that she hired Mabel Williams, a young librarian from Somerville, Massachusetts. Mabel was working as a reference librarian and collaborating with local high schools and Anne wanted her to do the same thing, only on a much bigger scale, at NYPL. Mabel began working with schools and inviting classes into branches and finally in 1919 she was appointed to Supervisor of Work with Schools and her groundbreaking work with young people (aka teens) began. Her official title (“Supervisor of Work with Schools and Young People”) wouldn’t happen until 1948.

 

Read the full post on the New York Public Library blog.

Read, Kids, Read

This editorial by Frank Bruni originally appeared on The New York Times site on 5/12/14.

As an uncle I’m inconsistent about too many things.

Birthdays, for example. My nephew Mark had one on Sunday, and I didn’t remember — and send a text — until 10 p.m., by which point he was asleep.

School productions, too. I saw my niece Bella in “Seussical: The Musical” but missed “The Wiz.” She played Toto, a feat of trans-species transmogrification that not even Meryl, with all of her accents, has pulled off.

But about books, I’m steady. Relentless. I’m incessantly asking my nephews and nieces what they’re reading and why they’re not reading more. I’m reliably hurling novels at them, and also at friends’ kids. I may well be responsible for 10 percent of all sales of “The Fault in Our Stars,” a teenage love story to be released as a movie next month. Never have I spent money with fewer regrets, because I believe in reading — not just in its power to transport but in its power to transform.

So I was crestfallen on Monday, when a new report by Common Sense Media came out. It showed that 30 years ago, only 8 percent of 13-year-olds and 9 percent of 17-year-olds said that they “hardly ever” or never read for pleasure. Today, 22 percent of 13-year-olds and 27 percent of 17-year-olds say that. Fewer than 20 percent of 17-year-olds now read for pleasure “almost every day.” Back in 1984, 31 percent did. What a marked and depressing change.

 

Click here to read the full editorial on The New York Times.