I’ve been really good about photo documenting my displays in the teen area since starting this job in 2012. It’s helpful to me in not only thinking about what I’m doing, but it gives me a quick visual in what I might not be doing, too. The display above came out of an idea I had been wanting to do but never approached management about — and then when it came up in management notes that adult services would be doing a blind date with a book display, I asked if I could in teen too. Voila! I love it. Not only is it a fun way to entice readers, but visually, it just looks really nice too. I wrote really short but enticing descriptions of the books and I’m eager to see how it plays out with readers.

On to this week’s links! There’s a little bit of everything, I think. And as usual, if there’s something good I missed over the last couple of weeks (especially because it took me a week to fully recover from ALA), let me know in the comments.

• Outstanding Books for the College Bound‘s list is finally live! I am so wildly proud of this list and love that it offers such a variety of books. I’m going to talk more in depth about many of the titles, as well as how to use and promote the list, in the coming weeks. But go! Dig in! There are 124 titles, 25 in each category (except for in social science, where we couldn’t choose a final title and decided to only pick 24). 

• Did you know this week was Dawn Schafer’s 40th birthday? I never thought book characters aged. This post over at Rather Be Reading about Dawn and her legacy with the Babysitter’s Club is fun. 

• Should books for children that contain profanity come with a warning label? While I feel like this topic is so old and overdone and doing nothing but spinning wheels right now, it might be of interest because there’s not only an initial post, but there’s a nice followup from the publisher on the specific book being called into question. 

• Every wonder what it might be like to serve on YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults (BFYA)? Edi, one of this year’s committee members, talks about her experience and it’s really interesting. 

• Speaking of BFYA, here’s a nice writeup about the teen feedback session at ALA.  

• A little more on BFYA — how about a look at the books which landed both on the BFYA list and on the Quick Picks list? Angela Frederick breaks down the overlap.

• This isn’t a new post, but I found it while looking for book-inspired cookie cutters last weekend (if you don’t look around for really off-the-wall things once in a while, you’re probably lying). I’ve never quite understood or appreciated what a 3-D printer might be able to do, but when I saw that you could make cookie cutters on one, my perspective changed a little bit. Shakespeare cookie cutters! Made from a 3-D printer! This is really fun. 

• I can’t wrap my mind around how much money people are willing to pay to have an author at their book club. YES, pay the author to attend. But $750 for one book club appearance? I can’t imagine what their dinner bill for the club must look like. 

• Malinda Lo has a really valuable resource to YA and YA-friendly books about LGBTQ characters of color. 

• This is a longer read, but it’s certainly one to spend some time with: “First Times” in YA Lit.  

• Fan of figure skating? Jennifer Rummel wrote a nice roundup of YA books (and some movies) where ice skating plays a role in the story. Check it out. 

• Adele is blogging again at Persnickety Snark! I used to read her blog when she updated it regularly, and so her coming back is super exciting. I’m not a huge podcast listener — I used to be able to listen to “Welcome to Night Vale” when it was warm enough to go for walks outside — but I dig Adele’s roundup of what she’s listening to. Maybe I’ll have to give them another shot. 

• These books have secrets. These books have secrets I REALLY love knowing. 

• Women, own your accomplishments and be proud of your work. 

Elsewhere for me:

• I put together a timeline to black history in YA fiction over at Book Riot this week, and I think it might be one of my favorite — and most eye-opening — pieces I’ve done. Historical fiction is an area I’m fairly weak in, despite liking quite a bit of it, and I found my knowledge of black historical fiction to be even more lacking. But as it turns out, it’s not necessarily my own lacking. It’s just a genre REALLY lacking in YA fiction. I built a solid list, but thanks to the help of a bunch of awesome librarians, I was able to draw together some more. What’s disturbing, though, is how the books fall in history. There’s a lot in some areas and virtually nothing in others. WHERE are the books about teens living and making art during the Harlem Renaissance? What about the 80s and the era and birth of hip hop? We need more variety in black historical fiction. While we have some and it covers important ground, this needs to get better. Also bothersome is how little of this is recent. 

• I’m taking on partial responsibility for Book Fetish over at Book Riot, too. Here’s this week’s collection of bookish items and accessories you probably need in your life or need to give someone else in your life (a comic book dress!). 

• Earlier this week on my post about YA urban fiction, and we had a reader comment asking about urban fiction for YA readers featuring LGBTQ characters. So I pulled together a quick list at Tumblr — feel free to add more to this, if you know of others.