SLI Public: Strategic Literacy: Query SLI

Book Links

The ALAN Review (The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents)
An excellent resource for the latest research and papers presented on adolescent literature.

American Library Association: Best Books for Young Adults
This book list, compiled by young adult librarians, contains a wide variety of new teen fiction (featuring realistic teen characters) as well as a contemporary list of non-fiction titles covering topics such as African-American art and poetry, life of a migrant child, the afterlife of dead bodies, a relationship between a boy and an elephant, and children in apartheid South Africa.

Booklist Editors' Choice, 1995-1998
A very helpful web site listing fiction and non-fiction book lists of recommended adult and young adult titles. All book titles are accompanied by a detailed annotation, publisher’s information and cost. For convenience, young adult titles are categorized separately for Older, Middle and Young Readers.

Circle of Friends: Multicultural Books for Children
This site offers a wide range of quality, high-interest books with characters and themes related to multiculturalism. Books are grouped either by grade range (primary, intermediate and middle/ high school) or cultural themes. Cultural themes include African American, Asian American, Hispanic/Latino, Jewish/The Holocaust, Native American, Gay — Lesbian, Children and AIDS, Differently Abled, and Multicultural. Summaries and book prices are provided for each book.

Favorite Teenage Angst Books
This handful of book titles are grouped under the following teen topics: sex and love, mixed-up families, fitting-in, journeys, awakenings, creativity, pressure, trouble, healing, challenge, and out of bounds. A few categories recommend limited titles, however, each book is colorfully and thoroughly reviewed by the web site’s creator. All books are directly linked to Powells.com where new and used books can be purchased on-line.

Hungry Mind Review
An independent book review web site (as in NOT Amazon.com) containing very insightful, thoughtful, and lengthy book reviews of recommended books for children and young adults. Also, linked to web sites for purchasing new, used, and out-of-print books.

Kay E. Vandergrift’s Young Adult Literature Page
The purpose of Vandergrift’s web site is to educate adults on the world of young adult literature. This is an extremely informative web site that provides history, trends, characteristics, theory, research, and pedagogy related to young adult literature. Her book list of 100 Y.A. titles is recommended for adults who want to better understand the books teens read.

Multicultural Book Review Homepage
Although this site hasn’t been updated since 1996, it can still be a valuable resource for identifying specific multicultural titles for children and young adults. Helpful bibliographies include for each book a book review, a "suitable grade level" recommendation, and a personal, evaluative letter grade according to the developer of this website. Along with the four ethnic groups most often included within multiculturalism, other groups include Native Americans/Eskimos, Jewish, Middle Eastern, and East Indian.

Multicultural Resources for Children
A meta Internet site that offers hundreds of links to bibliographies, book reviews, cultural sites, articles, high-interest/low-vocabulary book publishers, and cool books for tough guys, to name a few. One could get lost here, but there are valuable resources especially within the "Young Adult Literature" section. This is also one of the more comprehensive sites for social studies, history, and science teachers wanting to build a classroom library.

Newbery Medal Home Page
A list of the 1922-1999 Newbery Medal winners in recognition for most distinguished contribution to children’s literature. Site includes summaries of the winning book and all honored books from the past six years.

Reading Rants: Out of the Ordinary Teen Book Lists
This is the web site of one New York librarian, who has a penchant for Y.A. literature. She reviews all of the books herself, and quite candidly at that. Her creative genres include Bare Bones (eating disorders), Boy Meets Book (male-interest titles), Reality Bites (non-fiction about teens), and Riot Grrrl (beyond teen romance), to name a few.

DRP à Booklink (software)
The site provides the readability value of over 5,500 textbooks. Although the Booklink software contains the readability values of over 13,000 books, the web site indicates only if the book has been reviewed; it does not provide the readability value of the book.