The Wonderous Web 2.0

What is Web 2.0?
Tim O'Reily organized a conference in 2004 to discuss the options and concerns available with Web 2.0. He is widely known as the creator of the term "Web 2.0". Through Web 2.0, the users, as well as the author, can create content to be viewed by Internet users. This is unique from "Web 1.0" because no knowledge of complex HTML coding or FTP site management is neccessary. Anyone can create and participate in Web 2.0. The web, and not an external software program, is the platform. Personalized Web 2.0 accounts can be accessed from any computer at any time. Real-time communication is enabled and encouraged. Participants can immediately change the look or content of any website. This content is updated immediately upon completion. Most Web 2.0 tools are free and easy to use. There is no need to purchase any software or medium through whcih to access Web 2.0.
Blogs
What is it?

• A blog is a shortened version of weblog and represents a website that is easily created and updated.
• Blogs are written about just about any subject.
• Their entries appear in reverse chronological order (newest entries on top).
• Blogs contain reflections, ideas, conversations, links to great resources and even multimedia.
• Blogging is a two-way street. Readers can participate in the experience by commenting on blog entries, thus creating online conversations. You are encouraged to leave comments, start conversations, and interact with others.

Where can I create my own?

• Blogger: http://www.blogger.com/
• WordPress http://www.wordpress.com/
• Blogstream http://www.blogstream.com/
  

Wikis
What is it?

• A wiki is a web page that enables users to create, browse, search or modify content. It contains a body of knowledge and serve as a platform upon which a group of people can share and build ideas together.
• Ward Cunningham was the first developer of wiki software. He was inspired by Vannevar Bush's concept of a "memex" which allowed users to "comment on and change one another's text."
• Wiki's are most often used to create collaborative and community websites. In business, wiki's are used for intranet and knowledge management.
• Anyone with a web browser can create a wiki on any topic they choose.
• Wiki's favor plain-text editing which makes editing easier and more legible.
• WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing is becoming increasingly available to users.
• Content displayed during editing appears very similar to the end result.
• A WYSIWYG interface resembles common text editing programs such as Microsoft Word.

Where can I create my own?

• Wikipedia- An online, collaborative encyclopedia http://www.wikipedia.com/
• Wet Paint- A popular social wiki site http://www.wetpaint.com/
• Wikia- Hosts wikis for online communities http://www.wikia.com/
  

Podcasts
What is it?

• Audio and video digital media files distributed over the internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.
• The word podcast is a combination of the terms iPod and Broadcast.
• It is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated.
  

Where can I create my own?

• Pod-catching requires application software that captures the podcast onto user's equipment.
• Listening to a podcast requires a media player, such as Window Media Player.
• These may be downloaded for free.
• Podcasts may be downloaded to a computer and then transferred to a MP3 player.
• Podcasts may be captured automatically with an aggregator or feed reader.
  

Social Bookmarking
What is it?

• Your bookmarks are stored onine, so they are accessible and editable on any computer.
• You can make your bookmarks public and share them with others.
• You can also easily create a network of other people who have similar interests as you.
  

Where can I create my own?

• Del.icio.us http://www.delicious.com/
• Mister Wong http://www.mister-wong.com/
• Furl http://www.furl.net/
• Blogmarks http://www.blogmarks.net/
• Diigo http://www.diigo.com/
• StumbleUpon http://www.stumbleupon.com/
  

Tags
What is it?

• Tags let users mark or "tag" information such as photos or videos in order to find the information later.
• A collection of tags is known as a folksonomy.
• Information is organized and maintained by users
• There are two different tag distinctions: "broad", meaning that many different users can tag a single resource and "narrow", meaning that the resource is only tagged by a few users.
• Many websites now feature tag clouds, a display of the sites most popular tagged information. The most popular information is represented as the largest word in the cloud. Tag clouds can also serve as a form of navigation through the website.

Where can I create my own?

• Social Media Sites:
• Flickr http://www.flickr.com/
• You Tube http://www.youtube.com/
• Social Bookmarking Sites:
• Del.icio.us http://www.delicious.com/
• Cite U Like http://www.citeulike.com/
• Listmakers and Social Cataloging
• 43 Things http://www.43things.com/
• Library Thing http://www.librarything.com/

Widgets
What is it?

• A portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requireing additional compilation.
• Often take the form of on-screen tools that draw on Internet data-bases to show the information on the user's 'widget' so a web-browser does not need to be used.
• Widgets allow you to take the HTML code someone else has created and insert it into your own webpage/browser, so that you have a "virtual portal" between a changing database and your website. The information on your webpage will change automatically, without you needed to authorize each change.

Where can I create my own?

• Widgipedia http://www.widgipedia.com/
  

RSS Feeds and Feedreaders
What is it?

• RSS stands for "Really Simply Syndication"
• Feeds are technically similar web pages, like those that are displayed in a web browser, but written in XML. This format allows software to "read" the content and make it more flexible.
• Aggregators let you "subscribe" to these feeds in different ways. Once you subscribe to a feed an aggregator will combine all your "feeds" and allow you to view everything you have subscribed to at once. It updates automatically and deletes material once you've read it.

Where can I create my own?

• Google Reader www.google.com/reader
• My yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com/
  

In all cases, the following set of steps will work to subscribe to a feed once you have an aggregator like Google Reader:

1. Find the link on the page that says "Syndication", "Syndicate this site", "XML", "RSS", etc.
2. Right-click (or press-hold in Macintosh) over that link. Your browser will show a menu of options, and one of them will be "Copy Link Location" or "Copy Shortcut". Select that option.
3. Now go to your aggregator and find the option to Add or Subscribe to a new feed. Select it and when you are requested to type in the URL (link) of the feed, right-click (or press-hold in Macintosh) again on the field and select "Paste". This will make the URL be pasted on to the field. If right-click doesn't work, you can try with keyboard options: Ctrl+V or Shift+Insert on Windows, or Command+V on the Mac. Because you, as a user (that is nevertheless aware or interested in the technology behind this), are likely to encounter this in subtle forms. For example, you might go to one news site and see that they say they provide "RSS 0.91 Feeds". Or you might see the XML orange icon shown above. Or you might see they say just "RSS", or "RDF". You will quite possibly see mention of all of these names and acronyms when you're looking at aggregator software. RSS is the most common format by a mile. All aggregators support the most used formats, and many of them support all the formats in existence. In general, you don't really have to even know which of these formats is actually being used.

Resources

• Bertland, Linda. "Web 2.0 in School Libraries." Resources for School Librarians. 26 Nov. 2008. <http://www.sldirectory.com/libsf/resf/web2.html>.
• Blowers, Helene. Learning 2.O. 2006. PLCMC. 12 Apr. 2007. http://plcmclearning.blogspot.com
• Casey, Michael, and Laura Savastinuk. Library Change. (2007 Apr) http://librarychange.com/
• Davidson-Turley, Whitney. (2005, Nov) Blogs and Rss: Powerful Information Management Tools. Library Hi Tech News, Number 10 p. 28-29.
• Etches-Johnson, Amanda. BlogWithout A Library. (2005 Apr) http://blogwithoutalibrary.net
• Farkas, Meredith. Five Weeks to a Social Library. (2006 Apr) http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/
• Google Reader https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin
• Holvoet, Katherine. (2006) "What Is RSS and How Can Libraries Use It to Improve Patron Service?" Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 23, Issue: 8, 2006. pp. 32-33.
• Horwath, Jenn. (2007) "Social Tools: More Than Just A Good Time?" The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, Vol. 23, Issue 8, p. 32-33.
• Journal of Information Science, Volume 34, issue 4 (August 2008), p. 591-604ISSN: 0165-5515, DOI: 10.1177/0165551508092259
• Laing, Dr. Christoper. (2007 Dec) "Using Podcasts in Higher Education." He@lth Information on the Internet, Volume 60, issue 1 p. 7-9
• Lenhart, Amanda, Oliver Lewis, and Lee Rainie. (2007, Apr) "Teenage Life Online: The rise of the instant-message generation and the Internet’s impact on friendships and family relationships." Pew Internet. 21 June 2001. Pew/Internet http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Teens_Report.pdf
• O'Reilly, Tim. "What is Web 2.0?." O'Reilly Media. 30 Sept 2005. 26 Nov 2008 <http://www.oreilly.de/artikel/web20.html>.
• Porter, Joshua. "Folksonomies: A User Driven Approach to Organizing Content." UIE.COM. 26 Apr 2005. 26 Nov 2008 <http://www.uie.com/articles/folksonomies>.
• Stephens, Michael. (2006) "Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software." Library Technology Reports. 42:4.
• Tapscott, Don. (2006) Wikinomics:How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. New York: Portfolio.
• Terdiman, Daniel. "Folksonomies Tap People Power." Wired. 01 Feb 2005. 26 Nov 2008 <http://www.wired.com/print/science>.
• Warr, Wendy A. "Social software: fun and games, or business tools?" Journal of Information Science, Vol. 34: 4, August 2008. pp. 591-604.
• Web 2.0 Wiki. http://web2tutorial.wikispaces.com/
  

Searching Smarter

I don’t know about you, but I conduct at least one Google search a day. It seems like there is always something I want to learn more about or need to find information about. I’ve learned that there are a few techniques that you can do in any simple search to improve your search results and cut down on the time you spend looking through information that is irrelevant to your search quest. Try these tricks the next time you search for anything online.

If you want to skip reading any further, you can watch a helpful little video that one of my peers at school put together for an assignment. She does a wonderful job of explaining and depicting everything I’m about to talk about. You can check out the video here: http://www.personal.kent.edu/~kreiber/karen.wmv .

Use quotes. By putting your search terms in quotation marks you are letting the search engine know that you want to find only results in which each of your terms appears in that exact order. This can be particularly helpful when looking for terms such as “French Restoration,” “human rights,” or “affirmative action.” Each of these terms, if placed on their own would result in a large number of useless results, but when placed in quotation marks greatly limits the options to those most relevant.

Use “Boolean Operators.” Boolean Operators are the following three words: and, or, not. When used properly, these can go a long ways towards improving your search capabilities. And can be used to limit a search, or can expand a search, and “not” can serve to limit a search. By placing these operators between your search terms (for example: endangered AND birds) you can help improve your search. Also, if you notice, many more formal, advanced search engines, such as the ones you might find at a library catalog already provide you with Boolean Operators to select from.

Use “site:” By attaching the word “site:” at the end of any search query and then including a domain extension, such as .com, .org, .gov, or .edu, you can limit your search and increase the reliability of the results. For example, if I was researching the French Revolution, but only wanted information from a school website I would type the following into my search bar: “French Revolution” site: .edu. This would give me results that only came from sites designated as “educational” and would limit my search to results which only had French and Revolution right next to each other.

Use a minus sign. Did you know that after any search query you can include a minus sign plus another term? This means that you want to exclude that secondary term from your search. I did this just the other day when I was looking for an image of the Australian bush country. I conducted my search in Google Images and originally searched the terms: Australian bush. I found that most of the results included George Bush, not at all what I wanted. So, I changed my search to read: Australian Bush –George. This narrowed my search, but then I found that most of the images were of the recent fires that crossed the Australian outback. I redefined my search to read: Australian Bush –George –fire. This gave me good results and I was able to quickly find the image I wanted.

Don’t ask questions. I know that “Ask Jeeves” has carved out a corner of the market by promoting this idea, but really, it is one of the worst ways to search on the internet. While the computer may be smart, you are smarter. Think about the question you are asking, extract the most important information and create a useful search question. Eliminate all insignificant words from your question (like, it, to, the) and focus on the nouns. Transitioning from “What impact does the government have on global warming?” to “Global Warming” government impact site: .gov will limit your search results from about 5 million to 500,000, not to mention increase the validity of your results. Despite the drastic difference it makes, you’d be surprised how many students just blindly type in their search question, rather than think about the actual query they are creating.

Hopefully, as you put these simple search techniques to use you can not only improve your own internet research capabilities, but pass on some good hints to your children.

What is Information Literacy?

It doesn’t take much observation of teenagers to recognize that they feel comfortable with technology. They can text, update their MySpace page, and download songs to their I-Pod in a flash.

What is a bit more surprising, researchers are finding, is that these same students struggle when faced with using a search engine to find a reliable website, or determining the validity of a web site, or navigating through search results. In fact, studies show that, “today’s undergraduates are generally far less prepared to do research than were students of earlier generations, despite their familiarity with powerful new information-gathering tools” (Breivik).

Technology has become an integral part of our daily lives and a necessity in the business and economic work force. Today’s work environment requires employees to be able to manage large amounts of information in order to maintain a “strategic advantage in today’s global market” (Breivik). With such rapid changes in technology, teachers and educators are beginning to realize that, while students may be familiar with technology, they are not proficient at learning how to use it. In other words, today’s youth are not information literate.

In January of 1989, the ALA Presidential Committee on Information Literacy offered this definition of the term: “to be information literate, a person must be able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information” (Leininger). Essentially, information literate people have learned how to learn. (If you're interested in what exactly students are expected to be able to do, you can check out the standards here.) They also concluded that information literacy is a learned skill—a skill which are becoming “more and more important in our jobs as well as our daily lives” (Leininger).

Recognizing the importance of information literacy isn’t enough. A major problem is arising. Technology develops, but our academic curriculum isn’t aligning itself to meet these changing needs. In other words, today’s students aren’t receiving the direct instruction they need to become information literate and consequently, successful in a technology-rich world.

While teachers may assign research projects and librarians may teach students how to navigate the library catalog and locate a book on the shelf, no educator takes direct responsibility for teaching students how to evaluate, locate and judge the material they find online. This isn’t to say they don’t try, but with the ever-present pressures of standardized testing and curriculum alignment, there often isn’t time to present students with the instruction that they need.

Businesses and higher education have begun to recognize the importance of ascertaining a candidate’s information literacy before making decisions and hiring judgments. As a result, the Prinction-based educational Testing Service, who also creates the SAT and ACT exams, has begun creating tests designed to “grade students’ knowledge of the cyber world” (Heyboer). Their initial test results show were “shocking [because] students did not perform well.” They view the preliminary results of these tests as “a warning flag…and a cry for action” (Heyboer).

While we might not be preparing to enter the collegiate world or pursue and international banking career, having sound informational literacy skills can benefit us in our personal lives. Not only can we better improve our own ability to interact with and utilize technology, but we can make sure our children are gaining the skills they need to succeed. Being able to speak the language and reinforce what your children are learning in school can have a powerful effect.

Have you been looking for a new home? Comparing the safety ratings of car before making a new purchase? Contemplating the advantages of one car seat over another? Looking for reliable information on a political candidate and their policies? Helping a youngster learn about whale sharks for homework? Learning about a newly diagnosed medical condition? Whatever your informational need, strong informational literacy skills can help.

The purpose of this little blog mini-series is to help you become familiar with some of these skills, so that you can apply them to you and your family’s lives. In the upcoming posts we’ll learn how to improve our internet search quests, evaluate the information we find, protect ourselves from internet hazards, and find some valuable resources of information. Make sure to come back to learn more!

Leininger, Michele. Information Literacy and Public Libraries Retrieved May 3, 2007 from http://www.webjunction.org

Breivik, Patricia Senn. (2005) 21st Century Learning and Information Literacy Change 37(2) 20-28.

Heyboer, Kelly. (2007) Tech-savvy kids? New test shows shortcomings in cyber literacy. http://www.ets.org/ictliteracy/demo.html

Need a Good Book?

By Lonica Rowley

I just came across a fantastic website that can help you identify the next great book on your reading list. The website is called Novelist and is offered through EBSCOHost (a very reliable distributor, if any of you are familiar with it). While this site it most often used by librarians who are searching for books on a particular request, its available to the general public, as long as you have a library card.

What does this oh-so-useful site offer you? A whole lot. You can get any of the following:

• lists of award winners, grouped by age categories and topics.


• Author read-a-likes. You can use this feature to search for similar books to those published by an author you particularly like.


• Author biographies.


• Recommended readings, grouped by age categories and topics.


• BookTalks, basically like written trailers for a book.


• Reviews on all sorts of books.

If you remember my earlier recommendations to use Amazon.com to help you identify a book you might like to read, this might start to sound familiar. Essentially, Novelist is an upscale, professional version of Amazon. Their focus is just more literary-minded and people serving, rather than geared towards a comercial, we-want-your-money attitude.

You can access the site through the local library website. Go to http://www.ualibrary.org/ or http://www.columbuslibrary.org/ and select the "research/database" link. Scroll through the listings until you come to Novelist. Select this and the site should ask for your library card number. Upon entry, you'll be admitted to the site and all of it's wonderful resources.

I strongly recommend that you take some time to explore their site and see what they might have to offer you.

17 Ways to Improve Your Child’s Writing: Tips #1-7

By Terri Hessler

It might surprise you to find out that one of the last large writing studies conducted determined that students spend very little time in school on paragraph-length or longer writing (Applebee, 1981). It is common for longer writing pieces to be assigned to be written out of class because of the time constraints of the classroom. Without providing students time to write in the presence of an instructor or peers from whom they can gain feedback, direction, and/or support, students miss out on the social aspect of writing and opportunities to improve their writing. It is clear to me that I’m going to have to supplement the writing experiences of my child throughout her academic career so that she is prepared for the rigors of college writing. Here is a list of ways to improve a child’s writing as she progresses through elementary and middle school. I think that summer is an especially good time for supplemental writing activities because it promotes the maintenance of an academic routine.

Most of these tips are grounded in a finding from a large scale study conducted on written expression outcomes during the 70’s and 80’s. Hillocks (1986) found that longer writing received higher scores/grades/marks than shorter writing. Unfortunately, many students with written expression deficits write very little. While it is counterproductive and naïve to think that writing more words will produce a better writing piece, it is the first step in getting students to write higher quality pieces. These tips can be easily implemented at home and center primarily on the idea that writing more helps children (and adults) write better. If you are interested in improving your own writing, several of these can be adapted for your use (e.g., #1, #3, #6, #7, #8, #12, #13, #15). Next month’s column will contain the remainder of the tips.

1. Schedule daily writing time
Get your child used to the idea that a writing assignment doesn’t necessarily have to be completed in one sitting and that, in fact, it may seem less insurmountable to “attack” a writing task a little bit at a time for several days instead of all at once.

2. Use fully developed prompts
Providing explicit instructions will both increase the amount a student writes and the quality of the written product. A typical writing prompt might read something like this: Write a 3-5 page paper on the use of submarines in the Civil War. This type of prompt gives the student little direction and encompasses a topic so large as to be daunting. How much more focused and organized the resulting paper would be if the student is instructed instead to write a 3-5 page paper on the use of submarines in the Civil War. Be sure to include information on a) how submarines were constructed at that time in history, b) which side utilized them to a greater degree and did either have any help from other countries, and c) how the outcome of the war might have been different without them.

Even for younger children, providing direction/advice in the prompt can be helpful. Tell about a time you were embarrassed could be replaced with Tell about a time you were embarrassed. Who was around? Where were you? What happened?

3. Teach your child to self-graph
Self-graphing the number of words written can be motivating for some students (Brigham, Graubard, & Stans, 1972). A child could also count and graph number of correctly spelled words and number of new or different words. Public posting of graphs could encourage him or her to beat previous scores for a “personal best.” Friends and relatives (e.g., grandma, primary teacher, older brother) can be recruited to notice and praise “personal bests.”

4. Teach strategies with mnemonics
Many writing process strategies involve easy-to-remember mnemonics that can be posted on a wall or ‘fridge, or printed on laminated cards for portability. Some examples are:
TREE
develop Topic sentence
include Reasons to support premise
Examine the soundness of each supporting reason
create an Ending for the paper (Graham & Harris, 1989)

PLAN
Pay attention to the prompt
List main ideas
Add supporting details
Number your ideas (De La Plaz, 1999)

For simple editing, teach children to use COPS for checking
Capitalization
Organization (paragraphing)
Punctuation
Spelling

5. Let child choose own topics
Allowing students to write about what they know may result in more text and in students caring more about the final product.

6. Use a topic jar
For some kids, deciding what to write is a big part of the problem. For them, use a large mouth Mason jar to hold writing topics written by both kids and adults. There are various commercial products available that provide lists of writing topics (e.g., The English Teachers Book of Lists). Allow child to both add to and pick from the jar.

7. Support and encourage brainstorming
The more time spent actively brainstorming, the better the finished product likely will be. Brainstorming can be adult-directed and merely conversational, or it can be more structured by using various graphic organizers, like webbing/bubbling, T-charts, or Venn diagrams.

"Recovering Charles" by Jason F. Wright

By Jaylene Scott

I recently finished reading "Recovering Charles" by Jason F. Wright, the author of "The Wednesday Letters" and "Christmas Jars." I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It is a story of a young man named Luke who distanced himself from his drunken father after tragedy struck his earlier life. He goes on to live life, not really thinking about his father, until he gets a phone call shortly after Hurricane Katrina. His father had moved to New Orleans and was among the people missing shortly after the disaster. Luke has to decide whether it's time to go searching after his father and unearth some pain and sorrow he'd had hidden for so many years, or to ignore pleas for help from his father's friends.

Wright uses a series of flashbacks to help the reader understand the trials that Luke and his family faced. Luke has to sort through his feelings, but decides that the right thing to do is to go to New Orleans to look for his father. The book continues by telling of Luke's journey to and through New Orleans in search of the man that he used to know.

Glenn Beck said about this book:"Recovering Charles is a riveting story of hope, healing, and, above all, faith. I was profoundly touched by seeing my own struggles reflected in its pages and inspired by its message that life can always have a second verse."

This book was a quick and pleasant read, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good story that helps you reflect on the truly important things in life.

Characteristics of Young Adult Literature

By Lonica Rowley

Young adult and adult fiction often overlap boundaries. Part of the difficulty, historically, with getting publishers and literary critics to acknowledge this literary genre lay in actually defining the genre. In fact, even today, well after young adult fiction has been recognized by many critics, there are many works of fiction which continue to vacillate between the two categories. However, there are certain characteristics that continue to appear and define the young adult genre; the following are some of the most significant.

1. Stories are told from the viewpoint of young people. Most young adult fiction is told from a first person perspective and is written from the eyes of a young adult. There may be multiple perspectives or plot lines in a single work, but they will all most likely be told from the perspective of a teenager. Essentially, teenagers like to read about other teenagers. Even if the story doesn’t necessarily center on a young adult, it will often be told from a youngster’s perspective. For example, you could easily argue that To Kill A Mockingbird is really an adult story that revolves around Atticus and Tom Robinson’s court trial, but since the story is told from the perspective a Scout, a young girl, young adults relate more easily to the tale.
2. Young adult stories often get rid of all adult figures. This often allows the young adult to shine in center stage and receive credit for all the work they accomplish throughout the story. Adults are often missing or only play a minor role. An incredible number of stories eliminate any and all adult figures, take Lord of the Flies for example. Certainly, the boys in the story would not have started hunting one another had an adult figure been around to guide and lead them. If, by chance, an adult does figure into the story, they are rarely a parent of one of the characters. More often, any adults in a tale will be more of a mentor figure that the teen has sought out and approaches on their own terms.
3. Young adult literature is fast-paced. Many teens struggle to read for enjoyment at all, let alone willingly plow through a lengthy novel on their own initiative—of course, the Harry Potter series was a ground-breaking work on this front. Most young adult fiction is quick to read and quick to develop. In order to accomplish this task, the young adult genre is often marked by a limited number of characters and narrative events. Furthermore, the language flows naturally and changes and develops with the current times—popularity in speech and trends is often important in young adult fiction.
4. Young adult literature includes a variety of genres and subjects. While I often refer to it simply as “fiction,” the genre is really more than that. Young adults take interest in non-fiction, poetry, drama, science fiction, historical fiction, and even graphic novels, to name just a few. In fact, all types of literature are now being written to appeal to a young adult population. Teens’ tastes vary just as much as adults; they like to read about a variety of subjects and issues in a number of different literary forms. On the same front, young adult authors can feel comfortable writing about other cultures or customs. Not all stories need to be told from a well-understood, American middle-class perspective. Certainly, teens’ interest is piqued by learning about a different experience. In part, that’s one of the greatest values of literature—learning about places and people unlike you. Teens recognize that and can thoroughly immerse themselves in expanding their horizons. Indeed, educational research shows that the teen years are a great time, developmentally, for teens to learn about life outside of themselves.
5. Young adult books are optimistic and characters make worthy accomplishments. Adults often get turned off by a teenaged protagonist that acts like they know more than adults, but in fact this is a major appeal to teens. The ability to succeed on their own terms and in their own way really appeals to young adults. In fact, change and growth is perhaps the most common theme appearing in young adult literature. All works of literature in this genre explore the theme to some extent. In most cases, the protagonist loses innocence as part of the passage from childhood to adulthood. This gaining of maturity would, potentially, affect them for the rest of their lives. The inherent need to learn, grow, and overcome appeals to teens of all ages.
6. Young adult novels deal with real emotions. At a time in life when hormones often rule, teens take particular interest in emotions and want to see them accurately represented in the fiction they read. Often books deal with similar emotional struggles: acquiring more mature social skills, achieving emotional independence from parents and other adults, developing a personal ideology and ethical standard, achieving a masculine or feminine sex role, etc. By following the development of these feelings in a fictional character, teens are often able to work out their own angst and emotional struggles.

While this is only a brief view of young adult fiction, these defining characteristics often help to establish and corral the genre. Certainly, once you are aware, it becomes easy to see the reoccurrence of these characteristics when reading young adult literature.

Much of this information is taken from the book Literature for Today’s Young Adults by Kenneth Donelson and Alleen pace Nilsen. Certainly, if you are interested in learning more about this thriving literary genre, this is one of the most highly-reputed texts in the field. I would strongly recommend this entertaining and informative text to anyone curious about the field.