Building Book Buzz in Bethesda

My friend Ivy has a talent for sending me things that fit just right into my life (sometimes it's a book and sometimes a cheese dish and sometimes a tool to save my aching back) and yesterday, she sent this link to a Donna St. George Washington Post story titled:  "Wanted:  Young readers to build book buzz."

It's a story about the teen readers who gather at the Montgomery County library in Bethesda to talk books.  Not just the books already on shelves across the country, mind you, but books provided through a galley review program initiated by the Young Adult Library Services Association of the American Library Association.  What the teens have to say about the books tell publishers, librarians, and writers quite a lot about what excites and what does not, and about where a book might be headed.

I loved reading the story, because I love the honesty of teens, and I love what happens when they gather within libraries.  (The photo above, for example, was taken just ahead of a talk I gave in a Wisconsin school library earlier this year, and I was amazed by the buoyancy of those readers, by the questions they asked and the things they confessed to.)  I love, too, how librarians and publishing houses are working together to fuel the fervency of the book-loving young.