Friday, June 13, 2014

Reader's Advisory Sites


Since books don't come with ratings like movies and TV shows, one of the hardest parts of a teen librarian's job is deciding what is acceptable for a high school library.  Few reviewers give details of YA literature based on age-appropriate content, and the ones that do frequently are too busy counting the f-bombs to judge quality.

Just this morning I came across Sarah's Reviews while looking for specific age-appropriate content information about an Adult to Young Adult crossover series.  Sarah's Reviews offers a happy medium.  While the site is limited, it does have posted reviews for the newest and most popular YA books, though it also reviews adult novels.

It lists all the issues parents may be concerned about in novels, and offers a fair review of the materiel.  An example:

In contrast Compass Book Ratings do a very good job of listing profanity and sexuality, but does not see the value of the book overall.  While I would definitely look here to see if a high-reading level, grade-school student could be given a book, I would not give much credit to their review.  A slice of their review of the Printz award winning, bestseller Looking for Alaska:



The Literate Mother offers less bias reviews, but is still on the conservative side. Their rates are very detailed.  While they recommend books as upper high school that I would have no reservation about giving to a younger student, they do reflect a love for books.  Below is an a example of ratings (the lengthy review that is below the ratings section on each page is not shown) : 










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