Kristina Naftzger

Teens, it’s 2021!

I’m not sure if this calls for exclamation points or just an extra-large sigh of relief, but either way, I’d like to start by flinging on you a fistful of the glittery hope that automatically accompanies the start of a brand new year.

Nice! You look…shiny. Please, take a moment to glow in the light (fingers crossed) of 2021.

Now that we have that out of the way, I must make a confession: I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. But I WILL take any excuse for a little ol’ fashioned introspection and self-improvement, and the following books are great for that kind of thing. Since you’re already covered in hope/glitter, it seems like a good time to tell you about them, but I’d also totally understand if you’d rather comfort-read Harry Potter for the tenth time instead. If 2021 has you feeling ambitious, here are some new-year, new-you YA books to consider.

Teens, look me in the eye. Do you dread public speaking? When your teacher announces an oral presentation do you grow a pit in your stomach the size of…well, a podium? “Thank You for Coming to My TED Talk: A Teen Guide to Great Public Speaking” by Chris Anderson, one of the brains behind the TED idea-sharing series, may be just what you need to transform your speech-making cold feet into confidence. Anderson provides readers a blueprint for how to deliver effective and engaging communication, whether you’re on stage or in an interview chair. In order to be a slicker speaker in 2021, you have to start somewhere…and I humbly suggest chapter one of this book.

I think it’s safe to say that all beings who experienced 2020 could benefit from reading my next recommendation: “Rewire Your Anxious Brain for Teens: Using CBT [Cognitive Behavior Therapy], Neuroscience and Mindfulness to Help You End Anxiety, Panic and Worry” by Debra Kissen. Not only does this book provide actionable strategies and exercises for understanding and reducing anxiety, but its tone feels genuinely supportive. It’s almost like your best friend—who knows and adores you inside and out—is secretly a psychology prodigy and wrote a book just for you. I especially love how the book explains the biology of anxiety, demystifying it in a way that takes away some of its power.

If you’re itching to reclaim your life and allow anxiety to move through you rather than define you (I LEARNED THAT FROM THE BOOK!), “Rewire Your Anxious Brain for Teens” is ready to help.

This next title goes out to the tweens. Written by Matthew Syed, England’s former number-one table-tennis player, “You Are Awesome: Find Your Confidence and Dare to be Brilliant at (Almost) Anything” is a book that breaks down the process of, well, becoming awesome at stuff. Because of his own experience being an average-kid-turned-ping-pong-wiz, Syed doesn’t buy into the “natural talent” hype. Instead, he shares his strategies for training your mind and self for greatness. While this includes practice, resilience, grit, and exploiting your neuroplasticity (wait…I’m giving away too much…read the book!), Syed maintains the results are worth it, even if you don’t “succeed” in the ways you originally imagined.

So there you have it, a trio of YA titles to help you ring in the New Year, self-actualization style…you party animal! And sorry about the glitter. Even if you don’t check out any of these books in 2021, I am wishing you fistfuls of optimism and silver linings (of the non-glitter variety), and happy reading in the days ahead.

All three of these YA titles are available using A.K. Smiley Public Library’s Books to Go Program. Details for placing your requests are available at www.akspl.org, or call 909-798-7565.

Teens, with an intense national election just days away, I’m in the mood to talk about democracy. And not just about the facts you learn in American Gov. Let’s talk about the nitty gritty messy stuff. The kind of stuff that threatens to undermine our representative government, subverting the will of the people and leaving our influence diluted.

Wait. Do you know about the nitty gritty messy stuff? Many of you probably do. I thought I did too, but I didn’t totally get it until I read Elizabeth Rusch’s “You Call This Democracy? How to Fix Our Government and Deliver Power to the People.”

While the first part of the title sounds cynical, the contents are anything but. Rusch systematically unpacks the reasons American democracy is in peril, including problematic issues with the electoral college, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and more, and instead of just pointing out problems, Rusch provides readers—specifically teen readers— starting points for actively working towards solutions.

You may find it hard to believe that a non-partisan book about politics is riveting, but this one is. Using real-life examples, easy-to-understand graphs and charts, and compelling data, Rusch helps readers develop a nuanced understanding of a complicated topic, sometimes getting our blood boiling as we realize the real sources of power in our current electoral system. You may walk away from reading this book vexed. But you will also be energized, informed, and well-positioned to take concrete steps towards activism if that is your thing.

After you put down “You Call This Democracy?,” you will more than likely be ready for some fiction, but your political juices will still be flowing. No problem. Your next read may have to be Brandy Colbert’s new YA novel “The Voting Booth.” When idealist, die-hard activist, and first-time voter Marva Sheridan sees fellow teen Duke Crenshaw turned away at the polls, she can’t let it go. What follows is a wild election day filled with mad dashes between precincts and a series of rejections, experiences that give Marva and Duke a civics lesson they may not have anticipated. Did I mention there’s also a splash of romance? You should have seen that coming. I mean, is there anything more passion-inducing than working together to realize your democratic duty?

I know in my last mullet-inspired article I promised you a literary man-bun next, but this time I delivered more of an 18th-century powdered wig (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s a long story…you may be better off not knowing). Before you go powder your own wig, I want to direct any first-time voters, or even second or third time voters, to the Teens page of the AKSPL website: www.akspl.org/teens/. There you will find a link to a Young Voter’s Guide to Social Media and the News compiled by Common Sense Media. This resource is designed to help you cut through the election hype and get to the facts. If you haven’t voted yet, be sure to check it out. And if you’re not old enough to vote yet, get a head start, check it out anyway, and turn yourself into an election fact-finding guru. And of course, if you’re 18 or older, VOTE.

Teens, think of this week’s article from A. K. Smiley Public Library as a mullet: a “business up front, party in the back” piece of writing. Read on to experience the world’s first—and probably last— literary version of a 1980s hairdo.

Of course, it is logical to begin with the business end of this mullet-essay, so first, let me introduce you to an indispensable database available through A.K. Smiley Public Library’s online resources: the Gale Testing and Education Reference Center.

It’s hard to imagine a more anxiety-producing database title than one that includes the words “testing,” “education,” and “reference,” but I promise you, this digital resource has a little something for everyone, especially teens. From SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) prep and practice tests to career advice and work-related exams and e-courses featuring cosmetology, firefighting, nursing, massage therapy, nail technology, real estate, military, and more, the Gale Testing and Education Reference Center is at your service. Need help writing a resume? Check. Want to know what college scholarships you may be eligible for? Check. Need a hand creating a customized list of dream colleges based on criteria that are important to you? Yep, that too.

With so much of the school year still cloaked in unknowns, rest-assured that this virtual test, college, and career-prep database is here for you whenever you need it. You can access it via A.K. Smiley Public Library’s website through the eLibrary tab or the Teens’ page, located under the Services tab. The first time you use it, you will create a free account, which will grant you access to all the aforementioned goods. But before you run off to check it out…

No self-respecting mullet manuscript would be complete without its “party in the back” component, so let’s get to it. This party takes the form of two hair-raising, must-read YA mystery recommendations: “One of Us is Lying” by Karen McManus and “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” by Holly Jackson. You can’t go wrong with either of these books—that is, unless you want to go to bed early and get your recommended eight hours of sleep.

In “One of Us is Lying,” four teens—a jock, a brain, a popular girl, and a bad boy— find themselves plunged into the heart of a murder investigation when their classmate and creator of their school’s most salacious gossip website dies under mysterious circumstances. The four, whose secrets were about to be exposed in the dead teen’s next post, are the obvious prime suspects, but which one of them is capable of murder? “One of Us is Lying” is a roller coaster ride of the most thrilling variety, with plenty of unexpected revelations and some final heart-pounding moments that make for delicious up-all-night reading.

Would you like to pull two all-nighters in the same weekend [disclaimer: this practice is not recommended]? “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” is equally suspenseful, especially if you enjoy true crime podcasts. For Pip’s senior capstone project, she decides to open her own investigation into a suspected murder/suicide that happened at her high school four years earlier.

Pip never believed the official police report: that high school student Sal Singh murdered his beautiful and popular girlfriend Andie and then killed himself. She is determined to get to the bottom of what really happened, and as she digs deeper into the past, Pip exposes major gaps in the evidence and clues that point to other possible perpetrators. With help from Sal’s brother, Pip begins to unearth a string of secrets that someone wants to remain underground. And they’ll stop at nothing to keep them that way.

Both of these titles are available as physical books using our Books-to-Go program, or downloadable eBooks via OverDrive.

And there you have it. The world’s first mullet-inspired newspaper article. Be sure to join me next month for the world’s first literary man-bun. Or will it be a bowl cut? Stay tuned…

I have a lot of favorite things about teenagers, but one of my most favorite of all is your natural gravitation towards social justice.

Now I understand that “teenagers” are not a monolith. It would be a mistake to lump you into one category with identical interests/behaviors/gravitational pulls. But so many teenagers I’ve known have been masterful at sniffing out injustice and energetic about opposing it. Does this sound like you? Then read on—the following young adult titles may get you fired up.

First up is Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. Authors make it clear that this is NOT a history book. Instead, they write, it’s “a book about the here and now. A book to help us better understand why we are where we are. A book about race.”

It’s blunt and fast-paced, delivered in a down-to-earth tone that will help you wrap your head around the long and tangled relationship between race and power in America—the one that most history books leave out.

In Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice, author, lawyer, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson gives readers an insider’s look into the criminal justice system, revealing how it sometimes fails society’s most vulnerable.

Through the story of Walter McMillan, a Black man falsely convicted of murder, Stevenson shines a light on the economic and racial factors that affect unequal justice in America. This story is powerful and intimate and exposes in grim detail the devastating effects mass incarceration has on the nation’s poorest people.

Bernie Sanders wrote a book for young people called Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution and just as the title promises, it’s a practical handbook designed to help young people transform their “idealism and generosity of spirit” into meaningful and robust social action.

From understanding and navigating the political process to mobilization, the book calls on young readers to be bold, think big, stand up, and fight back to correct inequality and imbalance in the status quo.

Because They Marched: The People’s Campaign for Voting Rights that Changed America by Russell Freedman is especially relevant in this moment. The book describes the events surrounding the 1965 march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, using graphic images and first-person perspectives to illuminate the energy, tenacity, courage, and single-mindedness required for social change. It’s an energy that will probably look and feel familiar to you, as it reverberates around the world right now.

Teens, these books are just the tip of the iceberg. If this topic is up your alley, here are a few more titles into which you may wish to dip your protest sign:

Unpunished Murder: Massacre at Colfax and the Quest for Justice, by Lawrence Goldstone (I’m reading this right now—it’s riveting…I’ll try to read fast.)

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People, by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Stolen Justice, by Lawrence Goldstone

We are Everywhere: Protest, Power, and Pride in the History of Queer Liberation, by Matthew Riemer *Please note, this is an Adult Nonfiction title

Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss and the Fight for Trans Equality, by Sarah McBride *Please note, this is an Adult Nonfiction title

All of the titles mentioned above are available to borrow through A. K. Smiley Public Library’s Books-to-Go program. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You is also available to borrow as an eBook through Overdrive. So get to it! Your voices are a force and it’s inspiring to listen to you use them.