Weeding: A Spooky Trip Through our YA Fiction

I often visit AwfulLibraryBooks.net to laugh at the ridiculous things some librarians find on their shelves during weeding.  This week, however, I didn't even have to leave my own library to get a good chuckle.  With the summer being so busy, there isn't time for things like weeding and reorganizing so it is one of the first things we're getting started on now that the kids are back in school.

Each member of my department has an assigned section to weed, and I am the proud gardener of our Young Adult books, movies, and series.  When I tell you I have literally guffawed this week at some of the things I've come across, I am not exaggerating.  While some of these were taken off primarily because of age, and the fact that I doubt any of our current teens would touch them, there were also a few that contained just enough bad or misleading information to make me cringe, but just enough ironic cover-choices or contents to make me laugh out loud.

I use the MUSTY system when weeding:
Misleading (factually inaccurate),
Ugly (covers or damages that make you cringe),
Superseded (a better edition has come about),
Trivial (of no merit),
Your collection (The book is not of interest to the members of your library community or out of place in your collection)

Some of the books I found were in fact still relevant, but the covers were so bad that I had to pull them anyway and put in an order for updated copies. Others were ancient, the oldest I found had been purchased in 1987, but hadn't been checked out in years, or not at all.  I've decided to showcase a few of my favorite weeds of the week.
Enjoy, LOL.

YA Graphic Review: Skim by Mariko Tamaki

Skim by Mariko Tamaki
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Whenever I read a book that has graced a few banned lists, I always wonder why people don't trust young adults or worse yet, TEENS, to be intelligent and open-minded enough to ingest a story and take only the parts necessary to them. Contrary to belief, they are not as susceptible to peer pressure as most accuse them of being, and are actually more willing to step out on their own beliefs than most adults I know!

That being said, it is clear why Skim made the banned list. Teen Suicide, Student/Teacher impropriety, Wicca and homosexuality make it a prime target for rough attention. However, each and every one of those plot-lines is addressed in such a cavalier way that this book becomes all too important for young adults to read.