Talking to Teens

I was surprised how easy it is for teens to really open up and talk about the books they love and hate. I was a bit nervous that they would have absolutely no interest in talking about books and think that it was the lamest topic possible. But much to my surprise and relief they loved voicing their opinions about books and reading. In fact it was actually kind of hard to get some of them to stop talking about the topic. One girl was even kind enough to give me a 20 minute summary of the entire plot of The Host by Stephanie Meyer, trying to leave out no detail, after I told her that I had not heard of it. What was more surprising was learning that some students who I never would have thought were fans of certain books told me about how much they loved them, including one boy who said the Twilight series were some of the his favorite books. Overall the whole experience has been very positive and I found out that even teenage boys like talking about books almost as much as they do about sports or girls. I also got to see just how passionate many teens can be about their reading choices and how happy they are to argue with one another about what’s good and what’s not. The assignment also helped me see just how much I like working with teens as their insights into certain things can be truly unique and extremely humorous.