Teen Genreflecting: A Guide to Reading Interests (Genreflecting Advisory Series)
Herald applies her established mastery of genre fiction to young adult fiction in this thorough, well-organized professional guide that works equally well as a collection development tool. She offers practical knowledge that will be useful to both the novice and experienced young adult librarian, clearly explaining, for instance, the differences between science fiction and fantasy. The book's outstanding and ample title lists include choices that span the decades, from classics such as The Catcher in the Rye (Little Brown, 1951) to recent titles such as Belle Prater's Boy (Farrar, 1996) and Damned Strong Love (Holt, 1995). A good contents page and a combined author-title index give readers instant access to the material. There are also such welcome features as YALSA genre lists, along with a selection of author favorite's called "Di's Picks." Like Genre-flecting (Libraries Unlimited, 1995), the book does not include publication dates with titles, an omission Herald explains but nonetheless seems a bibliographic drawback. Still, the combination of depth and a compact, user-friendly format makes this volume preferable to titles such as Fiction for Youth (Neal Schuman, 1992), What Do Young Adults Read Next? (Gale 1994), and The Young Adult Reader's Advisor (Bowker, 1992) Every library with a young adult population would benefit from counting this book among its reference sources.?Nancy Zachary, Scarsdale (NY) Public LibraryCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.