Reading Rants! was founded by Jennifer Swan in 1998 with help from web designer Andrew Mutch. She is a Middle School Librarian in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Her motivation behind the site was her love of teens, sharing literature that speaks to them, and the great respect she has for Young Adult literature. The blog is primarily made up of “out of the ordinary” booklists for teens.
The level of activity on this blog is high. Swan posts a new book and review approximately every week. This makes the blog a very rich resource because not only is there an upward of 350 books listed on the site, all the books are reviewed by a professional librarian and reviewer. Sawn also makes an annual list of her Top Ten books of the year and makes sure there is information about the blog and interesting facts about the people involved in the site. There is some user activity, but not as much as one would expect from a blog that reviews books so regularly.
The types of books that Jennifer Swan reviews are typically books that are not considered to be mainstream, but she does review prevalent and popular literature as well. Her choices of books are what reflect the issues and trends in YA Lit; Swan incorporates a wide variety of books to help reflect the diversity, even if she openly does not like the genre. She also makes the themes of the site very teen friendly and doesn’t shy away from topics, such as “druggie fiction”, that teens enjoy but aren’t necessarily approved of by their parents. She also tries to incorporate literature that reflects some of the issues teens face such as books about eating disorders or characters who are LGBTQ.
There is quite a lot of interactivity and networking on this blog in the form of links to other Young Adult blogs and author websites. Swan has made a list of top book review websites and blogs for teens where teens can look at other blogs specifically made for their audience. She has also listed the top kid and teen-lit blogs for adults, who are looking for other resources. There is a list of out of the ordinary authors that Swan has chosen and all are links to their websites. Reading Rants! also does presentations at libraries, schools, staff training days, and conferences. These presentations are on a wide variety of topics on Young Adult literature, including: Swan’s Top Ten titles of the year, trips for working with teens, YA programming that works, bootalking tips, how to talk to parents about YA fiction, collection development, and graphical novels for teens. From the date list it does not appear that Jennifer Swan has done a presentation in quite some time, but the option is available.
The evidence of teen participation varies but there are some threads that are quite active. The average number of comments for most books is approximately five; sometimes there are no comments, sometimes a few, and sometimes more than fifteen. From the comment records, there is an average of one comment per day, sometimes more. There seems to be a group of core contributors that post on all of Swan’s reviews, but there are other teens participating as well. There is a comment feed for recent comments near the top of the page where you can see what teens have said, which can be useful if teens want to know quickly what teens have to say about the books on the blog. The only place for teens to contribute is through comments on books and the Top Ten picks.
One thing that I didn’t particularly like about this blog was the ambiguity of topics in the Reading Rants booklist. For example, terms like “enquiring minds want to learn” and “home fries” don’t tell you a lot about the books that may be under this topic. In this form, it makes it hard to pick which booklist you may be interested in. However, when you click on one of the topics it does expand the definition, such as, “enquiring minds want to learn: unusual biographies/memoirs for teens”. Although it adds quirkiness to the site, I think it makes searching for books you want harder to do. I also thought that it could have been slightly more interactive. I do appreciate that Jennifer Swan kept the blog primarily as a booklist so that books were easy to find, some blogs can be too cluttered and oversaturated, but I think that it would be more popular and fun if there were a couple more social elements to it. I did like the look of the blog. It is generated by wordpress.com and has a clean, sophisticated yet fun look that makes it easy to read and easy to navigate.
Since this was primarily a booklist blog I learnt a lot about what kinds of books teens are reading and how teens feel about them. It was interesting to see what books had comments from teens, and what books didn’t. There were a few books that had over forty comments and it was easy to tell that this book was really popular among teens. The books that didn’t have any comments a lot of teens may have been unfamiliar with, which shows that the site is attempting to introduce teens to new literature that doesn’t always make the top ten lists. I found the lists of blogs for both teens and adults to be a very useful resource. I looked at some of the ones I hadn’t heard of before and I got a broader idea of some of the current trends in YA literature. I also really liked the links to blogs that were by and for teens. There were some interesting reviews made by teens that gave a good insight into what teens value when it comes to reading. This blog is relatively simple, but it is a very useful resource for teens that are looking for books they may enjoy. I would recommend it to teens and I would also use it as a resource to see what out of the ordinary books are popular or of good quality.
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