While not a library journal, the ALAN Review (only available online through UWO) is devoted entirely to young adult literature, albeit primarily meant for the teaching profession. ALAN, or the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents, is part of the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) in the United States. A lot of the content is relevant to our discussions on YA materials, so I thought it would be worthwhile to examine the journal a little further.
Looking through the two most recent issues, I was initially pleased by the number of articles aimed at pointing readers towards materials meant for marginalized teen groups. Out of two issues, three articles were about LGBT content and one was concerned with finding quality texts that dealt fairly and honestly with the issues faced by teen mothers. It should be the duty of professional journals to raise awareness of these issues and texts, which is exactly what the ALAN Review is doing. Even with some of the articles being slanted towards the use of these books in the classroom, there is still information that YA librarians can take away, even if it is just a list of titles that may appeal to a certain demographic.
The article "Creating a Space for YAL with LGBT Content in Our Personal Reading: Creating a Place for LGBT Students in Our Classrooms" (vol. 35, iss. 3) may not sound relevant, but it addresses many of the same questions that librarians have. How do we deal with parental pressure or other forces? What responsibilities do we have to various groups of people? By seeing how educators deal with some of the same problems that librarians do, perhaps their solutions will become ours as well.
Another article that stuck out to me was "Where the Girls Are" (vol. 35, iss. 3), a comment on the author Naomi Wolf's attack against the Gossip Girls and A-List series. My personal hatred of Gossip Girl aside (I hate it for no other fact than that they are rich and live in New York. I prefer the more romantic starving artist view of New York as seen in Flight of the Conchords. But I digress), I thought the article made a valid point that we should not automatically assume these books, which emphasize such nasty things as rampant consumerism and sexual voraciousness (or so I've heard), are forever warping the minds of young women. Assuming what a reader gets out of a book is a dangerous approach to dealing with materials. Instead of trying to sway readers away from those series, we must think about how society has manufactured the tastes of teenagers and make sure they have the resources to be able to make informed decisions.
One negative aspect to the ALAN review is that the book reviews are pretty much filler. They sometimes only contain plot synopsis, often make no comments as to whom the book would appeal to and end with the standard amount of glowing praise. A disappointing side to an otherwise wonderful journal.
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