We checked in on the progress of a book give-away at Bassick High School in Bridgeport and were delighted to sit down with Loise Beecher, the school Librarian. Since our sweet spot for book collections and deliveries has been PreK - 8th, we asked her about her 'go to' sites when trying to find good books that teens actually want to read.
The ALA Book and Media Awards site is a great resource that reviews award winning books for various ages, but her favorite site, KirkusReviews.com has a very intuitive and powerful search capability. If you type in "teen" in their lists search bar, you get lists of teen spy thrillers, favorite summer novels, teen romances, funny paranormal teen reads, etc. The site covers all levels of kids and adult books.
Many thanks to Ms Beecher for the pointers and for the list of her personal favorites. We will try to keep our eye out for books for the library as they have over 1,000 students but extremely limited funding for new books.