Girls' Reading for a Change - Readergirlz Online Book Community

With all the great new titles coming out for boys, and excellent work on getting boys reading, let's not forget the girls.

Readergirlz is a new online book community celebrating gutsy girls in life & literature. Each month there are recommended reads, and a featured book. You can chat live to the book's author on the Readergirlz Myspace Group Forum. Readergirlz suggests that you get together with a group of friends for a monthly book celebration. The Book Celebration Guide (keep scrolling down the page to get to this) each month suggests appropriate eats, decorations, and movies to go with the featured book. There's even a While-You-Read Music Playlist to download. In our time zone, the author chats are usually in school time, so this could be a great activity for a school library or English class to get behind. To see previous months' book picks, go here.

In addition to being Library Week in New Zealand, this week is Teen Reads week in the States, and to celebrate, Readergirlz and YALSA have teemed up this month to host 31 "flavorite" authors for teen girls.

You can download the 31 flavorites poster here. This could be great to use in your library with a display of some of the authors and titles featured. Or, you could use it to help with your buying of great books for girls.

Teens can chat live to the "flavorite" authors, by joining then connecting to the Readergirlz group forum at 1.00 pm NZ time every day this month (including weekends). You need to be a member of MySpace to do this, so this may not be possible at all schools. Join up with the forum the day before you want to join in a chat, as the Readergirlz moderator needs to accept you as a member first. Then, at the Readergirlz group forum site, scroll right down past the Welcome and Member faces to the forum. Find the October chat thread and double-click it. At 1:00 pm NZ time, the chat starts. You can post questions and the writer will answer them. To see the answers, return to the forum and refresh.

As NZ time is ahead of American time, each day's author chats are at 1.00 pm the following day. To chat with Stephenie Meyer, who has written the very HOT Twilight Series (Yr 11 up), log in on Thursday 1 November. Stephenie's chat session will be a little later, at 5.00 pm NZ time (this is midnight Halloween in New York!)

Go here for some more great ideas for Girls' Reads on Create Readers.

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