Talkin’ Bout Best Books
Thoughts for discussing books at the BBYA Committee Meeting
This is not an attempt to:
-Crush your creativity
-Suck the joy out of your reading
-Tell you what to say or
-How to think.

Rather, this is an attempt to get you to focus your comments on the BBYA nominations so that:
Everyone gets a chance to contribute
The BBYA Committee can get only the most useful information they can out of you and
You get to say everything that you want and need to say.

I hope that these tips help you to think about what you have read and critically analyze the books. The most important thing to remember is that your opinion matters, your comments matter and you have the right to speak your mind:

1. Talk to the committee or the chair. There may be hundreds of people in the room, but don’t worry about them. The 15 people on the dais are the ones who are making the decisions about the books.

2. Keep it positive. There is really very little need to discuss a book you don’t like. Let me be the bad guy. The committee would rather hear about your favorites rather than the ones you hated. So come ready to talk about your top 5 -10 books rather than your least favorite 10-20. However, if you feel strongly about a book, we want to hear about it.

3. Focus on WHY you like/love/hate the book. What was the hook? What was the most appealing aspect of this book?

4. Keep your comments short and succinct. We have roughly 2 hours and possibly 60 teens that all have something they want to say. A little quick math tells us that everyone gets about 2 minutes to speak.

5. Don’t give a summary of the book. Everyone on the committee should have already read the book. We don’t need to know what it is about. Here are some suggestions for topics to talk about:
- Characters (Real, fake, interesting, annoying (but in a good way?))
- Plot
- Pacing
- Language (Was this well written?)
- Pictures/Artwork/Cover
- Believability
- Voice of the Character (Does this sound like a teen or like a real person)
- Compare to other books (Espcially this year selections)
- Format/Layout (Espcially poetry and titles that use some type of formatting other than the standard, for example footnotes, diary format, IM (leet speak), slang, etc.)
- Relevant/Age Appropriate (Does this appeal to teens, or is it too young or old?)
- Factual (Espciall for non-fiction)

6. Be honest. The Committee is interested in hearing about what teens think about the books. Don’t bother telling us what you think we want to hear. Tell us what you think about the book. And remeber, no matter what you believe about a book, it isn't wrong. It is your opinion and you have every right to it.