Teen Online Reading

Teen Online Reading: A Great Journey!

Reading used to be a solitary activity, one that included long trips to the library, talking to old ladies in reading glasses, and then ambling home with your load of books.

Boy have times changed! Now, instead of trekking to your local library, you can find great books online, make friends via the Internet, and have a plethora of books delivered to your front door. Let’s take a look at some online reading sites to help get you started!

BookLoons

BookLoons has a great name and a great site. BookLoons has everything you could possibly need for your reading adventure. On their homepage they offer excerpts from popular books, relevant book reviews, and columns like What’s in a Review.

In their Shelves category, you can take a virtual tour of the

• Classics
• Fantasy
• Kids
• Sci-Fi
• Travel
• Contemporary
• Historical
• Mystery
• Romance
• Teens

In each category, you’ll find a list of books with a brief description and an icon rating of one to five books letting you know how good of a read a particular book really is. They also feature a category filled with contests you can participate in, and hopefully, win!

Teens SRC

Teens SRC kicks in up a notch by offering an online forum where you can chat with other like-minded teens. Developed by the BC Library Association for teens interested in reading, this forum is a great place to connect with others.

Besides being able to chat with other teens, there’s also a section entitled Your Words. Here, you’re able to post your own writings and give and get feedback from other visitors to the site. There’s also a section for contests (with winner’s names posted) and a section of the latest book lists.

Once in the Book Lists section, you can choose to search for a book via its title, or you can choose from one of these exciting categories:

• Books to Make You Think

This is an intriguing category filled with book titles that discuss issues of our day, like working in a sweatshop, advertising, racism, violence, climate change, and activism,…the list goes on and on. For teens that truly care about the world we live in today, and who aspire to fix some of society’s ills, this is the category for you!

• Canadian

Don’t let the Canadian title fool you, this category houses books that are written from all over the world. Just think, books written in Jerusalem to Africa, from Canada to Greece, can all be yours with just a click of a mouse.

• Chic Lit

What teen girl (or any woman for that matter) doesn’t love Chit Lit? Once considered a light weight category by publishing snob’s world wide, Chick Lit is inspiring a new generation of Jan Austin’s everywhere to pen a little chick lit of her own.

• Lad Lit

Not to be outdone, the boy’s are showing a strong comeback in this relatively new genre of Lat Lit. Curious about this category? Well, consider some of these eye-catching titles:

• 24 Girls In 7 Days by Marshall Boswell
• All The Way by Andy Behrens
• Battle of the Bands by Lesley Choyce

Other great categories include:

• Classics
• Dairies and Letters
• Fantasy
• Get Graphic
• Historical Fiction
• Horror and Supernatural
• Humor
• Mystery

A Final Word

If you thought joining a teen online reading club would be a huge snore, you’ll be in for a real treat. Where else can you browse cheekily entitled categories like Queer Lit and the like?

More so, joining a teen online reading club gives you the opportunity to share your ideas, stories, and likes and dislikes with a receptive audience that more often than not, will understand where you are coming from. Now that’s worth its weight in gold!