Review & Overview

I only recently discovered the Your Kid’s Next Read podcast. Well, I did sort of know about it, but I thought that it was only for preschool and primary school books, maybe middle school as an upper limit. Turns out they cover YA too! (It also turns out that I love hearing about the younger books as well. What can I say… love books, love podcasts.)

The YKNR podcast is usually co-hosted by Allison Tait (middle grade author) and Megan Daley (probably Australia’s best known teacher librarian), but this episode is solo-hosted by Tait.

The Teens & Reading episode is very much in the TL wheelhouse. Tait talks with author Allison Rushby (What makes a novel YA rather than middle school? Answers include “the Talking Fox Factor”), and also teacher librarian and book reviewer Trisha Buckley.

But the best bit,* I think, is Tait’s interview with Dr Bronwyn Reddan, a researcher in literary culture who worked on the Teen Reading in the Digital Era project (Deakin University) and was a research fellow on the ‘Discovering a “Good Read”: Pathways to Reading for Australian Teens’. This is an incredibly rich discussion with lots of fascinating insights into teens and reading for pleasure.

• When & why does teen reading decline? (Busy lives; many schools stop providing reading time past year 8; screens.)
• How do teens decide what to read? (Top 3: books by authors they like, peer recommendations & bookshops. Only quite engaged teen readers are searching on Booktok, but it’s still a big influence on what’s hot. Teen boys are more likely to get recommendations from family than friends.)
• What can adults can do to encourage teen reading? (Create reading time; help them find/access books they like; model reading; find ways to make reading social.)
• Why is it important for teens to choose their own reading material? (Helps them develop their own taste – don’t get controlling about teen book choices.)
• What’s the role of the school library?** (Very important; not much time in high school English classrooms for reading; library is a significant place for teens to find books (4th on list); TLs important but under-used for book recs – 60% of teens do not ask their TL for recs; can we promote more links between TLs and parents?)
• What’s next for the research team? (Grant application for researching the connection between reading and wellbeing.)

Reddan also recommends the Australia Reads blog post ‘7 ways to support Australian teens in reading for pleasure’.

Really, there’s so much interesting stuff in this part of the podcast – highly recommended listening! I now really want to listen to Episode 132: ‘The Who, What and How of Teen Reading’, a deeper dive into this material, as well as the follow up episode to Teens & Reading: ‘Real Talk About Literacy and Literature’.

* The interview with Dr Reddan is from 13.23 to 30.45.

** The school library bit starts at 27.18.

---

Tait, A. [Host]. (2024, August 26). Bonus: Teens & reading [Audio podcast episode]. Your Kid’s Next Read. https://www.yourkidsnextread.com.au/podcast-episode/bonus-teens-reading/

> Click here for image details

Images are used on this blog post under the “Fair dealing for criticism or review” provision of the Commonwealth Copyright Act, 1968.

Screenshot of podcast episode on my phone.

Mobile phone border and background from Canva.