Jill Whitson, a YALSA member, speaks to Thiruchelvan Selvanayagam about what it's like to have your library sponsor a WrestleMania Reading Challenge finalist and encourage a reluctant teen to start reading. Jill's student designed a bookmark that earned him a spot in the WrestleMania Challenge finals. He didn't win, but he did get to attend WrestleMania and Jill won $2,000 for her library's teen and tween collection.

Listen in to find out more about her experience. Want to register for the 2009-2010 WrestleMania Reading Challenge? Sign up through Teen Read Week registration by this Friday and you could relive the experience Jill describes in this podcast.

In this podcast, Michael Cart interviews Lizzie Skurnick author of the just released Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics we Never Stopped Reading. Lizzie is the author of the blog Old Hag and is a columnist for Jezebel. Listen The podcast discussion covers:

• Shelf Discovery
• The range of human experience covered in many teen novels.
• How teens read and what they get out of reading realistic fiction
• Books including Secret Lives by Bertha Amos, Jacob Have I Loved, Phyllis Reynold Naylor's Alice series, and The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp
• Reasons why novels for girls and women do not receive the respect they deserve and boy vs. girl readership of teen fiction.
• Skurnick's career & the readership of her Jezebel columns
• The future of print reviewing and the changing world of reading in electronic and print formats.

Matthew Moffett and Pam Spencer Holley discuss the new book Pam edited for YALSA, Popular Reads for Teens, and the history of some YALSA book lists. The book compiles information from Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults and Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers along with annotations and program ideas.