by Donna Deegan

The Massachusetts Teen Choice Book Award was created as a response to the need to honor and recognize new Young Adult fiction.  Modeled after the Rhode Island Teen Book Award, this award gives teen the opportunity to vote for their favorite YA author.   Sue-Ellen Szymanski and Mary Ann Rogers met several times with MLA/YSS and MSLA in order to create an award which will be a joint venture between MLA and MSLA.

“I wanted to give teens a chance to voice their opinion on whom they felt was the best YA author,” said Mary Ann Rogers, a library media specialist in Billerica, MA.  The committee consists of public and school librarians.  Reading specialists and teachers are also welcome to join.  The Massachusetts Library Association and the Massachusetts School Library Association will sponsor the award.  The committee will meet once a month on the last Monday of the month.  Each member will be responsible to read between 10-15 YA fiction titles that have been published in the last year.  Each book will be rated from 1-10 by the members.  A final list is then compiled and a ballot is then created.

Several public and school librarians attended the initial meeting at the John Glenn Middle School in Bedford: Donna Deegan, Mary Ann Rogers, Joan Collins, Sue Ellen Szymanski, Sarah Sogigian and Tricia London. The group drafted by-laws and discussed the goal of ensuring nominations of interest for both middle and high school teens. They may appear in separate sections of the ballot. 

“We want to find the best possible fiction that has been or will be published this year,” said Rogers.  We hope to read advance copies of titles that will be coming out in 2009.  Once the list is compiled, a ballot will be ready for late fall.  The voting will take place from the fall of 2009 to the spring of 2010.

“We encourage any public or school librarian who is interested in YA fiction to join the committee,” said Rogers. Hoping to attract librarians from all parts of the state, the committee voted to conduct some virtual meetings and to rotate physical meetings throughout the regions.  Plans are for a virtual meeting in January, a February meeting in Milbury and the March 30th meeting in the Northeast Region.  The committee also hopes to create some positions, such as webmaster, for those who would like to participate but cannot travel to monthly meetings in person. Contact Mary Ann Rogers if you are interested in joining this new award committee. This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Massachusetts Teen Choice Book Awards Nominee Requirements

In order to be eligible as a nominee for the Massachusetts Teen Choice Book Award, books must conform to the following:

1. The book must be of interest to teens etween the ages of 12 and 18 years old.
2. The book must be published within one year of the creation of the nominees list. For example, nominees for the 2010 award were selected in 2009. They had to have a publication date of 2009.
3. The primary consideration of book selection should be quality, but the level of young adult interest should also be considered. This means that adult novels with a high level of teen interst may also be nominated.
4. There are no restrictions based on home country of the author or whether the author is still living.

Donna Deegan is the Library Teacher at Lynn Classical High School                   

Graphics from classroomclipart.com