Youth Collection Demystified- Teen Fiction

Join us today as we continue exploring the Youth collection and discover how to find Teen Fiction in the library.

Overview
Once readers enter middle school and begin to outgrow the Juvenile Fiction collection, they are ready to move on to Teen Fiction, which is divided into two sub-categories: "Y" Fiction (or Youth Fiction, for grades 7-9) and "YA" Fiction (or Young Adult Fiction, for grades 10-12).

What It Looks Like

Many of the libraries in the Ozark Regional system shelve Juvenile Fiction separately from Y/YA (aka Teen) Fiction, though as mentioned in an earlier post, some of our smaller branches still combine the two sections into one.  Like Juvenile Fiction titles, the spine label on a Teen Fiction book is white and is labeled with a "Y" or "YA" designation, as well as with the first three letters of the author's last name.  For example, a book by Sarah Dessen would have a spine label that reads "YA Des".

Left: The cover of a Teen Fiction title.  Right: A close-up of the spine label.

How to Find It
Here's an image of the catalog card for pictured book...

Author entry card for Sarah Dessen's Whatever Happened to Goodbye?

We know this title is Teen Fiction because our catalog card locator mentions that the book is labeled with a "YA", followed by the first three letters of Dessen's last name.  We know we can find this book shelved, alphabetically by the author's last name, with the other "Y" and "YA" titles in the Youth area.

There's our book!

And that's it- an overview of Teen Fiction and how to find a "Y" or "YA" book in the library!  If you've missed any part of this series on demystifying the youth collection, you can catch up on Board Books, Picture Books, Easy Readers, Juvenile Fiction, or the Paperback Collection at your convenience.  Next up: the Nonfiction Section!

Keep reading!

Shaen