YA Friday: One Year Later…

They say it's your birthday. It's my birthday, too!

It's been one year since I made my first YA Friday post about National Poetry Month. Since then there have been 52 uninterrupted weeks of YA recommendations, 12 monthly wrap-ups, over 500 highlighted books, and over 2,000 page views. I have had other staff members collaborate and share some of their favorite books and even create their own YA Friday posts to share.

In honor of YA Friday's first birthday, I decided to pick some of my favorite blog posts and talk a little bit about why I liked each one.

Meanwhile I'll be arriving to my blog-birthday party like:

Favorite YA Friday Posts

BTS smiling for the camera in black suits at the Grammys 2019

YA Friday: Welcome! This is your first time with BTS, right?

What if the world famous K-Pop band BTS' music videos were YA books?

This was one of my favorite posts because:

♥ I love BTS. If it wasn't obvious before...
♥ It was a lot of fun learning about the different meanings and fan-theories behind the videos and then getting to explore books that aligned with those topics and kind of had matching book covers.
♥ This is also the most-viewed YA Friday blog post and is consistently in the top-ten most viewed blogs each month.


If You're Out There book coverYA Friday: #SVYALit

Sexual violence takes a toll on survivors, as well as their friends, families, and communities, in these realistic fiction books.

This was one of my favorite posts because:

♥ It's important.
♥ I remember not being able to put Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson down when I first read it the summer before my freshman year of high school. I don't think my mom really knew what it was about when she bought it for me, but after I finished it, I asked her to read it too and we got to sit down and talk about the book and some of our shared fears about entering high school as a young girl.
♥ All of these stories are beneficial for all genders, especially those looking to deconstruct rape culture and all of the daily microaggressions that contribute to it, and to confront how their own internalized misogyny can be fought against, and what they can do to make it easier to recognize rape culture in their own lives, and encourage their friends to speak up and speak out against it at every turn.


YA Friday Presents Favorite Books 2018 Picked by your San Jose Public Library Staff

YA Friday: Favorite Books 2018

Teens hungry for can’t-miss reads will devour our favorite young adult books of 2018, as selected by San José Public Library staff.

This was one of my favorite posts because:

♥ So many awesome co-workers got to contribute to this post and highlight some of their favorite YA books of the year!
♥ I learned that while we all have different reading tastes, there were some books that we loved unanimously, like Elizabeth Acevedo's The Poet X.
♥ 2018 was an incredible year in YA publishing and while there has been no shortage of must-reads and series additions, debut authors really stole the show sharing stories of strong and powerful women and it was a delight to feature those stories.


Girls With Sharp Sticks book cover

YA Friday: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story

Broadway babies and founding fathers fanciers alike will enjoy the fiction on this list for fans of Hamilton.

This was one of my favorite posts because:

♥ I love doing collaborative posts and I was excited that this was one that could cross over fiction and nonfiction with Leizel.
♥ The topics that Hamilton addresses are still very relevant and I'm excited that historical fiction and true stories continue to resonate with teens in a variety of accessible formats, like music and graphic novels.
♥ All the songs get stuck in my head after reading this post... And I'm not mad about it.


YA Friday: The Mock Printz "Prince" Awards 2019

Find out who won San José Public Librarians' Mock Printz Award. Did your favorite win this year?

This was one of my favorite posts because:

♥ This was SJPL's first Mock Printz committee and so we got to have fun reading and discussing young adult books as a group and then picking a favorite.
♥ The Printz award doesn't get a lot of recognition outside of library and book-world circles and so it was nice to have a blog to introduce this award to people who may not be aware of it.
♥ Some of the extra categories we got to vote for books on were really silly and fun and I'm excited to do it again next year!


Ariana Grande's thank u, next album cover

YA Friday: thank u, next

Did we match each song from Ariana Grande's new pop album, thank u, next to YA books? Yes.Yes, we did.

This was one of my favorite posts because:

♥ I was genuinely surprised how quickly I put this list together. What can I say, I was inspired.
♥ It reminds me of a Buzzfeed-style listicle and is contemporary with BookRiot themed posts and the like.
♥ I managed to get all of Stephanie Perkins' Anna and the French Kiss series books into the list. (Please read them. They're amazing.)