It’s that time of year again—the beginning of fall when temperatures start to fall and the pumpkin spice must flow. That means it’s almost Teen Read Week—the week of the year with no forced reading for teens, just fun reading! (Well, that’s the dream anyway—who knows what projects your schools have been assigning.)

Seriously though, Teen Read Week (October 9–15) is a time for all teen librarians to flex our brains and come up with amazing programs for our teens to make literacy, reading, and learning fun. But literacy isn't just about reading—it's about taking a risk and learning new skills and competencies.

Want to work on your culinary literacy? We have cooking programs like A Taste of African Heritage at Greater Olney Library and Cooking with Keisha at Queen Memorial Library. Are you all about digital literacy? How about DIY YouTube video tutorials at Whitman Library or a MakerJawn program at one of five libraries in North Philadelphia? Feeling the writing bug? Try the Creative Writing Workshop at Philadelphia City Institute with author Beth Kephart!

Just want to hear about the best YA titles of the year while eating snacks and then heading home with a ton of free books? Then check out my favorite day of the year—Teen Book Blast! For the past three years, a bunch of librarians get together on the final day of Teen Read Week to run their mouths and make fools of ourselves while trumpeting our 50 favorite books of the year. Have a favorite book? Tell us—we’ll send you home with books! Like snacks? Come eat snacks with us—we’ll send you home with the leftovers!

In case you were wondering, your friendly local teen librarians have been keeping track of our favorites of the past few years. You can find them here:

50 Favorite YA Titles of 2015
Back in 2015, we were loving Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon, and Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, among others.

2014 YA Favorites
In which your heroes were very into some way out there titles like Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by A.S. King, and Noggin by John Corey Whaley.

So are you loving these books? Totally hating them? You’ll have your chance to tell us whether we are right or wrong while having snacks on Saturday, October 15 at 3:00 p.m at Philadelphia City Institute, 1905 Locust Street (at Rittenhouse Square).

We have a lot of amazing programs for teens at libraries all over the city—during Teen Read Week and all year. Check out our calendar of amazing, fun, FREE events!

Do you have any favorites that we missed? Share them below in the comments!