ABSTRACT
As editor of the Books for Adolescents pages of the International Reading Association’s (IRA) Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, I am always looking for good reviewers, people to read and write reviews of the latest and most popular novels written for young adults. I have tried undergraduate English majors, doctoral students majoring in education, experienced middle and high school English teachers, and even university professors. e reviews that are most popular with the IRA publications directors, however, and the ones that I nd the most revealing about the genre and its readers, are the paired reviews done by parents and their children. In these paired reviews, one parent and one child read the same book and write reviews separately. ey may look at each other’s reviews and discuss their content before nalizing their dras. ey may even comment on their partner’s ideas in their own reviews, but they do not devalue or invalidate judgments the other person has made in his or her review. Interestingly, these parentchild reviews are generally similar in their appraisal of a book’s value, although the specic elements that appeal to them may dier. Oen, each reviewer arrives at similar conclusions about plot development or characterization. And oen, the parents are impressed with what the young reviewers have to say and learns as much about the workings of their ospring’s mind as they do about the book. Both are important:
knowing what young people are reading and understanding how this literature ts into their worlds.
