Books for "Bad" Kids -- Advice Needed

Each year at its Otter Award dinner, the Northern California Children's Booksellers' Association (NCCBA) gives out Literacy Grants to various organizations and people who work with kids, the goal being the promotion of literacy.


Months ago, I picked up an application and last minute on a whim decided to fill it out. I won! For many years, I've volunteered with an amazing organization called The Beat Within, which started as a single writing workshop in San Francisco juvenile hall and has since spread into juvenile halls and prisons all over the country. Each week, trained leaders help the "bad kids" put down their thoughts, ideas, poetry, drawings and life stories. The work -- You never know what to expect -- is then printed in a weekly newsletter that's sometimes 60 pages thick.

The best testimony comes from a participant named Nick: I thank the Beat Within for helping me find something that I didn’t know I had, which is the power to step up and be a good writer, which has helped me free my mind and soul.


You can read more about The Beat at www.thebeatwithin.org/news. I've also written on Salon.com about my own experience as a Beat workshop leader. Those essays are posted on my website at www.jillwolfson.com/journalism/pen.html and www.jillwolfson.com/journalism/mother.html

In my application, I said that I hoped to use the grant to make quality age and developmentally appropriate books available to incarcerated youth who do not have access to such material. I’m disappointed -- okay horrified -- by the selections on the prison bookshelf. It mostly holds well-used, poorly-written paperbacks in the action/horror/crime genres. Lord knows that those kids have enough of that negative energy in their lives. Also, over and over, I have been amazed at the positive response when I actually bring in a specific book for a specific student and give it to him or her. Many of these kids have never had the affirming experience of being handed a book and being told: “I got this with you specifically in mind.”

Sooooo yippee. Now I have $500!! to spend over the next 6 months in the children/YA department of my local independent book stores.


But help, I need lots of input on what to buy. As I said, the kids gravitate towards high action. I have nothing against a good horror or crime story, but I'd like to offer something exciting without all the gratuitous slashing, raping and gutting. They like poetry as inspiration for their own poems to girlfriends and for raps. There are a lot of minority students, no surprise given the hideous ethnic make-up of the prison system, so stories and biographies that reflect cultural diversity are must. Age range is 13-17; reading level spans elementary school through college. Lots of gang members, lots of kids with learning disabilities and histories of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Honestly, I'd love to see them laughing while reading a book.


So please, post your suggestions. Books need to be in paperback. Hardbacks -- not the words, but the weight itself -- have be used as weapons. The kids have also opened their own skin using the edge of a cover. There's a metaphor there somewhere.