Programs:Teen Reading Lounge

"PHC can play an important role in helping young people develop an awareness of how the humanities reach every corner of our lives. Working with them is our opportunity to deliver civility and culture to the world they will create."
— Mary Garm, Lackawanna County Library System Administrator and PHC Board Member

Welcome to PHC's Teen Reading Lounge Program!

PHC believes that including teen audiences in the public humanities is the first step in building a community of well-informed, highly-engaged adults. Teen Reading Lounge (TRL) is an interactive book discussion series created by PHC for public libraries to encourage teens, ages 12-18, to read and talk about literature that matters to them.

Through book discussion and artistic workshops with a qualified facilitator, teens create special projects and sharpen critical thinking skills. The program, which occurs over several sessions, appeals to popular interests in young adult literature. Libraries can choose from two series, fantasy fiction or comics & graphic novels.

TRL has two goals:

  • Engage teen audiences in out-of-school time learning in the humanities.
  • Increase the capacity of libraries to conduct public humanities programming for teen audiences.

An informal learning program, TRL is fun and engaging. However, TRL also advances many important learning agendas. TRL advances skills promoted by PA Forward, the Pennsylvania Library Association's literacies initiative—civic and social literacy as well as basic literacy skills. Last but not least, it supports learning outlined by the PA Core Curriculum and the Pennsylvania Standards. TRL addresses reading comprehension, speaking and listening, civics and government, interpersonal relationships and arts & humanities standards in the PA Standards and reading literature and speaking and listening standards in the PA Core Curriculum.

Read more about why PHC feels it's important to reach teen audiences. [416K PDF]

Featured:

Teen Reading Lounge is a program of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, developed in part by federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds administered by the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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