Report on Teen Read Week 2005

Smart girls decide for themselves™.

Does your school library celebrate Teen Read Week?

As you can see, about one-third of your school libraries participated in Teen Read Week this year. About one-third did not participate, and one-third of you didn't even know if your library particpated.

How much do you agree with this statement? "Events like Teen Read Week have increased my interest in books and reading."

How well do you agree with the following statement? "I read for the fun of it."

Quite the Readers!!!

As you can see, the majority of survey takers said they read for the fun of it. You can see this by noticing how much the agree and strongly agree sections take up of the pie chart. Only about 25% indicated that they don't read for fun.

I read because my parents encourage me to read.

Reading and Friends

How well do you agree with this statement? "The people I hang out with like to read and talk about books."

Which kinds of materials do you read the most often?

This bar graph shows that most of you read books. There are, however, plenty of other reading materials that you choose to read. Magazines, websites, and assigned material were also very popular choices for the people who chose to take this survey. Some of you also listen to audio books, and read comics and graphic novels, and textbooks.

Not including school assignments, how many books do you read?

count percent notschool2 Not at all 128 13.31 Less than 1 book per month 123 12.79 1 book per month 151 15.7 2 to 3 books per month 245 25.47 4 to 5 books per month 130 13.51 6 to 10 books per month 76 7.9 11 to 20 books per month 54 5.61 More than 20 books per month! 55 5.72

Reading Topics!

What kinds of people do you like to read about?

This graph shows that we had very open-minded survey takers. The people you like to read about can range from musicians to celebrities, to people like yourself, and even animals.

What kinds of books do you like to read?

count percent forfun adventure 495 5.48 animals 202 2.24 animecomix 205 2.27 art 110 1.22 auto/bio 206 2.28 hobbies 215 2.38 classics 230 2.55 entertainment 381 4.22 factual 134 1.48 fantasy 430 4.76 fashion 268 2.97 fiction 497 5.5 truestories 414 4.59 historical 249 2.76 horror 376 4.16 how-to books 134 1.48 humor 459 5.08 maps/geog 39 0.43 medical 71 0.79 mystery 476 5.27 philsophy 78 0.86 picturebks 156 1.73 poetry 242 2.68 plays 163 1.81 politics 61 0.68 religious 86 0.95 romance 362 4.01 science 112 1.24 scifi 212 2.35 shorts 286 3.17 sports 240 2.66 suspense 322 3.57 teenlit 484 5.36 travel 89 0.99 westerns 45 0.5 anything 208 2.3 everything 141 1.56 dontlike 50 0.55 other 101 1.12

Choosing a Book

How do you usually choose books to read?

Where do you get your books?

Check out the data above and the pie chart below. The data above shows that most people who took the survey were read to outloud when they were younger. The pie chart below shows that most of the people who took the survey are not read to outloud anymore.

Does somebody read out loud to you now?

How often do you visit the school library?

This bar graph shows how often you visit your school library. Unfortunately, the most common response was never. Hopefully you're just getting plenty of books elswhere. The chart below asks how often you visit the public library. Unfortunately, you can see that never is the largest count again at 156 responses. Something else to note is that 139 of the respondents have no public library. If you have a public library, hopefully you are taking advantage of that. It's good to see that about 25 percent either visit the library once a month or twice a month. Keep up the reading!

How often do you visit the public library?

count percent visitpublib nopublib 139 14.45 never 156 16.22 1/yr 95 9.88 evry6mos 82 8.52 evry3mos 81 8.42 1/mo 123 12.79 2x/mo 117 12.16 1/wk 85 8.84 2x/wk 51 5.3 daily 33 3.43

The bar chart below is showing that most people have libraries in their community. 819 respondents said yes, and only 19 said no. However, in the chart above 139 people said there was no public library in their community. As you can see, there is some discrepancy there. Figuring out why that difference exists might be an interesting project for you to work on in the SmartCenter!

There are libraries in my community.

My public library has a room or space just for teens.

The pie chart above is representing whether or not the respondent's public library has a room or space just for teens. As you can see it was fairly even between yes and no, with yes having a few more responses. The bar chart below is representing if the library has a set of resources just for teens. Most of the librarys seem to have a collection just for teens. Only a small portion (83) said yours does not. A great majority of respondents for both questions answered that they did not know. However above most of the respondents said they had a librarian that could help. If you don't know what your library has to offer, always ask. Your librarians are there to help. They may have a wonderful set of resources for you.

My public library has a collection of books and resources just for teens.

This final graph shows that most of you would read more if you knew of more good books to read. Try searching on the Internet, asking parents and asking librarians. There is a good book out there for everyone!!!

I would read more if I knew about more good books to read.

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us!

Please remember that all web-based polls are not scientific because the pollsters cannot randomly select the respondents to participate in the surveys.

All our surveys are anonymous; check out our privacy policy. All data copyright 1996-2000.