St. Margaret’s students were reading just for the fun of it as the school celebrated the tenth annual Teen Read Week October 14–20, 2007. Students joined with thousands of others at schools, libraries, and bookstores across the country to celebrate this year’s theme, “LOL @ your library®,” which encouraged teens to read humorous books and graphic novels.

Allowing time for leisure reading helps students in many ways, according to St. Margaret’s School librarian Katie Klein. “Students who read for fun do better in school, have higher SAT scores, and develop richer vocabularies,” she said. “When students find books they enjoy when they’re young, they become life-long readers.”

That’s why the school set aside time each afternoon last week, allowing students to read a variety of material of their choice. And those choices were as diverse as the student body itself. For example, titles seen around campus ranged from Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and from Newsweek to Glamour magazines.

Teen Read Week is the national adolescent literacy initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association. The theme for the 2008 Teen Read Week will be “Books with Bite @ your library.”