Interview a teen

I interviewed a 17 year old African-American girl who is a senior in high school. She is a page at a public library, but doesn't describe herself as an avid reader.

Favorite books
Addicted by Zane, because it involves an interesting double life; Cut by Patricia Mccormick, because it describes struggles of a teen and is an interesting story; and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson because it was interesting.

She finds out about new books from her sisters who are all around the same age (actually they're her cousins, but she calls them sisters). She also said books with colorful, eye-catching color attract her attention.

Magazines
She likes Essence, Sex etc., and Ebony. She doesn't really like graphic novels.

Internet
This seemed to excite her the most when talking about it. She uses Myspace all of the time and also uses the Myspace chat client and several other chat clients to talk to friends. She also uses Yahoo Mail and said she's been spending a lot of time on the Common Application online lately applying to schools. When we were talking about music, she mentioned that she recently downloaded audio Sparknotes for a book she was supposed to read for school and listened to it on her iPod.

Movies
She enjoys comedies most and said her favorite is First Wives Club because she liked the story of revenge-- she used to watch it a couple of times a week. She's also a scary movie fan (only when there's someone there with her during the worst parts)-- her favorite in this genre is Interview with a Vampire.

TV
Her favorite shows are Law and Order, CSI, Ugly Betty, and music videos on MTV and BET.

She is not into video games.

Music
She likes the bands EnVogue, Pretty Ricky, Omarion, and Gym Class Heroes (especially their song "Cupid's Chokehold"). She described her taste as eclectic and said she also likes a lot of 80s music. As we were speaking she continually had her iPod in hand (her headphones weren't in her ears of course). She said she has the iPod with her everywhere and she's either listening to that or is on her phone.

Etc
I asked her what materials she'd want in the library that aren't already there. She said she thought we could use more beauty how-to guides and that CDs or MP3s would be awesome but that people would probably break the CDs (being a page she's conscious of these things :)). In general, she said she thinks teens look for stories that have to do with the real world and the issues they face growing up-- that's why she liked books like Speak and Cut.

My Impressions
It was really fun talking with her because she was very open about her tastes and mentioned some things I hadn't heard of and want to look into. I had heard of all the books except for Cut that she mentioned. I wouldn't have thought of anything by Zane as YA and honestly I was surprised that she openly admitted to reading Zane books because when I was her age (and even now) I would have been embarrassed to admit to reading anything with explicit sexual content. She seems really comfortable with who she is, which I admire! I also enjoyed talking to her about getting ready to go to college, which was exciting. That first real freedom is the best thing ever. Our taste in TV shows definitely overlaps, but other than that I think I need to become more hip to the teen scene.

We also had an interesting side discussion near the end of the interview when I asked her what she thought teen guys liked to read. She said that she didn't think they liked to read at all, but that she took one of her Zane books to school and they were really interested in that, but only for the sex scenes, not for the story. She seemed annoyed by this because she finds the plots interesting, not just the graphic content. I wonder if those boys were really only interested in the sex scenes, or if they were trying to prove their studliness by acting as if that was all they liked about it in front of the girls...