The Teen Citywide Read is returning for its third year, bringing together Transition Year students and library branches across Dublin. The campaign is run by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature and Dublin City Libraries, and is funded by Dublin City Council and the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.
Running from October to December, the programme encourages young people to read for pleasure, connect with their local library and engage with contemporary Irish writing.
For the first time, this year's programme features two books by Irish authors, offering students a broader range of reading experiences and reflecting the diverse interests, backgrounds and reading preferences of teenagers across the city. This year's selected titles are supported by publishers Gill Books and Little Island Books.
The selected titles are:
Something Terrible Happened Last Night
by bestselling author Sam Blake, published by Gill Books,
Mixed Up: An Irish Boy's Journey to Belonging
by writer, activist and speaker Leon Diop, published by Little Island.
Mixed Up: An Irish Boy's Journey to Belonging is a powerful memoir exploring Irish Book Award-winning author Leon Diop's experience of growing up mixed-race in Tallaght, addressing issues of identity, belonging, racism and neurodiversity with honesty, warmth and humour.
My book is about a journey to becoming comfortable with your own identity and that is exactly what I would love to help young readers in Dublin with too. Reading someone else's story is the fastest way to understand your own. I'm hoping that through this wonderful programme we will be able to look at how we build positive attitudes towards our own identities and be respectful of different people.
Something Terrible Happened Last Night is a contemporary young adult thriller set in Dublin. When a group of teenage friends discover a body after a party, they begin investigating the mystery themselves. Combining social media, rumours and multiple perspectives, the novel was shortlisted for Teen and Young Adult Book of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2023.
I hope the choice of a pacy crime novel with a cast that aims to reflect today’s 16 and 17 year olds will grab readers' interest, get them talking and get them reading.
Participating schools will be provided with sets of the selected titles for their school libraries, while students will be encouraged to visit their local library branch, take a guided tour, join the library, and borrow books.
Welcoming the return of the programme, Acting City Librarian Brendan Teeling said:
Like many readers, I got into books as a teenager, and our Teen Citywide Read encourages today’s teenagers to get into books as well. It’s about giving young people the time and the space to read something because they want to, not because they have to. I hope every student who comes through our doors this autumn joins up, borrows a book and keeps coming back.
Students will also take part in author workshops. This year's featured authors, Sam Blake and Leon Diop, will visit libraries across Dublin, giving young readers the opportunity to engage directly with the writers behind the selected titles.
Both books are available to borrow from Dublin City Libraries, in print at local branches and as eBooks on BorrowBox.
This year's programme was launched on 8 October in Coolock Library. Cllr Clodagh Ní Mhuirí, representing the Lord Mayor, and Acting City Librarian Brendan Teeling were in attendance, along with students from Coolock Community College. The students heard from both authors, who spoke about their books, what the programme means to them, and the importance of stories in connecting people and experiences. They ended their visit with a tour of the library.
This is the 13th year of the city-wide reading initiative which is targeting teenagers for the third time. Books chosen for the Citywide Reading Campaign in previous years included:
