All Boys Aren't Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto by 
The Black Girl Survives in This One: Horror Stories by 
Curses and Other Buried Things by 
Firekeeper's Daughter by 
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by 
The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by 
Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir by 
Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler by 
Your Plantation Prom Is Not Okay by There are lots of awards for fiction and nonfiction young adult titles! It is easy to find the ones we have in our collection with a keyword search using the award name. When searching for phrases, use quotation marks to force the database to see the phrase as if it is one word as shown in this screenshot:
Various punctuation can be used to manipulate the spelling of search words. The question mark is used to substitute an indeterminate number of letters, and can be used either at the end or middle of a word in the WSU Library Catalog. (Other databases may use different punctuation for this.)
Lexile® Framework for Reading can identify the vocabulary level of books or other texts. Not all catalog records for YA and children's books in our collection include a Lexile level, but many do. Try the search lexile AND ?HL to locate many books in our collection that have the HL lexile designation.
Most graphic novels for YA readers have call numbers beginning with PZ 5 741.5. The rest of the call number is based on the author’s name and book title.
Most graphic novels and comics for adults are shelved together in the call number range PN6710 - PN6798 on the second floor. Other graphic novels in our collection are found in the Library of Congress call number for that topic. For example, Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman, is about the Jewish Holocaust in Poland during World War II and found at the call number D810.J4 S6432 1997.
PZ 5 call numbers are used for non-picture books, which includes nonfiction for all ages and YA fiction. PZ 6 call numbers are picture books.
Advanced Search allows researchers to use a combination of search words and fields to find a more targeted result list. Click on the “Advanced Search” tab on the catalog screen as highlighted in the screenshot below.
Advanced search gives you several search boxes that can be joined to make a more specific catalog search possible. As an example, we'll search for a book about mermaids written for children or young adults.
Notice in the screenshot below that “mermaids” has been typed in the first box. The "as a phrase” and “keyword anywhere” options have not been changed, so we are search for "mermaids" anywhere in the catalog record.
On the second line, “juvenile fiction” has been typed in the search box. There may be exceptions, but generally "juvenile fiction" is used for fiction books, while "juvenile literature" is used for nonfiction books. This example keeps the default option "as a phrase," while “Subject” has been selected from the drop down menu as circled in the screenshot. In other words, we are also searching for "juvenile fiction" as a phrase in the subject field in the catalog record in this combination search. We could also choose to select a range of years on this screen.
Click the "search" button or hit the "enter" key on your keyboard to see the list of results.
Borrowing e-books is a bit more complicated than checking out print books. These are some of the limitations:
To access an e-book, click on the "click here for electronic book" link found in the library catalog as shown in this screenshot:
