This might be too obvious, but John Green (a really good YA novelist) and his brother Hank have a Youtube channel vlogbrothers that has a HYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOJ teen following. (Though, kinda geeky. But, geeks cooler than I was in high school...)
He also has done some metafictional stuff online, but I don't know links for that.
They talk about books and other very-contenty-stuff (science, politics, the environment) inbetween all the craziness and community-building.
I have about 30 blogs in my "fav book blogs" bookmarks folder, and would be happy to send you links for all of them if you *want* (annotated, even!), but here are 3 I think are very teen-friendly:
1) bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com - this is a YA librarian writing mostly about YA books in a very funny and straightforward voice. And she reads VERY widely, lots of mainstream YA, not just the geek-love stuff. I think the Book Highlights of 2009 - http://bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com/bookshelves_of_doom/2010/01/my-literary-highlights-of-2009.html - links to enough of her reviews to give you a very good idea of her voice. Also she has a lot of links to funny videos, trailers for teen movies, etc.... It may just be my favorite blog-of-someone-I-don't-know on the entire internet.
2) http://www.thingsmeanalot.com/ - this is pretty intellectual but I don't think it comes off as aloof. The books themselves aren't super-intellectual (To Say Nothing of the Dog, The Blue Castle, Mules and Men, Ella Minnow Pea), just the reviewer is superbrilliant. But she really thinks deeply and writes compellingly but accessibly about what she reads. If someone had presented me with this blog at the age of 17 I would have fallen for the WWW even harder than I did. For the lit-geek kids maybe?
3) http://www.citizenreader.com/citizen/ - Citizen Reader mostly reads nonfiction and her reviews are funny and incisive, mostly fairly short with clean sharp sentences. If you have kids looking for NF options, this blog would be GREAT!
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Date: 2010-03-03 04:52 am (UTC)He also has done some metafictional stuff online, but I don't know links for that.
http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers
They talk about books and other very-contenty-stuff (science, politics, the environment) inbetween all the craziness and community-building.
I have about 30 blogs in my "fav book blogs" bookmarks folder, and would be happy to send you links for all of them if you *want* (annotated, even!), but here are 3 I think are very teen-friendly:
1) bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com - this is a YA librarian writing mostly about YA books in a very funny and straightforward voice. And she reads VERY widely, lots of mainstream YA, not just the geek-love stuff. I think the Book Highlights of 2009 - http://bookshelvesofdoom.blogs.com/bookshelves_of_doom/2010/01/my-literary-highlights-of-2009.html - links to enough of her reviews to give you a very good idea of her voice. Also she has a lot of links to funny videos, trailers for teen movies, etc.... It may just be my favorite blog-of-someone-I-don't-know on the entire internet.
2) http://www.thingsmeanalot.com/ - this is pretty intellectual but I don't think it comes off as aloof. The books themselves aren't super-intellectual (To Say Nothing of the Dog, The Blue Castle, Mules and Men, Ella Minnow Pea), just the reviewer is superbrilliant. But she really thinks deeply and writes compellingly but accessibly about what she reads. If someone had presented me with this blog at the age of 17 I would have fallen for the WWW even harder than I did. For the lit-geek kids maybe?
3) http://www.citizenreader.com/citizen/ - Citizen Reader mostly reads nonfiction and her reviews are funny and incisive, mostly fairly short with clean sharp sentences. If you have kids looking for NF options, this blog would be GREAT!