Library resources
Reading Well for Teens
Reading Well for Teens suggests recommended reading and digital resources to help you understand your feelings and boost your confidence. Teens and health and wellbeing experts have chosen the books to help you manage your emotions and cope with difficult times.
Reading Well for Teens champions a fantastic range of titles to support your mental health. The book list promotes mental wellbeing and helps to break down common misconceptions and barriers around mental health issues and topics such as body image, neurodiversity, sexuality and gender identity, and difficult experiences including bereavement and bullying, as well as social pressures.
Please search our online library catalogue for the titles you are interested in.
You can also access the eBooks for free from our eBook provider Overdrive: Reading Well for Teens with your library card.
Find out more about borrowing eBooks, eAudiobooks, eMagazines and eComics.
Developed by The Reading Agency, each title in collection has been endorsed by health professionals, so you can be sure you're getting the right advice.
Reading Well for Teens offers a varied mix of fiction and non-fiction titles, with many available in a range of audio and eBook formats, so you can read or listen wherever you happen to be.
Young adult non-fiction collection
The young adult non-fiction collection is made up of over twenty titles.
In young adult non-fiction you'll find social media, coding, meditation, climate change, feminism and more.
There are no overdue charges on young adult non-fiction borrowed on a young adult's ticket. Once reserved these books can be sent to your local library free of charge.
Need help and support?
The bad times don't last. Help is there but, sometimes, it can be hard to ask for it.
Resources around the web
The Mix: Essential support for under 25s
The Mix provides support on all aspects of life and mental health via an online community, a free, confidential helpline and their counselling service.
The Samaritans
If you want someone you care about to open up about something that is troubling them, remember these active listening tips from The Samaritans:
SHUSH
- S - Show you care
Focus on the other person, make eye contact, put away your phone. - H - Have Patience
It may take time and several attempts before a person is ready to open up. - U - Use open questions
Use open questions that need more than a yes/no answer, and follow up with questions like 'Tell me more?' - S - Say it back
Check you've understood, but don't interrupt or offer a solution. - H - Have Courage
Don't be put off by a negative response and, most importantly, don't feel you have to fill a silence.
For more information visit The Samaritans' guidance on how to support someone you're worried about.
Internet safety
Be Internet Smart provides you with tips to keep you smart and safe on the web.
The Breck Foundation looks at ways of exploring the internet safely. This site provides updates on an internet safety campaign that was started in Surrey by Breck's mother. This site also links to ThinkUknow which has a section for those aged 11–13 and for those aged 14+.
