Good idea, clunky implementation – YALSA’s Teen Book Finder Review

So, I love the YALSA lists online. They are top-notch and a great place to go to find titles for my 9th grade classroom library. Actually, they're the best place I've found. And all the books are in this app, I suppose, but... a lot of buts. A few of the screens are missing "back" buttons, so once you get there you're kind of trapped and have to start over instead of just going back and searching for more "sci fi" titles or whatever. I wish the reviews or synopses were a bit more substantial—there's all this app infrastructure but then not all that much that actually tells you about the actual titles once you find them. And the searching—yikes! Authors names are actually NOT IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER. First, they seem like they're sorted by first name, but then you look closely and realize all the first names are L's, for example, but after that the names jump all around. Bizarre. The first time I tried searching by author, I was looking for other books by the same author of a book I'd just found through the app. When I finally found her name (not in alphabetical order), it said "NO TITLES LISTED." And I had just looked at a book by her in the app! (Lish McBride/"Hold Me Closer, Necromancer" if any folks who work on the app are reading). So as a result, I fear this may not be a reliable way to locate books for kids as I'd hoped. If this worked the way it should, it'd be awesome!
Review by teacherskip on YALSA’s Teen Book Finder.