Well that's a start! Thanks man

it's still really annoying that the teen side is ignored

Yearh, I'm totally with Anonymouse. His Dark Materials are absolutely brilliant, just generally, and also specifically from an anti-religious point of view. Trouble is though, if it's because you want your girlfriend to make an "atheism for teens" section of the library it doesn't make a lot of sense to put His Dark Materials there. I mean, it's fiction and it's fantasy, and I suspect you are looking for something non-fiction, that deals specifically with the subject of Atheism, like "The God Delusion" or "End of Faith", but for teens.

And add to that the fact that unless it's a very small library, they probably have His Dark Materials allready. They are fairly succesful books after all.

But just in case: the author's name is Phillip Pullman.

And as a shout-out; to anyone here who hasn't read them yet, get on it, and quick! And that means everyone!

BTW, if you start this be prepared for a lot of flak.  If the teacher doesn't nix it some neurotic parent with a death fixation (read: rapture) will start a whole lot of hysterics since her moral (NOT!!) indignation got aroused (sexually) by a couple of pagans (that's you and your girlfriend) trying to poison our children's minds with all that filthy talk about not believing in our most loving, giving, (arousing) dog. Just ignore them, eventually they'll go away. Yeah, right! But hey, go for it and be a thorn in their collective sides for as long as you can.

Sund v. City of Wichita Falls, Texas, 121 F. Supp. 2d 530 (N.D. Texas, 2000)

City residents who were members of a church sought removal of two books, Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate, because they disapproved of the books' depiction of homosexuality. The City of Wichita Falls City Council voted to restrict access to the books if 300 persons signed a petition asking for the restriction. A separate group of citizens filed suit after the books were removed from the children's section and placed on a locked shelf in the adult area of the library. Following a trial on the merits, the District Court permanently enjoined the city from enforcing the resolution permitting the removal of the two books. It held that the City's resolution constituted impermissible content-based and viewpoint based discrimination; was not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest; provided no standards or review process; and improperly delegated governmental authority over the selection and removal of the library's books to any 300 private citizens who wish to remove a book from the children's area of the Library.

You might want to research this case as it would have an impact on your decision. Take note of the name of the guy who made the biggest fuss over these two books. He's now head preacher at the 1st Baptist Church in Dallas.

Since atheism is not a doctrine, and since free expression of atheistic viewpoints is still not fully possible in US society, you won't find many books actively endorsing it, let alone ones aimed at a teen market. Most of the popular literature in recent years that specifically advocates an atheistic outlook is "reactionary" non-fiction, aimed at debunking the propaganda, misunderstandings, lies and superstitions which abound in religion and are presented non-critically as fact.

A library today would find it hard to stock a specifically "atheist" bookcase, even for adults. But I would be more inclined to tackle another issue first - is the library, even unwittingly, endorsing a weighted concept of religion simply through its categorisation policy? I have seen, for example, bookshops and libraries with categories such as "Christianity" and "Other Religions", the latter being the smaller. This reflects simply the bulk of material available for display, but it also subliminally reinforces a particular vew of the status worth-wise of the relative subject matter.

One bookshop met the challenge in a way that I liked - I think it was in San Francisco but I can't remember its name. There they had divided the material into "Religion - advocacy", "Religion - fundamentalism", "Religion - sociology", "Religion - atheism", "Religion - reference", "Religion - theology", and so on. I had no problem with atheism sitting cheek by jowl with the rest of the stuff as the books concerned did indeed address religious issues, albeit in a debunking manner.

The "advocacy" section contained material advocating religion, naturally enough, but the fact that "Sacrifice: The Making Of The Muslim" shared shelf space with Benny Hinn's "Lord, I Need A Miracle" does at least encourage a browser to pick up and compare - a first step to realising that maybe the "mainstream" message does not deserve respect just because it's prevalent and that better literature advocating alternative viewpoints exists. The same applied in the "theology" section. Even if the customer only scanned the titles they would at least have reinforced the realisation that there are a lot of different religions out there, all of whom think they are right, yet having severe problems even agreeing amongst themselves within any one of them what it all really signifies.

A very telling section under "advocacy", by the way, was a subsection "For Children". This was suspiciously well-stocked but when one saw how everyone from the Ba'hai to the Pentecostals were essentially making the same pitch and appealing in the same way to the same childish view of the world it left one in absolutely no doubt what was going on in that "literary sub genre". Nowhere was there a category "Propaganda", but then it wasn't needed. One look at the children's books was enough to see that the shelves contained little else.

I'm with the poster above who said that teens should not be underestimated - and in fact when it comes to religion even more so. For a lot of people it is in one's teens that one tackles this question seriously for the first time while having the appropriate skills and access to research the subject oneself. How the research material is presented can have as much effect as its contents, especially in establishing a basic perspective over the true scope, nature and relative application of the superstition-based ideologies on offer.

If I had to however stock a library section aimed at teens I would simply remove the more esoteric elements from the available adult literature (a lot of the theology stuff is inaccessible to almost everyone outside of a very narrow group of interested and specifically educated parties) and arrange my categories much as that bookshop did. After that they can make their own minds up.

Education .... Must say, when we kids were young Mom and Dad would often read out loud to each other stuff from their favorite books. They were real book fans. I liked it.

Favorites from Einstein, Freud, Jung, Skinner, Becker, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Nietzsche, Kahill Gibran, Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson, Jacques Cousteau.

Mom would read NT Jesus drunk and yell , "see, the damn church people are idiots" .... No fooling, and sober Dad would nod and laugh .... My Mom was radical anti church. 

 So here I AM, atheist to the core, opps, I meant GOD ! ... as all is God.    Lucky ignorant uneducated me.

Teach the kids, they need you ....   

I'd reccomend the "maybe yes, maybe no" one. Dan Barker is a very good writer. Buy it directly from the ffrf rather than Amazon (unless you get it linked from here.) It's cheaper if you're an ffrf member and it gives them support.

That I'm not sure of. There was a lot I couldn't comprehend in "The Blind Watchmaker" and I have a Bachelors degree.