Don’t accuse Angelina Benedetti of not knowing what’s cool to read. She knows what teens like.

The library cluster manager for the King County Library System knows how to “enthusiastically book talk” with the best of them and she’s proven it at countless conferences and in her duties for the KCLS.

It is that passion for teen materials that won her the 2011 Allie Beth Martin Award, a national honor from the Public Library Association.

She was selected for the award because of her consistent excellence in public librarianship and readers’ advisory advocacy, or helping patrons find just the right books to read. Benedetti will be honored with other award recipients in June as part of the PLA President’s Program at the 2011 American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans.

Benedetti said she feels “overjoyed, but humbled because it’s something like this where you say ‘Wow, you know, really…me?’”

As cluster manager, she manages the operations for three libraries: Renton, Fairwood and Renton Highlands. She has been with the KCLS for all of her 15 years as a librarian.

Benedetti began as a teen-services librarian, the people who work with the kids in schools.

Then for about eight years she worked in the Selection Department, first buying teen materials and then managing the department.

The Selection Department makes all of the buying decisions for all 46 libraries in the KCLS, looking at everything from patron requests to what authors are popular. She managed the team of eight librarians who did the buying.

In 2009 she left to become the library cluster manager.

“It was a great opportunity to come back and work in the community libraries,” Benedetti said. “I really had missed working with patrons and getting to work with frontline staff.”

Originally from the area, she said four generations of her family have lived in the Renton area. Benedetti graduated from Tahoma High School. Her mother, Mary Gotti, worked as a library assistant in the KCLS until she retired in 2000.

Benedetti didn’t always know she wanted to be a librarian. It took some encouragement from her mother.

“When I was in college, she kept on telling me ‘Now you should really think about becoming a librarian’,” Benedetti recalls. “And I didn’t listen to her until I took a story-telling class. And then it was all over and I realized that, that’s exactly what I wanted to do.”

She said that interest came not only from her family, but some great librarians she met along the way at schools, in the community and college mentors.

The person who hired her into the KCLS was Susan Madden, the only other librarian in the system to win the Allie Beth Martin Award.

“Part of the reason that I am receiving the award, I spent a number of years working on American Library Association committees to select the best materials for teens,” Benedetti said.

She served on a committee called “Best Books for Young Adults” for five years and a jury for teen book of the year, called the Michael L. Printz Award for one year.

Now in addition to her duties as cluster manager, she writes an online column for Library Journal called “35 Going On 13.” It’s recommended teen books for adult readers and it comes out monthly.

“If I’m ever trying to pick any kind of book where I just go “what are my favorite authors and what are my favorite…it’s books that are written for teens,” she said. “There’s just amazing things out there.”