Lincoln’s Hat: Exploring Object-Based Learning

Posted on October 7, 2026 by Joan Lange

Imagine this. You arrange a student field trip to a museum and carefully plan a scavenger hunt so that students find items in the collection and record information. The result might be a dash to locate the items, jot down details from the museum labels, and complete the hunt with a feeling of accomplishment. But have students engaged in deep learning? Does our typical 30-second interaction with a museum object allow for the slow looking needed to make discoveries?

How do we slow down, decelerate learning, so that students are immersed in opportunities for deep thinking? One approach is Object-Based Learning, and Smithsonian has embraced this initiative to awaken students’ curiosity by examining objects and by engaging in activities and questioning techniques that build meaningful connections. The Smithsonian Learning Lab has released an educator toolkit for Object-Based Learning, which incorporates several of Project Zero’s Thinking Routines. Librarians may also recognize the similarity of the analysis questions with Library of Congress Teaching Guides for Primary Sources. (Note that links to resources are listed at the end of the article.)

I decided to select Lincoln’s hat from Smithsonian’s “101 Objects that Made America” and analyze the hat using the Object-Based Learning Tools. As I looked at a photo of Lincoln’s hat, the KWL Worksheet prompted me to develop my own questions and wonderings before reading a background article about Lincoln’s hat.

The Read an Object worksheet encouraged sustained looking and wonderings.

The Writing Activities worksheet formed creative connections with the object using 5 Senses descriptions (some senses, such as hearing and smell were developed through imaginative connections, since I did not have the physical object). Activities also prompted to write a Haiku, a Seven Word Story, a Headline, and a New Title for the object, Lincoln’s Hat.

After these explorations, I used a drawing activity suggested by Dr. Thomas Kador in his book Object-Based Learning. Kador suggests that drawing an object that cannot be touched helps us to connect with the object: slow concentration in the act of drawing promotes emotional and psychological connection (185).

I located two other hats: 1) an infant cap belonging to explorer William Clark’s child, (the child was named after his friend and fellow explorer Meriwether Lewis); and the pink pillbox hat that Jackie Kennedy wore the day of John F. Kennedy’s assasination. Below are my drawings of the three hats.

While drawing the hats, I made several personal connections between the objects. Each of these hats might be seen as a type of memorial. The following impressions could be refined later with scholarly research.

Infant Cap: Clark’s child, named for his friend Meriwether Lewis, carried on the memory of this friend who tragically died several months after the infant’s birth. The cap’s two entwined ribbons that trail at the base of the cap and the cornucopia of blooming flowers, grapes, vines, and leaves seemed to me to suggest Clark and Lewis’s blossoming friendship and hopefulness for this young child’s life.

Lincoln’s Hat: The wide mourning band on the hat memorialized Lincoln’s son Willie (who died in 1862) as well as those who had died during the Civil War. This hat was worn to Ford’s Theater on the date of Lincoln’s assassination, so it remains a memorial to this great president.

Jackie Kennedy’s Pink Pillbox Hat: Before drawing this hat, I researched the hat’s material: bouclé, which is a wool yarn that is woven so that one strand is tightly twisted while the other strand is loose and creates a looped texture. The two entwined strands of yarn that create the woven texture of the hat seem to me to represent the tension of her love and dedication for her husband while also suggesting her grief in the loose, looped strands. The bright pink of the hat, suggesting happiness, is contrasted with the sorrow of her husband’s death.

An additional connection is that Lincoln’s hat was not publicly exhibited until many years after his assasination (to possibly prevent sensationalism), and Jackie Kennedy’s pink bouclé suit was boxed up to remain in a private archive for 100 years. (The hat mysteriously went missing at the hospital, so the photo of Jackie Kennedy arriving at the Dallas airport is the final document of this hat.)

What did I discover in this experiment with Object-Based Learning? This approach to learning would be an engaging way for students to slow down and observe objects. The variety of methods, including noting surprising elements and creating a haiku, seven word story, and headline for the object, will encourage students’ empathy and creative communication. The challenge to compare one object to another historical object and find possible connections promotes insightful thinking that could motivate further research. Scholarly research would help qualify and refine these initial wonderings and impressions. I would also encourage students to draw the object (artistic merit is not important). The act of drawing as part of the journaling and note taking process encourages thoughtful observations of the object.

I hope this exploration of Lincoln’s hat using the Object-Based Learning method might encourage you to try these activities with your students to deepen awareness and help them to build meaningful connections.

Whether you use the activity sheets during a museum visit or during an in-classroom lesson (using printed photos or digital images of objects), the object-based learning tools are designed to enhance student learning and engagement.

Bibliography:

Baldioli, Shannon. “The Case for Training Teachers in Object-Based Learning.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian, 7 June 2022, www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-education/2022/06/07/the-case-for-training-teachers-in-object-based-learning/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2026.

Fiore, Faye. “Jacqueline Kennedy’s Pink Hat Is a Missing Piece of History.” Los Angeles Times, 26 Jan. 2011. Los Angeles Times, www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2011-jan-26-la-na-jackie-kennedy-pink-suit-20110127-story.html. Accessed 25 Aug. 2026.

Infant Cap of Meriwether Lewis Clark. 1809. Curated Collections, Missouri Historical Society Museum, highlights.mhs.yourcultureconnect.com/e/curated-collections. Accessed 24 Aug. 2026.

Kador, Thomas. Object-Based Learning: Exploring Museums and Collections in Education. University College London, UCL, 2025, discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10212322/1/Object-Based-Learning.pdf. Accessed 24 Aug. 2026.

Lincoln’s Hat. 1865. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian, americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/closer-look-president-lincolns-silk-hat. Accessed 24 Aug. 2026.

“Object-Based Learning Toolkit.” Smithsonian Learning Lab, Smithsonian, learninglab.si.edu/help/object-based-learning/toolkit. Accessed 24 Aug. 2026.

“101 Objects That Made America.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian, 31 Oct. 2013, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/101-objects-that-made-america-2254692/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2026.

“Project Zero Thinking Routines.” Project Zero, President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2026, pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines. Accessed 24 Aug. 2026.

“Teacher’s Guides and Analysis Tools.” Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/programs/teachers/getting-started-with-primary-sources/guides/. Accessed 26 Aug. 2026.

Library Shenanigans: Part One

Posted on September 22, 2026 by Rebecca Moore

Juggling myriad duties every day, we are all eminently skilled school library ringmasters. We fill our resumes with information literacy, collection development, programming, technological skills, digital citizenship, advocacy, and more. However, there are probably a few library, uh, “happenings” that won’t ever make those magisterial lists, but for better or worse, stick to our memories more effectively than any lesson in how to install Papercut (again)! Many thanks to all the librarians who took the time to share their library shenanigans and photos with me, and had me giggle-snorting at my desk while 5^th graders gave me confused looks (I could just see them wondering, “Do all librarians act like this?” Yes. Yes we do.).

I’ve organized the episodes into the following categories: objects, wildlife, facilities, and students student-ing. Because the last is the most fruitful category, and because I have such a wealth of material to share, I’m dividing the post into two parts. Today I’ll cover objects, wildlife, and facilities, and next week we’ll bring on the student hijinks!

Objects

We’ve all found items in the library that left us bemused for some reason. There’s the mini crockpot Emily Auerswald (Greenwich Country Day, CT) found, or the dragonfly (see photo above) and whole roast chicken that Christina Pommer’s (St. Stephen’s, FL) students left in the back office to collect later, or the tupperware of lasagna Tara Peace (La Jolla Country Day, CA) found hidden in the shelves (fortunately not yet moldy!). Whitney Etchison (Severn School, MD) “freaked out a little” when she arrived at the library one morning, “turned on the lights, and found two CPR dummies behind the front desk”—which she didn’t at first realize were dummies, hence the minor freak out! “Still the weirdest thing I’ve found left behind the desk,” she says.

Jo Melinson (Sacramento Country Day) had some fun with unexpected items in her library. “For my 60th birthday last spring,” she says, “our Lower School Librarian and her 2nd grade daughter hid 60 tiny glass whales throughout the library for me to find. I found the most creative one this fall hidden in the hand soap container (we had to use up the soap for it to become visible!)”

Overlake’s lost and found boxes always overflow with endless heaps of clothes, though I don’t think we have it as bad as Alyssa Mandel at The Out-of-Door Academy (FL) where it “is evidently a cultural practice”! She reports finding “a LOT of clothes in here. Like whole outfits—pants, shirts, hoodies, sneakers.” Sometimes accessories join the mix as well: “Necklaces and bracelets, hair clips, even grooming tools like straightening irons and hair brushes.” We’re all familiar with the “forest of water bottles” and other forgotten items that merrily populate our campuses, but Alyssa “can’t fathom how someone changes into an outfit they presumably brought in a bag or backpack and then just ditches the clothes they came in. Also, we have bathrooms and lockers, but this is the library—where is all this changing taking place?!” As someone who frequently walks into the library bathroom at 3:00PM and finds hordes of girls changing into athletic gear, I sympathize!

If you are a lower school librarian, you have likely run into some shenanigans involving lost teeth. Says Kristen Oeth (Columbus Academy, OH), “I had two first graders in two different classes lose a tooth on the same day. The resulting declarations (mid-story, of course) got the class quite off track. Although lightning is not supposed to strike twice, evidently chaos can!”

However, Julie Rick sees that story, and raises the stakes! Says she: “At a former school where I was a librarian, I once found a child’s tooth on the library carpet—right in the spot where students regularly sat for story time. Naturally, I assumed it had fallen out of someone’s pocket, so I checked with all the teachers to see if anyone had recently lost a tooth. No one claimed it. Case closed? Absolutely not. Over the course of that school year, I found FOUR MORE TEETH on the library floor. Five mystery teeth. Zero witnesses. Zero suspects. Zero explanations. I can only assume there was a highly organized Tooth Fairy operation happening in my library, and I was the last person to know.” (Can I just say, this makes me very glad not to work in a lower school!)

For object-related shenanigans in the library, though, I think no one can beat Brian Collier’s (Marist, GA) “Finding Nemo” adventure! Says he: “Student Council uses an office in the library to prep their promo materials for games and pep rallies. We’re mainly talking large banners but sometimes there’s the odd palm tree or fairytale castle. One year there were remote-controlled fish blimps that the students inflated with helium in the office. They were floating around peacefully, occasionally bumping against the 8-foot ceiling but generally behaving themselves…until one of the boys decided to fly a clownfish dubbed Nemo out into the library. (Note: our library has a three-story atrium topped with a barrel vault ceiling.)

“Nemo, released from the office confines, slowly swam skyward amidst shouts of “grab him!” Too late. He was out of arm’s reach and, despite every attempt to “fly” him back down, he decided to nestle into the top of the barrel vault. Nemo remained there until a groundskeeper and a few coaches came in the next morning carrying a half mile long extendable pole with a bouquet of duct tape (sticky side out) tied to the tip. They took turns leaning off the bridge trying to catch Nemo. It honestly looked like they were deep-sea fishing—leaning over the railing with this giant pole, eventually with a giant clownfish stuck on the end.” Mic drop!

Wildlife

As the Overlake library has no AC, we always prop the doors open when it’s warm or hot outside. That invites frequent visitations by birds, so many that we started putting up bird tape and bought a bird net! The worst are the hummingbirds that fly up 20 feet to our clerestory windows, out of net reach. We also find the occasional newt or salamander navigating the carpet, and we assist them back to the wild.

Fortunately for Overlake, the squirrels that sometimes steal candy from the Upper School principal’s office have only faked us out by darting in and out, but Christina Pommer (St. Stephen’s, FL) was not so lucky. She once returned from winter break “to find three baby squirrels, one at a time, one morning in the library and enlisted several intrepid faculty members to collect and distribute outside!” Margaret Wadley (McCallie, TN) also reported some high-energy squirrel hijinks! She says: “Years ago, a squirrel got into the Library (I think through the air vents) and took hours to remove because it kept hiding behind books on the shelf. I had to get all students to leave and had multiple teachers and school staff helping. My principal came in with a wire trash can over his head and a yardstick to push books back and try to get the squirrel out where we could catch it! Finally, I think the squirrel got tired and a teacher was able to catch it in the wire trash can with a book over the top, and we released the poor thing outside. The whole day was like that scene from Christmas Vacation, screaming included!”

Brian Collier (Marist, GA), whose library is surrounded by trees with a creek nearby, also had a squirrel visitation. The critter “decided to move into our drop ceiling. We tried trapping it, but it was too smart, so Zach, the youngest member of our maintenance team, decided to evict the squirrel himself. He isolated the little guy in an office and there was a crowd of students and faculty watching through the window like it was a World Wrestling event. Zach sort of stood in the middle while the squirrel parkoured all over the place. Zach eventually decided to take off his sweatshirt to use like a net. (There was a certain amount of swoony expectation when he started lifting his shirt, but he had a t-shirt underneath, so everything remained G-rated.) The battle ended pretty quickly after that, and the squirrel was released back into the wild.”

In terms of other natural world visitors, Suzanne Fox (Roland Park) reports that one winter, their library had mice! “A mouse walked across a study room desk. There may have been some screaming.” Hearing that, Laura Hooper (St. George’s, RI) might be glad that one day, “a neighborhood outdoor cat was hanging out by the [library] entrance. A student noticed from a distance and generously ran up the library steps to let the cat into the library (no, it was not Dewey)!” Rena Popelka (Columbus Academy, GA) might also want some feline support for the bat in her library! “It was just down the hall from me, hanging on the back of a carrell. Maintenance came and removed it outside where it promptly flew off.”

Allison Peters (Colorado Academy, CO) has had multiple univited animal guests. She reports: “Several years ago while doing a biography lesson in our cozy corner a second grader raised her hand. I called on her and she said ‘Ms. Allison, there’s a snake right there,’ and pointed to a garter snake curled up under the baseboard heater. The students were a lot calmer than me! They were practical and ran to get our science teacher while I ran away in a panic. I don’t like snakes. A few years after that I was sitting in a circle with a first grade class in the same cozy corner when a student raised her hand and said ‘Ms. Allison, there is an animal sitting next to me.’ And it was true! A vole had literally joined our circle. Of course, we all scooted away and two clever and calm first graders went to get the same science teacher. The snake and the vole were kept for the day in the science classroom and then released back to the wild after school. We think they entered through the side door when Operations was delivering furniture and doing work in the library.”

Moving away from mammals and birds, Martha Kennedy’s (Concord Academy, MA) library had an involuntary insect infestation! She says: “Early in my career, a student came to me and said ‘There are insects in the other room.’ I immediately thought ants, but when I pulled out a chair and looked under the carrel desktop, I saw dozens of large crickets and a cardboard package that looked like an 18 count egg carton! I quickly went to my neighbors in the science wing for a large vessel and a willing volunteer to help me collect them. The student was not keen on the day’s dissection, but was fine with coralling the critters into a glass container. We captured as many as we could and took them outside where they scattered and possibly fed the geese who frequented the soccer pitch. Decades have passed and no one ever fessed up nor divulged a single peep about how and why these crickets were in the library. The crickets we didn’t capture, however, lived on for months having made their way down two floors to a computer lab. They drove our tech guy nuts.”

Megan Glidden (Albuquerque Academy, NM), however, takes the cake with her arachnid volunteer! “Just last week, some students came into my office to let me know they had found a “big bug” in the back of the library. I went back to investigate and found they had used one of our bowl-shaped desk light shades to contain the bug. It was, in fact, an angry 4-inch vinegaroon. It was waving its tail and spraying its vinegar smell. We slid some poster board and cardboard underneath and transported it outside. Just another day in the life of a librarian.” Even looking a picture of that critter makes me glad not to live in New Mexico!

Public Domain Image

Facilities

Sometimes, librarians are the cause of the chaos! Says Jo Melinson (Sacramento Country Day, CA), “Every year the librarians take a day at the beginning of March to turn the library into a reading (only) room. We build a reading fort for classes to reserve and move all the tables and chairs aside to make room for bean bag chairs, pillows, and beach chairs. Then we serve tea and hot chocolate to all our cozy readers.”

Once again, though, Brian Collier (Marist, GA) takes the library shenanigans cake, when his library turned into “The Library Rainforest! We found a wet patch on the carpet one morning. The library roof is prone to leaking, but it hadn’t been raining for a while, so I got out my spyglass (did I mention that our library has a three-story atrium topped with a barrel vault ceiling) to see if I could spot where the water was coming from. Oh, my. The fire sprinkler was leaking. It was just sort of dripping a little, but I had nightmare visions of the whole system suddenly opening up and flooding the place.

“Did you know: there are only a handful of sprinkler repair companies in the state of Georgia! It took them a while to get to us and when they arrived they didn’t have a ladder long enough to reach the sprinkler. So, we had to wait while they found a lift tall enough to reach but narrow enough to fit through the door. Did you know: most lift rental outfits have tall lifts and narrow lifts but not tall AND narrow lifts?

“While they were hunting this unicorn lift the leak got to the point that it was actually spraying out in a fine mist. When the morning sun came in through the upper windows you could see rainbows in the air. Students said it was like an indoor rainforest. Despite the yellow ‘Do not cross’ tape we put out, students kept trying to walk through it…until they realized it smelled like sewage. Eventually the repair guys came back with a majestically tall lift…that still didn’t reach! Fortunately one of them must secretly be Spider-Man because he clambered out onto the safety rail and stretched up to where he could reach the spray head and swap it for a new one. I kind of miss the rainbows, but not the smell.”

I swear, sometimes it seems as if we need hazard pay every time we set foot in our libraries! And we haven’t even gotten to the students! Stay tuned next week for yet more monkeyshines…

Series: Infrastructure as Instruction: Reclassifying from Dewey to Library of Congress by Stephanie Gamble

Posted on August 19, 2026 by Patricia DeWinter

Part 2- Be Prepared
If I’ve convinced you in my last post to consider transitioning your prep school collection from Dewey to the Library of Congress Classification (LCC), you are likely asking the next obvious question: How on earth do I actually execute this without losing my mind or shutting down the library? This post pulls back the curtain on the gritty digital, material, and personal preparations required to move thousands of books from a decimal system to an academic one. For context, this year we tackled 15,000 volumes in our general non-fiction collection. We also converted our reference collection, which began with around 650 volumes and an Alum section of around 300 volumes. We have a unique collection of around 2,000 volumes in a China Studies Collection that we set aside for next academic year. As I refer to the collection in this post, I am specifically referring to the 16,000 items in this year’s project.
Prepping the Machines
The first major hurdle is making sure your library catalog/software can support a living hybrid collection. For us, this meant ensuring users could find resources even if our collection was split between two entirely different call number systems during the transition.
Admittedly, this took several years of circling back and working closely with technical support before we cracked the code. While I am happy to share detailed Accessit procedures with anyone who reaches out, here is our general data workflow:
We ran a global update across our records to pull the Library of Congress call numbers from the MARC 050 field into an additional field. This automatically populated 77% of our general non-fiction collection with LCC data, giving us a baseline to work from (though we still had to find or build custom call numbers for around 4,000 resources).
In Accessit, custom additional fields cannot be easily exported into Excel. To get around this, we ran a retroactive tidy-up to copy the new LCC data from that additional field directly into the Abstract field.
This allowed us to run a report that could export everything into a highly flexible Excel master sheet containing:
Barcode
Title & Author
Publication Date
Current Dewey Call Number
New LCC Call Number (Abstract field)
Working in Excel and Sheets allowed us to see exactly which books needed manual cataloging and let us predict how much physical shelf space each LCC letter class (A–Z) would ultimately require. It also gave us flexibility to sort and filter sections and add additional columns for weeding, status updates, and conditional formatting to keep things organized.
Beyond the catalog, we also upgraded our printing process. Historically, we processed our small batches of new arrivals by typing spine labels manually. For a whole-library overhaul, this was unrealistic. Fortunately,our Dymo printer software allows direct data-piping from CSV files, automating the import process entirely.
Prepping the People
Before touching a single book, we needed to make sure we were versed in the nuances of LCC cataloging. This was imperative not just for the cataloging involved in reclassifying, but also as we transition to teaching students this new system. As our students came back to school in September, both my library assistant and I started class, too. We took a deep-dive Library of Congress Classification class through the online professional development portal Library Juice Academy. This gave us a solid understanding of the history and structure of LCC and the technical confidence to build correct Cutters and manage tricky classification decisions.
Your daily library tasks do not pause just because you are reclassifying. We were incredibly fortunate to get some bonus manpower this year. Even with that extra manual labor power, this project has consumed enormous amounts of time this academic year, and will bleed into the next. Because of our impending building move, we faced a firm timeline. Without that constraint, I might have taken a year to do our weeding (it would waste time and material resources to reclassify and re-label books that no longer belong on our shelves) and backend reclassifying before moving into the physical process of affixing new spine labels and reordering the shelves. Without that flexibility, we had a rolling process, Dewey class by Dewey class. (Check back soon for a Workflow and Process post that goes into greater detail!)
If you aren’t comfortable or confident with spreadsheets, that would be another area to brush up on. I lived in Excel and Sheets this year, and while I’ll share some pro-tips in the next post, comfort working within them is key in this scale of project. We used Excel for the largest sets of data, and some particular needs, but for data I needed to have more than one staff member using Sheets worked best.
Depending on your library’s budget, it may help to ask for a supply line bump for this kind of project. While we came in on budget, our operational supplies took up a much larger portion of our annual budget this year than usual.
Finally, do not underestimate the need for a fleet of book carts. They serve not just as transportation, but as roving, portable workstations. (See my rolling spine-relabeling station below!)
Prepping the Space
Using the proportions calculated from our initial Excel data pull, we mapped out how much shelf space each LCC class would need.
Initially, we planned to move books to their final alphabetical LCC locations immediately as we relabeled them, but we quickly realized this would cause massive, chaotic disruptions to the shelves mid-year.

Prepping the Materials
On the physical side, you need to prepare for the realities of your specific collection. We stocked up on standard supplies—spine labels, label covers, and barcode protectors—but we also discovered hidden project creep.
For example, our library had a legacy from the early 1990s: a unique black tape holding on book jacket covers. That tape is now deteriorating and flaking off. Every single book with this tape had to be stripped, cleaned, and fitted with a new cover before receiving its LCC label. We went through a small army of precision knives and fresh blades to clear away decades of old spine tape.
Instead, we chose a less disruptive path: we relabeled the books but put them right back where they were sitting in Dewey order. Yes, this meant the library was temporarily out of alphabetical order, but it kept our shelf space functional and stable. Because we have the unique advantage of moving the entire collection to a brand-new Upper School library building this summer, we can sort them into true LCC order during the move. Even if we weren’t moving buildings, I would still recommend this “batch-and-hold” method over constant, daily shelf-shifting.
We strategized our rollout to protect our students’ heavy research seasons:
The Trial Run (000s): We started relabeling with Class A. It was our smallest projected section and mapped perfectly from our existing Dewey 000s, meaning zero physical shifting was required to test our workflow. This was also a chance to work out the little kinks in the manual work of relabeling.
Expansion (100s and 200s): Next, we tackled the B Class, which cleanly absorbed our Dewey 100s and 200s onto the same physical footprint.
Planning around Research Projects (900s): Our history students write major research papers in the winter and spring. To avoid disrupting them, we jumped straight to the 900s before their research cycle started. We tackled Classes E and F (History of the Americas) right after the US History paper deadlines since those books wouldn’t be in demand anymore, followed by Class D (World History), in an attempt to have that section completed before the late spring regional history papers.
Filling Gaps (300): Next we jumped to the 300s, as many of the items pulled out of the 900s were H’s–what many of the 300s would reclass to–filling our temp shelving. Relatedly, there were many large gaps in the E’s–particularly E180s–that would get filled with books from the 300s. This helped us clear our flexible shelving for the next push.
The Wiggle Room: To make this work, we cleared out a specific section of shelving to act as a “temporary overflow working space.” When books didn’t neatly fit the section we were currently processing, they went to the overflow shelves to give us the spatial wiggle room we needed to keep moving.
Next Up…
In a future post, once the dust (so much dust!) has settled a bit, I’ll share the nitty gritty of our process and workflow.
Until then, order those spine labels, audit your data fields, and embrace the shuffle!

Summer Reading Adventure 2026

Posted on August 15, 2026 by Rebecca Moore

With the prospect of returning to school looming close, I’m clinging with my fingernails to the remnants of summer, and all the wonderful reading experiences I’ve had thanks to filling out my AISL Summer Reading Adventure board. Since my vacationing brain is still away with the fairies (or ferries, which is more appropriate for Washington State and its waterways), my only idea for a blog post for August was to list the books I read for each category, and why I chose it. So if this is TL;DR, please feel free to grab a book instead! (Note: I tried to add links to my GoodReads reviews, but technology failed me, alas! If you’d like to see a specific review of mine, just let me know.)

Read a Middle School Mystery

Islands of Elsewhere by Heather Fawcett. I picked this one by the expedient of searching my public library catalog for juvenile mystery audiobooks, and this one sounded fun. I’ve always been a fan of islands, and with a magical element, I’m there!

Listen to an Audiobook

The Trouble With Heroes by Kate Messner. I listen to audiobooks all the time, so for this, I just picked one of my monthly Libro.FM educator audiobooks. It’s such a wonderful opportunity to hear audiobooks I might not otherwise encounter, though this book was already on my want-to-read list, so this was serendipitous. Such a wonderful book, too.

Read a Book Everyone Is Talking About

A Prince Among Pirates by Katie Abdou. As I was wondering what to read for this category, I saw in an SLJ email that this book was the one most on hold in libraries that week. While I don’t know how they determined that, it was another moment of serendipity as I was already listening to this one, being another Libro.FM audiobook. And how can you lose with gay pirates?

Read a Book That’s Been Languishing on Your TBR Pile

Jane and the Final Mystery by Stephanie Barron. My mother lent this to me about two years ago and it’s been sitting in my book pile since then, so I figured this was a good opportunity to get it read. I think I’d been putting it off since I knew Jane Austen died relatively young, and this fictional mystery covered the time when she was failing, so it wasn’t exactly a cheerful read.

Read a YA Book

Time After Time by Mikki Daughtry. To find this one, I looked at the newer, available YA audiobooks from my public library. I’ve always enjoyed books that link different time periods, family history coming around again, etc., and this was a romance so it seemed like a good fit. I liked it, but didn’t love it.

Read a Picture Book

Life After Whale: the Amazing Ecosystem of a Whale Fall by Lynn Brunelle. I’d heard about this book somewhere and it sounded interesting, so when I saw it on a shelf, I picked it up. It certainly was interesting, if a bit gruesome in parts! I learned a lot, though.

Ask Another Librarian or Bookseller for a Recommendation

The Secret Astronomers by Jessica Walker. My colleague Andrea recommended this one; she has an eye for graphic design, and this is a singular book. It’s written as full color post-it notes and drawings made inside an old astronomy book, in which two students who don’t know each other are writing to each other. I love books in unconventional formats, as well as epistolary fiction, so this was right up my alley.

Enjoy a Beach Read!

You Jump First by Myah Ariel. This is another Libro.FM audiobook that I decided to read because it fit this category so well, being about a summer romance on a lake in the woods. And it’s friends-to-lovers, a trope I much prefer to enemies-to-lovers!

Read a Comic or Manga

Opting Out by Maia Kobabe. Originally for this category I was going to use all the myriad Webtoons I keep up with (I read daily), but then I saw a review of this and it sounded great, so I checked it out from Hoopla. Highly recommend!

Read a Book from a Genre You Don’t Usually Read

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden. I usually avoid horror like the plague, which my students know because I don’t front for them—I tell them straight up I’m a huge horror wimp! So I thought horror was the obvious choice for this category, and this is a popular series. Didn’t quite give me nightmares, but I’m not reading more!

Read a Book That’s Been on Your Library’s Hold List All Year

Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery: A Graphic Novel by Cynthia Cheng. I called up a friend who works in my public library system, and asked what children’s book had been most checked out over the past year. This was the one! I enjoyed it, as I’ve enjoyed other Baby Sitters Club graphic novels, but do wish they’d update the tech depicted.

Read a Book You have Hand-Sold to a Patron but Didn’t Read

Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba. For this category, I looked at my booktalk lists for books I had talked about but not read. This one was one I’d always wanted to read, being a diverse mystery set in a different country, and I found it fascinating. Not quite a mystery, more a ghost story, but really good. Now I can booktalk it with more enthusiasm!

Read a Classic You Were Supposed to Read but Never Did

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. I’d never actually read a Jules Verne book, so this seemed like a good opportunity. I’m interested in geology, so naturally this is the book I chose, though it did rather jump the shark in the end!

Read a Book Recommended by Someone Whose Taste Is Nothing Like Yours

This Isn’t Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew by Daniel Wallace. I asked my niece Charlotte for a recommendation, since I know she likes psychological reads and true crime, neither of which appeal to me! She recommended this. I frankly didn’t care for it—I thought it overpromised and underdelivered, and the author seemed like a jerk as a kid, but I am not the right audience!

Read a Cozy Book

Tales from the Family Tree by Rebecca Moore. One of my favorite comfort-read series is a cozy story set in the early 1900s in New England, with a Swedish-heritage family and friends. Almost nothing bad ever happens! I loved it so much I wrote a fanfiction sequel to the series, and thought it was time I read it again (and cringe at all the things I should have changed!).

Read a Fantasy Book

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna. I’ve been wanting to explore more cozy fantasy, since I loved Sarah Durst’s The Spellshop, and this was recommended by a friend. I enjoyed it, but it felt like an ersatz House in the Cerulean Sea but without Klune’s level of crack.

Read a Book in a Genre You Love

The Cookie Crumbles by Tracy Badua. I love mysteries and I love baking, so this seemed like the perfect choice! While I did enjoy it, as someone who works at an independent school, I did find myself side-eyeing a few things about the school where the baking competition took place…

Read a Stay Up Past Midnight Book

Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar (Short stories, different authors). My old eyes won’t let me stay up reading after midnight, but this is part of a series I read when I was younger—stories set in the world of Valdemar by Mercedes Lackey. They’re essentially published fanfiction for Lackey’s series, and I devoured them like popcorn!

Ask a Student for a Recommendation

Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie. I got this recommendation from a senior whose senior project was to live like a 13^th century peasant for three weeks; this is something he read to understand more about the era. In the early to mid 1300s, the Inquisition was active in the mountainous areas of southern France, where Catharism persisted long after it had been stamped out elsewhere. In interviewing the people of the village of Montaillou, the Inquisition not only provided information about their religious beliefs, but a detailed account of their everyday lives. I actually haven’t finished this yet, since it is dense, but I am on track to finish by the due date!

Read Whatever You Want!

Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories (short story collection, multiple authors). I’ve been wanting to read this one, since I loved Ancestor Approved, another short story collection about Native Americans. While I still liked that one better, I did enjoy this one a lot.

8th Grade Propaganda Project: Student Interview

Posted on June 16, 2026 by Rebecca Moore

Last month, I interviewed Sara Baquero-Garcia, our 8^th grade Social Studies teacher, about her propaganda project. For this month, I decided to interview one of Sara’s 8th grade students about the Animal Farm project and propaganda to see whether the learning actually landed with them—to understand what they really took away from the project. Many thanks to Phoebe for taking the time to answer my questions; here are her thoughtful answers.

Question: Can you describe the Animal Farm propaganda project?

Response: Phoebe described it as “an amazing way to understand how to effectively incorporate creativity and an interesting book with lots of complex themes—such as propaganda, manipulation, peer pressure, totalitarianism, and the corruption of socialist ideals—into a poster. It required examining one theme, and then finding a story and a person to help explain that idea. What was so cool was that everyone chose something different and made personal choices that really helped differentiate their poster from others.”

Question: What kind of research did you need to do for the project? What types of sources did you use, and where did you find them?

Response: “I researched different types of propaganda techniques and ensured I looked into both historical and modern examples. If I only looked at the first websites to pop up, I would have been making [biased] decisions. I used class materials such as books, articles from educational websites such as Britannica, and Gale, and examples of posters from previous years. I also thought that some advertisements, and political campaigns online, provided me with some information to help me with this project. I also compared multiple sources to make sure the information was accurate and to understand how propaganda can be used in different situations.”

Question: What do you understand now about propaganda that you didn’t before?

Response: “I understand now that propaganda is not always obvious, [and it doesn’t always appear] as a negative tone at first glance. Before this project, I mostly thought propaganda was just old war posters or political messages, but now I see that it can appear in my social media, advertisements on websites, news, and even entertainment. I also learned how propaganda often uses emotions, repetition, and persuasive techniques to influence people’s opinions or actions.”

Question: How do you think you can apply your new understanding of propaganda to our current world?

Response: “I think I can apply my understanding of propaganda by being more critical of the media and information I see every day. Instead of immediately believing something online, I can look at the source, consider the purpose behind the message, and recognize persuasive techniques being used. This can help me make better decisions and avoid being easily influenced by misleading information. Especially in a world of AI, many reels are inaccurate and make up all sorts of stuff so it is important to understand how to notice inaccurate vs. real.”

Question: Anything else you’d like to say about the project/propaganda/etc.?

Response: “Overall, I thought the project was interesting because it showed how powerful communication and persuasion can be. It also made me realize how important media literacy is today, especially because people constantly see information on a daily basis through social media and the internet. The project helped me pay more attention to how messages are designed to influence audiences.”

Closing Reflection

What I appreciate most, reading both Sara’s vision for propaganda literacy and Phoebe’s reflections on her project, is seeing how well the learning took root. Sara set out to help students become critical thinkers who understand not just propaganda as a historical curiosity, but as a living force shaping their choices, their beliefs, and their daily lives. Phoebe’s answers show that she’s internalized this—not as abstract knowledge, but as practical wisdom she’s already applying to the information she encounters. For school librarians, this is exactly why partnerships with teachers like Sara matter so much. Together, we equip students not just to consume information, but to interrogate it, to understand the forces shaping it, and ultimately, to think for themselves.

Another 8th grade propaganda poster, from D.

Note: I used Flint for light copy-editing, drafting the transition between the two parts, and the conclusion in part two. Everything else is human-written, and it’s all human-edited!

Bringing the Outside In: A Collaborative Vision by Bethany Winter

Posted on May 26, 2026 by Patricia DeWinter

The overarching vision for utilizing the AISL grant funds was to seamlessly “bring the outside in,” bridging the gap between natural science and our indoor learning spaces. The library, with its row of back windows offering a beautiful view of the school’s surrounding grounds, provided the perfect canvas for this initiative. Recognizing this potential, a science teacher approached the library team with an innovative idea for a cross-curricular collaboration. Together, we transformed the back of the library into a dedicated bird-watching sanctuary. Using the grant money, we purchased high-quality bird feeders and secure, weather-resistant storage containers for the feed, establishing a thriving, active ecosystem just outside our windows that students can observe and study daily.
Taking Flight: The Minnesota Raptors Project
Building on the success of the window sanctuary, we wanted to create a dramatic, immersive visual experience within the library’s main architectural feature: a large, open-air atrium space. We envisioned life-size replicas of indigenous Minnesota raptors soaring overhead.
To bring this ambitious idea to life, we utilized a multi-step design and fabrication process:

Projection and Tracing: Using digital projectors, we displayed accurate, life-size silhouettes of the raptors onto the wall. These dimensions were meticulously traced onto large, flattened cardboard boxes to create sturdy, recycled canvases for the birds.
Student-Led Artistry: The project truly became a community effort as students took the lead on the fabrication process. Using realistic photographic references, students painted the intricate feather patterns and distinct features of each raptor.
Resource Management: Grant funds were strategically allocated to purchase high-quality acrylic paints, specialized brushes, and durable storage units to keep the supplies organized throughout the duration of the project.
Reflecting on the Process: Because of the scale and attention to detail required, the tracing and painting phases represented a significant, long-term time commitment. However, the extended timeline allowed dozens of students to leave their mark on the project, fostering a deep sense of ownership and pride in our shared library space.

A True Community Effort: Installation and Exhibition

Bringing this vision to full fruition required teamwork that extended beyond the classroom. Over Spring Break, our incredible custodial team supported the project by installing a system of secure hanging wires high above the large, open space in the library. This critical behind-the-scenes work ensured the raptors could safely “fly” at their intended scale.
Before taking their permanent place in the rafters, the completed birds made their public debut. They were proudly featured in a school-wide art show centered around nature and environmental awareness. This exhibition allowed the students’ hard work to serve a dual purpose: it celebrated their artistic talents while sparking meaningful conversations among parents, staff, and peers about local wildlife conservation and our shared responsibility to protect these magnificent birds of prey.

Project Impact Summary

Initiative / Collaboration	Materials & Support	Educational & Community Focus
Bird-Watching Sanctuary	Feeders, specialized feed, and rodent-proof storage.	Local ecology, passive observation, and data collection.
Life-Size Raptor Fabrication	Paint, crafting supplies, and project storage.	Biology, anatomy, collaborative art, and environmental advocacy.
Custodial & Installation Support	Wire suspension system hung over Spring Break.	Cross-departmental teamwork, safety, and immersive spatial design.

The final installation now stands as a permanent, student-created monument to Minnesota’s native wildlife, successfully merging science, art, school-wide collaboration, and environmental advocacy.

8th Grade Propaganda Curriculum

Posted on May 15, 2026 by Rebecca Moore

Our 8th grade social studies teacher, Sara Baquero-Garcia, is a font of knowledge when it comes to propaganda. Having been impressed by her students’ Animal Farm projects, and by helping her find resources for another part of the project, I decided to interview her about her overall propaganda coverage with the 8th grade. Her wide-ranging explanations covered many different types of propaganda, how they interlink with each other and with the modern world, some aspects of the projects, and more.

For length, I have divided the post into two, with the first covering project background and types of propaganda. Part two, coming in June, will cover her Animal Farm project, and offer a student’s insights into the project and what she learned.

Now, on to part one!

Project Purpose

Sara’s propaganda project evolved from wanting students to “explore the media around them,” the images and messages they see and hear every day. What do these images and messages mean? What do they omit? “Those things that are not said are often the most important ones,” says Sara. “And if they are said, how are they being said?” Digging deeper, she wants students to consider “how we come to believe what we believe, and how we come to assume the things we assume.” The goal is for students to “become critical thinkers, so that they can make their own conclusions.”

Project Background

Sara has been teaching propaganda for decades, starting at The American School in Japan, in the 1990s. “We were revamping our curriculum at the time, and I had the freedom to do this media literacy project,” she says. In the 1990s, “in Tokyo you could walk anywhere and it was like you were bombarded by Times Square type of visuals,” which at once brought propaganda to mind and inspired the unit. Sara used to teach it as a two-month unit, which she felt was “totally worth it,” but the kids got propaganda-ed out. That prompted her, over time, to “separate the parts of the project” and run different parts “when they are beneficial for whatever we’re talking about.” It’s a “mammoth” project, so a one-block lesson was never going to suffice!

One non-negotiable part of any project Sara does is student choice. “The kid has absolute choice within the resources that we either give them, or that they find in something that they are connected to,” she says. “That is crucial.” While assigning a broad topic, like a big news event, for an initial activity is fine, “it should never be the piece that they have to do” for the main part of the project. Says Sara, “I think it’s really important to give them agency. And as they’re looking for their favorite piece, they’re looking at so much more, and so that’s where the research can be super rewarding for them. …They’re starting to think through the lens of the researcher.” They are doing the analyzing Sara looks for, and focusing on something of interest helps them “really zero in” on not just that topic, but on propaganda in general.

Types of Propaganda

Ideally Sara addresses four types of propaganda: political, commercial, news, and entertainment. While each might have different purposes, they use similar strategies students can recognize in any situation. “I usually use twelve techniques [of propaganda], not because they’re the only techniques, but because they’re ubiquitous,” Sara says. She asks her students to “really reflect” on the common elements inside these techniques. Here is Sara’s general description of the project itself, and, here is the list of the techniques Sara uses with the students.

Political Propaganda

Political propaganda is often the natural starting point. Because of the fall election cycle, Sara tends to start the year with politics. “That’s a great time to explore the topic of political propaganda and the effect that it has on the electorate,” she says. “You’re looking at the campaign process. You’re looking at how people vote. You’re looking at the system of gerrymandering. …There’s so many things to look at when you think of campaigns,” including “how propaganda connects to our understanding of politics.”

For researching this aspect of the project, Sara relies on some resources we post on her class LibGuide, like The Living Room Candidate—”The absolute best source for presidential campaigns.” She also makes use of local advertisements and mail-delivered pamphlets. One year, Sara had her students study major initiatives on the ballot, one initiative per group. They examined pros and cons, viewpoints from either side, etc. By the end, she felt that in addition to having a “blast” doing the project, “these kids knew more about those initiatives than any adult that you would ask out in the street.” Sara liked watching how they came “to the understanding that you don’t need this flashy situation of presidential campaign in order to be engaged within the system of what’s happening in that election.”

Another way she approaches political propaganda is the historical context, which she finds vital because it shows “the power of political propaganda.” She says, “Of course, you can’t do a historical propaganda examination without looking at the Nazi propaganda of World War II, and the campaign[s] against Jews,” Communists, Romani, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, etc. “The intensity of what that meant with the eventual Holocaust.”

For students, Sara wants them to explore questions like, “How could I, a normal every day German citizen, come to believe that it’s OK for [my] Jewish neighbor to just disappear? How does one get to that? How do people get to a place of complacency with the status quo when something like that is happening around you?” She turns facile answers, like “they were evil” or “they were ignorant” or “they didn’t know,” back on the students. “How are we complacent, or how are we ignorant, or how are we unaware, or how are we being brainwashed?”

To help answer these questions, Sara recalls to students the techniques of propaganda, which include fear and scapegoating. “Did the Nazis use fear? Absolutely—they had a whole movie of connecting Jewish citizens with rats,” she reminds students. “And that film made people so afraid of even being touched by a Jewish person, so then it became OK to separate Jewish kids in Jewish schools, and to not have Jewish colleagues at your job, because they were equated by the propaganda as vermin.” “Being told again and again to believe in something can have a powerful effect on the receiver of the information, and if people in power are the ones giving the information, it can be a very powerful tool in convincing people to follow an ideology without thinking critically. That is always a dangerous result and that is a major reason for students to learn how to question what is being told to students through propaganda.”

Commercial Propaganda

Sara tends to do commercial propaganda at a time that coincides with Christmas, “because we have so commercialized that holiday. I want kids to examine what they have, what they want, what they’re asking for, how their behavior as consumers has been shaped by propaganda, by commercials, by trends, by social media.” She calls those messages out for using “the same propaganda techniques” they’ve studied before, “to get us to thinking some way.” Especially Sara pinpoints influencers telling students “what they should look like and what they should buy and what’s cool.” She wants to get the students thinking about the cycle of trends like Stanley Cups, which were cool but now are not. “Every trend requires an expenditure, and every expenditure is benefiting someone,” Sara says, “benefiting some company or some business, and there’s things attached to that.”

If her time is limited for covering commercial propaganda, Sara might have her students look at commercials through the lens of the techniques used by political propaganda. For example, the fear technique used by the Nazis to target Jews gets used by commercials through the threat of being uncool or not accepted if you don’t have, for example, a Stanley Cup. Or the technique of promised happiness as shown by, say, Coca-Cola commercials. “You look at a Coca-Cola commercial and…everything is glittery. You know it’ll be better to be happier with Coca-Cola, right?”

Sara adds, “a commercial needs to do two things: it needs to give you what you should want, but it also needs to give you why you should want it and how not having it makes you less happy, less whole, less..something. The goal is to always make you feel less, unless you purchase whatever it is the commercial wants you to have.” When Sara sets the students free to look at commercials, “they can’t believe that the teacher is OK with them looking at commercials; how fun is that?” But through the laughter and sharing, they also start to analyze and think. “So having that fun session where they’re looking at all of these fun things, it’s not a waste of time; it’s actually helping them really zero in, and where they are in that part in that culture.”

Says Sara, “for most kids, what’s really interesting,” after they start studying commercial propaganda, “is that now they have the vocabulary to speak to what is happening to them. What are the influences happening to them?” Once they have the vocabulary, and that “intricate understanding,” students can say something like, “Wow, I did not realize that they were using XYandZ to get to me.” This also gives students the tools to understand what types of propaganda work best on them personally, as well as the understanding that “most successful pieces that use propaganda use more than one technique” for that reason—to appeal to many different people.

A tie-in for this part of the project is Annie Leonard’s video The Story of Stuff, which explores the system that brings us material products. It covers the process from extraction to manufacturing to disposal, including everything and everyone affected at each point along the way. Sara points out that Leonard, being an environmentalist, approaches the topic from a negative point of view—”commercialism can be really bad because it’s killing the environment.”

Then she shows students the other side of the coin through documentaries made by a media executive from the 1960s. These show “how industry is so great for jobs,” the economy, and taxes, “and we’re civilized, and we have all these amazing things, and…everything is looking hunky-dory because we now have skyscrapers.” As Sara shows the students, this media executive shows “the power of propaganda in a very positive way… It gets us to be civilized. It gets us to make the better product. It gets us to be able to choose the better product because now we know about it.” The video is called: Advertisement, What’s it Doing to Your Life” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lz_q4PxZFxA

After watching both videos, students must “choose one product that [they] have purchased….and [then] look at six of eight components that are not a part of what the commercial told them.” This work takes the students two to three weeks, because they must really dig into it. Often, “It’s really hard to find information…[for example], you know Nike isn’t going to tell you where the plastic for your shoes came from.” Sara urges the students to think laterally in those cases. “When you have plastic manufacturing, where is it usually done?”

Thus, students learn “to infer from research into industries, research into health scenes, research into…the commercial aspect of it. Research into labor issues with the company or the product or the materials, issues with resources and where they come from.” Sara adds, “There’s a variety of things you can do, and then that’s where I’m really excited about it, because kids are seeing the big picture.” They are seeing, “Oh, every time I purchase something I’m making a choice of what to support, and it’s a minute choice, but I’m not the only one making it.” As Sara says, there are “thousands, perhaps millions of people, making that same choice,” and that’s where the power of commercial propaganda comes in.

News Propaganda

“With news,” Sara teaches, it’s “really important to differentiate between fake news and media bias, because fake news is fake news…it’s not true. But media bias is that much more powerful because it is ‘true,’ but it is also biased.” Think of how someone like [Dan Rather] on CBS would report on the Gulf War differently than someone like Wolf Blitzer on CNN. [Rather] might report, “At such and such time, this happened.” Whereas Blitzer might report “with the visuals, and the drama of the droppings, and…precise hits.” From this, Sara says, the viewer knows “this is terrible,” and now he’s adding “a lot more information that is or isn’t validated, but it’s what CNN is telling you.” She wants students to think, “OK, what in that is factual, and what is interpretation of what’s happening?”

This is the struggle, she says, “with all media right now….There’s so much of a blur between what is…news factual versus interpretation.” And once interpretation is involved, so is bias, “because we’re all interpreting in some way…leaving some things behind and highlighting others.” Sara wants students to explore the question of, “why do we do that?” Also questions like, “Who is behind that interpretation? Is there a company that doesn’t want you to highlight one thing or another? Is there a government telling you to highlight this? Is there a boss that has interest in XYZ and doesn’t want those interests to be harmed by the [news] piece?” She adds, “Or maybe it’s just bad reporting” by people who “have no idea what they’re doing, or maybe it’s an AI bot…the news has become such a mire…” Students getting their news from social media is a case in point. Says Sara, that’s even more biased, and the algorithms set your news on repeat “so you’re totally missing these other parts.”

When Sara addresses media propaganda, students work with the same propaganda techniques, “but now it’s really important to look at different media outlets, and how they’re reporting the same event.” She assigns students to choose a current news story and explore the ways different media outlets report the same story. “What is common and what is different?” One visual she’s appreciated using is the [Fontes] Media Bias Chart, “which is a fantastic visual.” Once students understand how much bias exists in media, they “explore how the reporting of that affected the outcomes politically, and/or, at the moment. So it’s all connected.”

Entertainment Propaganda

Entertainment propaganda, Sara says, may be “the most powerful type when it comes to culture. What kind of culture do we create? What kind of community do we build, and how does that community of that culture get built?” It’s about “why we do the things we do as people.” As an example, she mentions teen slang, like the now-ubiquitous “bro.” “Where did that come from?” she asks. “Who started that?” And why? The same goes for the “67” phenomenon. “Kids went crazy, and nobody knows what it means, but everybody’s having fun…so it becomes a part of that cultural trend.”

As Sara says, we live through trends like the “ice challenge” without ascertaining “how that came to us and why we follow it.” She wants her students to examine past entertainment and trends that derived from books or songs, and now social media. “Where do kids get [the idea] they should… eat Tide Pods?” she asks. “How does a kid get to choose to do that?” The students might say, “Oh, it’s fun,” but “why was it fun? …What made you think that that was fun?” The entertainment realm is particularly prone to people posting and reposting pieces, because they think the pieces are fun or funny, or they “wanted to be part of the fun.”

Moving on from trends, Sara looks at the multiplicity of messages in films and songs, like Pink Floyd’s “We don’t need no education…” or the Beatles “Imagine all the people.” What do those songs mean? Or, what is a movie like The Matrix telling us to “think about ourselves, the future, the place of technology, what to fear, what to not fear?” Every song, movie, book, etc. “has a message.” Sara wants kids “to explore critically, what are those messages? How do they affect you?”

Despite its importance, though, Sara often “sadly” lacks the time to cover entertainment propaganda as fully as it deserves.

Librarian’s Note

Our library team has long had the privilege of supporting Sara’s work by helping curate resources for her project LibGuide and collaborating on source evaluation strategies with her students. These kinds of partnerships—between teachers and librarians—strengthen students’ ability to think critically about the information landscape they navigate every day.

Stay tuned in June for information about Sara’s Animal Farm project, and student insights!

Note: I used Flint for light copy-editing, drafting the transition between the two parts, and the conclusion in part two. Everything else is human-written, and it’s all human-edited!

Drawn to the Library: Graphic Novel and Manga Overhaul by Sam Stuart

Posted on May 11, 2026 by Patricia DeWinter

If you have ever worked with a middle schooler, you know they love graphic novels. Now more than ever, they are also demanding manga, or Japanese graphic novels. Along with manga, there is manhwa (South Korea), manhua (China), as well as other works with manga-esque illustrations from around the world. Manga is not my area of expertise, but I was a big fan of several anime series growing up, such as Dragon Ball Z, Rurouni Kenshin, and Pokémon. I have also always been drawn to graphic novels and find the expressiveness of the illustrations, and how those illustrations help drive the plot, to be engaging on many levels. Because of this, I find it easy to relate to your average middle schooler’s insatiable thirst for graphic novels and manga. And because keeping my students reading is my top priority, I have always dedicated a significant portion of my collection development fund to expanding our graphic novel selection. I have often said that I could spend my entire book budget on graphic novels and the kids would read them, and I say that only slightly in jest. But with so many other amazing novels, inspiring nonfiction, and materials needed for curricular connections, I have never really been able to dedicate as much money as I would have liked to this section of the library. The Vision to Reality Grant gave me the flexibility to explore new releases, expand on popular authors, and even work on expanding lengthy manga series. The project that unfolded during the 2025-2026 school year was titled “Drawn to the Library: Graphic Novel and Manga Collection Overhaul.”
Our Goal
The Vision to Reality Grant for the 2025-2026 school year really came at the perfect time for us to expand our graphic novel and manga collection. Waynflete School adopted a new schedule with 70 minute blocks, an increase from the previous year’s 50 minutes. Also, the school adopted a phone free policy across all grades. To accommodate the new needs of students during longer blocks, who are no longer attached to their phones, we felt that increasing access to visually appealing graphic novels would greatly benefit our students’ reading habits. Also, the short chapters and visual nature of most graphic novels lend themself to being the type of material that can be picked up and read for a short amount of time, which works well with longer blocks.
While our middle school was already phone free, the increased class length did cause some initial concern as to the feasibility of keeping middle school students engaged for that length of time. At this point in the year, I think the majority of those concerns have been alleviated, and my fellow teachers in the classrooms have done an excellent job of utilizing the full 70 minutes and incorporating both physical and mental breaks as needed. One area where I thought the impact of 70 minute blocks might really be felt was during the middle school’s supervised study hall. By providing high demand reading material such as graphic novels, we hoped to alleviate some of the pressure on study hall proctors by diverting some of those students into the library. Because we are an EC-12 school, our 6-12 students share a library, which is in the upper school building. This often creates an environment populated with high school students who can be seen as intimidating to our middle schoolers. By targeting the funding from the Vision to Reality Grant to collection development toward middle school students, we intended to increase ownership of the library by our middle schoolers and create an environment that is both welcoming to them and provides reading materials that they frequently desire. Without the funding for the grant, this would not have been possible, as the middle school has the smallest student body and, therefore, the smallest budget.
Learning More about Manga
While I knew that middle schoolers like graphic novels and manga, the first question was really: where to begin? This required learning a lot more about manga. I do have some familiarity with popular manga series, and there are certain manga series that I enjoy. This really forced me to look at this project through an impartial lens, to avoid getting stuck in the trap of buying material that I think people would like because I personally think they are good, as opposed to what books are actually in demand and well received by middle school students. My approach to this was to attend as many webinars on Manga and graphic novel collection development as I could find. The most beneficial webinar I viewed was presented by Britt Plotsky, the Manga Monarch. She provided a very informative overview of manga’s popularity, supported by her own library statistics as well as snapshots of manga on a national and global scale. She also provided a list of other Manga resources, including her own reviews of manga issues and series. This was very helpful for determining the appropriateness of some of these books for a middle school audience. Lastly, she included recommendations of other manga and graphic novel resources to use. Those included Good Comics for Kids, The Graphic Library, Manga Bookshelf, Manga Librarian, Manga Monarch, No Flying No Tight, and the ALA Graphic Novel and Comics Round Table. The Manga Librarian also includes a Wakelet of every manga resource she has, which is pretty comprehensive. Some of the other webinars included a reader’s advisor, which was also helpful, but I learned through a couple of accidental purchases that librarians’ idea of what is age appropriate can vary to some degree.
Making Difficult Choices
As badly as I wanted to buy the entire box set of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z for my own personal satisfaction, I knew I had to plan my spending out carefully to make sure that I was getting a wide range of titles that covered different interests and would support our readers of different ages. I also wanted to ensure that I was maximizing the amount of books we could purchase with the grant money, so I created a spreadsheet to keep track of what titles I wanted and how much they cost through different retailers.
I found that 3-in-1 manga issues were typically a lot cheaper, so I tended to favor those, especially for some of the longer manga series. Student feedback also directed me to favor 3-in-1s. One student suggested that since they read the books so fast, it is a lot easier to transport and keep track of the 3-in-1 volumes. If it prevents a book from getting lost, I am all for it. I also found several series that had small box sets, and felt comfortable buying these if they were around 5 volumes.
The sheet was primarily used to compare and contrast all the different price options. For example, is a box set the best option, or maybe buying each issue from our library wholesale provider? Is there a 3-in-1available, or can I find like-new used copies for the best price? All these considerations helped me stretch this money as far as possible and maximize the number of books we were able to add to the collection. A final difficult decision was how to divide the funds between manga and other graphic novels. I had initially intended to do a 60/40 split, favoring graphic novels. But as the demand for manga was there, and this has been an under-purchased area of our library, it ended up being closer to 60/40, favoring manga titles. This also unfolded organically, as there was demand from students for specific manga titles, while the demand for other graphic novels was a more general enjoyment of the medium. As non-manga style graphic novels are a regular part of my collection development and manga titles have been more frequently bought on an on-demand basis, dedicating a larger portion of the grant to manga titles felt justified. Not only did it bolster underrepresented materials in our library, but it also forced me to develop a better professional understanding of manga, which will serve to benefit future collection development.
We ended up with about 200 books, though a small amount of that total came from my yearly book purchasing budget, as I continued to purchase graphic novels with my regular book buying budget. That is this many middle schoolers worth of books!

Middle school students holding some of the books added during this project.
Considering What to Buy: This project came at an interesting time, as we switched our library’s management software at the end of last school year, so I did not have circulation statistics to base these decisions on. I felt a bit more comfortable with graphic novel selection and typically relied on starred reviews to direct my purchasing, especially from School Library Journal. I also expanded popular series and authors such as Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales, Raina Telgemeier, Svetlana Chmakova, Shannon Hale, Lee Knox Ostertag, and Kayla Miller. We were also able to replace some lost and well-loved copies of some of those favorite authors. I also added sequels to titles that have been popular here, such as Curlfriends, Miss Quinces, Beetle and the Hollowbones, and Cool Code, to name a few. I also noticed that The Babysitter Club, Emmie & Friends, Big Nate, and comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes and Foxtrot were popular. Newer comic strip style graphic novels, such as Huda Fahmy, have also proven to be continuously popular with our readers. Many of those items were added as donations or purchased previously and fell outside of the purview of this project, though it is worth noting that there is a consistent demand for these materials. As is typical of my collection development, I really looked toward student demand to direct my purchasing. Student requests and suggestions are always my first priority. This did result in me investing a bit more into certain series that I would have on my own, but felt worth it to keep my students reading and engaged with the library. Other considerations included books that were related to popular movies or TV shows, or books that have recent film adaptations, such as Stranger Things and Demon Slayer. I also definitely took note of the recommended titles from the webinars I attended, especially those that provided middle school-specific readers’ advisory. This was particularly helpful with manga selection, as there were so many titles that I was unfamiliar with. These manga titles cover nearly every genre imaginable, including sports fiction, romance, science fiction, as well as the expected action and adventure tales. Some of these manga series are even considered quite educational, such as Dinosaur Sanctuary and Cells at Work. I will note that I did observe that the action and adventure manga are circulating the best. These recommendations were a great starting point, but the necessary work of finding reliable reviews of these books remained.
Reviewing the titles: I quickly discovered that finding professional reviews of manga is incredibly difficult, and not only that, but often only the first volume of a series is reviewed. As I also quickly learned, while the first volume of a series might be targeted toward middle school readers, later issues may contain more mature topics or content. The Manga Monarch was helpful in finding some reviews and provided a fairly detailed description of violence, language, sexual situations, and drug/alcohol use. She even includes individual volume reviews (to some extent), so later issues with vastly different maturity ratings are pointed out. These reviews come from Britt Plotsy’s personal reading and reviewing of manga titles, so are limited to what she has read and categorized. I also found Manga Librarian, Manga in the Middle, and Manga Bookshelf to have useful reviews.
Another piece of advice I gathered from one of the manga webinars I watched was that IMDb reviews of a manga’s anime adaptation can be a helpful starting point. These are all good options when your favorite review database does not have the information that you need. Reviews for graphic novels were much easier to find through your typical avenues. My personal favorite review database is Novelist Plus. If you have access to this database, it typically provides reviews from sources such as School Library Journal, Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly, all in one place for a title if they are available.
Cataloging, Processing, and Setting the Books Free: After all the fun of purchasing wore off, it then became time to get to work so that these books could go to students. There was also a huge delay with our wholesale book distributor, Ingram. This resulted in some of these books taking multiple months to arrive, which was disappointing for both the students and me. Cataloging all these new items really opened up a few flaws in our current records, namely the lack of series information. As new items came in, especially those that were continuations of existing series in our collections, it necessitated the addition of that series information. I also wanted to include the volume number in the series so that students are more easily able to find the next item. This was treated as local catalog information, so I was able to adopt the language that would be most likely searched by our students. This was done for both the convenience of searching and the lack of existing series information for many titles.
As I worked through some of this information, I realized that we have a large amount of existing records to go through to update and standardize our series information. Other unique cataloging changes included adding graphic novel and manga as genres. Some may argue that those are not genres, but a medium, though we find it helpful for our readers to be able to sort those items in that way. Though it did take some time to catalog and process all the books, thanks to some very helpful volunteers, the books were ready for students! Me halfway through cataloging:

(Librarian pounding head into their computer after cataloging 200 graphic novels.)
Another big consideration was whether manga should have its own section of the library, as currently they are interfiled with the rest of the graphic novels. While this has some appeal due to the demand for some students specifically for manga, it opened up many questions, such as what to do with the manhwa and manhau, or English publication with manga-style illustration. It still seems like this could benefit our readers when we have more time to undertake a project of this magnitude. The ability to separate the manga from the graphic novels would also necessitate more shelf space, another project to be considered at a later date.
The Results: As mentioned above, we were able to purchase around 200 items, which made a visible impact on our middle school and young adult graphic novel collections, which previously included about 525 items. There was a noticeable increase in items when looking at the shelves. These photos show our graphic novel sections before and after the project in our Middle School Graphic Novel section:

A view of our middle school graphic novels before the project.

A view of our middle school graphic novels after the project.
And in our Young Adult Graphic Novel section:

First view of the young adult graphic novels before the project.

Second view of the young adult graphic novel section before the project.

First view of our young adult graphic novel section after the project.

Second view of our graphic novel section after the project.
There has also been a noticeable increase in middle school students coming to the library throughout the day, especially during their study hall and office hours. These are the times they have the most freedom to visit the library, as middle school students do not have any unsupervised time. As a middle school librarian, it has always been important to me that the middle school students feel that the library is their space, despite the constant presence of intimidating high schoolers. Other than providing the materials that best fit their desires, this project was intended to help create a more welcoming space for middle school students in the library, as it happens to be an upper school building. By heavily investing in materials targeted towards that age range, I hoped to encourage a more consistent presence of middle school students and increase the amount of time they spend in the library during each visit. We do not keep visitation statistics, but I have personally noticed this increase in middle school students visiting the library. This is partially due to efforts to encourage library use during office hours and study hall in an attempt to alleviate some of the pressure of long blocks on other teachers who have supervision duties during those times, but I also feel that this collection development project has shown middle schoolers that we have their reading interesting in mind and are working to make the library one of their go to places to hang out on campus. I have often felt that middle schoolers are some of the most frequent readers in our library, so it was really a pleasure to dedicate so much focus to developing an area of the library they hold so dear.

Students browsing in the graphic novel section.
While purchasing was targeted at a middle school audience, we also noticed an increase in upper school students utilizing the new graphic novels and manga additions. One of the original ideas behind this project was that the graphic novel and manga medium lend themselves to being easy to pick up and quickly read, even when a student might not have a lot of time. As upper school students tend to be much busier with schoolwork, we often see them reading less. The increase in students’ reading, especially those who I don’t see checking out books from the library as often as others, was a very positive result of this project. One high school student even mentioned that because they watched the show, they thought they wanted to check out the book for the One Piece series. Other students, who I would consider some of our more frequent readers, were happy to see additions to their favorite series and suggest other titles. I was happy to see that this project had such a positive impact on upper school students. As we recently switched our library’s ILS, we do not have statistics to compare with last year. Still, we all feel that there has been a general increase in circulation this year. Feedback from students has also been positive. Responses have included:
“Whoa, you have that!” “Oh my god, that is my favorite book!” “That book was amazing.” “Yes! I have been waiting to read this.”
“It would be cool if you had Spy x Family… wait, you do?!”
Or my personal favorite: “Do you have any more Bleach?”
I am very grateful to AISL for organizing the Vision to Reality Grant. It has allowed for a significant increase in a section of our library that was underrepresented and forced me to take a deeper look at what materials would best suit our students’ needs in that area. It also allowed me to dedicate more time and materials to support our middle school students and help move our library to a more middle school friendly area. I found the entire process very helpful professionally, as I now know a lot more about manga and can more closely relate to the students who love the medium. Expansion of the other graphic novels was also a pleasure, as I have always felt a spark of creativity from viewing the amazing artwork present in these books. I am hopeful that others will also be inspired by these works and that this project will inspire continued development in graphic novels at our school. Improving the collection in this way would have taken years without the Vision to Reality Grant, and I truly feel that these improvements would not have been possible without it. While I wrap up this project, it has also brought to light other areas that the library can improve, such as improved records and shelf spacing. These, among a few other projects, will be the next step in our continuous attempt to improve the library and make it a welcoming and desirable place for students to enjoy.

Vision to Reality Update by Sarah Richardson

Posted on May 1, 2026 by Patricia DeWinter

This past year I received a “Vision to Reality” Grant from AISL to create a YA section for
my Junior High students. I am the Research Center Coordinator at Lake Country School, a pk-8 Montessori School in South Minneapolis serving roughly 300 students. We have a single library for the school, and curating a collection in one space to span that age range has always been a challenge.
When I took the job 5 years ago, I began to see a need for a more robust and
appropriate selection of books for our oldest students. The English teacher had novels on her shelves, but they were rather dated and tended to reflect her tastes rather than what students might want to read in their spare time. I began to dream of a space where I could feature current novels, graphic novels and nonfiction titles that actually appealed to 13 and 14 year olds.
Luckily, our Junior High space has a common area with beautiful floor to ceiling oak
bookshelves. However, they were filled with a random collection of encyclopedias and attractive but unused sets of books. I got permission to take over part of the space, and with a combination of internal funds and the AISL grant, began the project. Last summer I stocked the shelves with books that I had chosen – award winners, JLG selections, books with starred reviews, and books that I knew would appeal to specific students. I also moved a few titles from the main library that belonged in the new section. Response from students has been great, though due to an unwieldy checkout system, I don’t have the circulation data I’d like – something to work on.
With the AISL grant, I was able to involve the students in a more direct way in collection
development. I asked each student (as well as the teachers) to suggest a book OR a genre that they would like to see on the shelves (vetted by me, of course!) As might be expected, some choices were not entirely age-appropriate, and in those cases, I asked for alternate titles. With my library apprentices, I made a spreadsheet of the suggestions coded by genre, and was surprised and delighted to discover that the categories were roughly balanced. I added some selections from my own “to purchase” list and worked with a local independent bookstore to fill the order.
As the books arrived, I placed a bookplate in each with that student’s name and the year.
I plan to mention the donor’s name when doing book talks next year, and hope to find some way to continue a tradition of students adding a book to the library – maybe when they graduate?
Many thanks to AISL for supporting this endeavor!

Book Club Starter Activities

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Rebecca Moore

As librarians, we all have things at which we excel, and things that make others say, “Well, bless their heart, they tried!” For me, my kryptonite is book clubs. Over the decades I’ve been a school librarian, I’ve run many book clubs in many formats, with only intermittent success. What I’ve finally settled on, though, is a monthly, no-commitment lunchtime session, in which students who love reading can talk about books while they eat their lunches. We also eat cookies, trade recommendations, and I pass around a box of sixty-plus questions for when the discussion lags.

We always start our meetings with a brief, brain-warm-up activity that I’ve either devised or borrowed. Most of the time, students have to solve a puzzle of some kind to “earn” the cookies I bring to club, but sometimes we play a game or do a craft instead. Below is a list of as many of my activities as I can remember—please feel free to try them out!

Crafts

Crafts that don’t require a lot of prep or a lot of time to complete are best for book club openers. I advise against anything that needs glue!

Author’s Crafts—If you are reading a specific book, sometimes you can find activities on the author’s website, such as Keeper of the Lost cities “stickers” we turned into buttons.
Coloring Pages—Find coloring pages related to the book you are reading, such as dragons for a Wings of Fire book.
Button Quotes—Print out reading and writing quotes in fancy fonts for button-making, or have students write the quotes out themselves with art supplies (or both!).
Gift Boxes—Turn old greeting cards or book covers printed on cardstock into small gift boxes.

Codes/Clues

If you have some basic locks and boxes, you can create an endless number of clues to lead students to the solution, whether it’s a series of clues or a single one. Here are a few that I have tried.

Haikus—I created a series of haiku puzzles to solve related to The Trials of Apollo, including music notes to translate to letters that create words, Bananagrams tiles to rearrange, and a song to play from a flash drive.
Rebus Puzzles—Endlessly useful! Sometimes I’ll do a rebus that leads to a key, sometimes I’ll do a chapter title or book title rebus to solve, etc.
Invisible Ink—Always a favorite. Often this forms part of a two step puzzle; the first puzzle leads them to a locked box with a blacklight, and they use the blacklight to read the final clue—usually, where to find the cookies.
Foreign Languages—Clues that include foreign languages. For instance, when we read The Lightning Thief, I created a clue with key words written in Greek letters.
Book-Specific Clues—Clues akin to puzzles or incidents in the book you’re reading. For instance, when we read The City of Ember, I wrote the clue on paper that I crumpled and ripped up; the students had to put it back together to read it.
Directional Clues—For instance, I found book titles that had a direction in them (north, south, up, down, etc.), and wrote out clues to help students find those titles in our catalog. The direction in each title told the students how to solve a directional lock. You could also use a map from a book with a narrative describing a journey in various directions.
Book-Title Clues—I borrowed this idea from a friend: I gave students a grid of twelve books, with one book numbered to show them how to count. The code to the letters in the clue sentence were three digits in sequence, joined by dash marks. The first letter indicates which book, the second letter indicates which word in the title, and the third indicates which letter in that word.
Word-Puzzle Clues—For example, I wrote sentences in which some letters at the end of the first word combined with letters at the start of the second word spelled a number to help open a number lock. A sample sentence might start: “Teachers ix-nayed…” and the rest of the sentence is a red herring. Note: This one was really hard—too hard without lots of hints!

Matching Games

These are fairly quick and easy to put together.

First Line/Last Line—Match first or last lines of books to the appropriate title.
International Covers—Match international covers for same book with the nationality of their publication.
Globe-Trotting Covers—Match ten books set in different countries with the country in which they take place.
Teacher Childhood Favorites—Match faculty childhood photos with their favorite childhood book; this obviously requires some faculty participation!
Book Summaries—Match covers of new books to their summaries.

Writing Activities

The story-writing activities run a bit longer than I would usually allow for a starting activity; I mostly used these first two with club iterations that only shared a glancing relationship with books (writing, book games, literary smackdowns, etc.).

Write-a-Line Stories—Write the first two lines of a story or choose two lines from a book, then fold the page down so only the second line shows. (You could also create small booklets and write a sentence per sheet and fold it back, as folding a letter-sized page over and over gets hard!) The next person sees the second line or book sentence, and either writes the next two lines based on that, or finds two lines from a different book that could continue the story. Repeat until you run out of paper, and read the story aloud!
Round Robin Stories—Start a story, and pass it along to the next person to continue.
Review Haiku—Write reviews of books in haiku form.
Post-it Reviews—Create a post-it sized form with room for some stars, author and title, and a small space to write why someone should read this book. Display those books in the library, along with the recommendation. Borrowed idea from (I think) Travis Jonker.

Book Games—General

Some of these games take longer than others; play them just as long as they hold students’ interest!

Book Title Balderdash—Pick titles of several new books that won’t be familiar to the students. They will all write fake summaries, hoping to fool the other players when all of the summaries are read aloud, including the real one. This can be played with a Balderdash game board, or just for fun without counting points.
Book Title Pictionary—Pretty self-explanatory. Can be played in teams or as a group.
Book Title Telestrations—Based on the Telestrations game. A student takes a book title or character, and tries to draw it well enough for the second student to guess. That student writes down their guess and passes it on, without the drawing. The next student has to draw something based on that guess, and so it goes.
Name that book—Inspired by Name That Tune. Students “bet” on how many words from the first sentence(s) it will take for them to name a book, omitting identifying words like names. The kids found this one pretty hard, so adding a genre or using the summary instead of the first line(s) might help.
Trivia/Jeopardy—This takes a lot of time to put together, so would be for a special event, probably when you are all reading the same book. Alternately, if, like me, you have several hundred Battle of the Books questions hanging around, you could grab a few from the most popular books and just have at it.
Names in a Hat—In this game, everyone writes down a book title or character and throws it in an ersatz “hat.” On the first round, the person who is “it” draws one slip after the other, and can say anything (except what’s on the slip) to get the other players to guess what it is. They have one minute to get through as many as they can. At the end of round one, all the slips go back in the hat. For round two, the active player draws the slips again, but can say only one word to try to get the other players to guess the answer. For round three, they can only charade it.

Book Title Games

In these games, students must figure out book titles or words in book titles from the clues given.

Food Titles—Find clip art of food found in titles, and students use the catalog to find title(s) including that food. This could also work with other things, like animals, plants, etc.
Changed Titles—Give a description of books that would result if one word were removed from the real title/series title, and a hint. Students must identify the real title. Example: __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ Ben Ripley attends an academy that focuses on being agile and flexible. (Series title, one letter added)
Emoji Titles—You can devise these yourself, or you can find some online. Line up some emojis that represent a popular book title. It can be straightforward, or use homonyms (like a peace sign representing the word “piece”). Here are the ones I used:

I love games and codes and crafts, so it’s always fun to come up with or hear about new, short activities I can use to combat my book-club kryptonite! I hope some of these prove useful to you.

AISL Independent Ideas

The blog of AISL – All opinions and ideas expressed here are of the individual blogger and do not represent AISL as an organization.

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