Our seventh grade English teacher, Kacie Simpson, always comes up with great projects connected to the books her classes read. This year, after reading S.E. Hinton’s classic, The Outsiders, pairs of students created these “Body Bios.” Each poster depicts a character from The Outsiders, alongside visual metaphors and quotes to represent their inner character and history. Below is a sample “Ponyboy” poster, by Angie and Yihan, with all of its parts explained.
Kacie says that even the kids who weren’t great artists learned from the work. For instance, one student drew a character as a square, because he thought it was funny (or perhaps had played too much Minecraft!). Ms. Simpson told him he had to have a purpose behind his choice of shape that connected to the book. Giving a presentation was part of the assignment, so when he presented to the class, this student connected the shape to the character being strong like a rock, which showed Kacie that he’d actually put some thought into it. Here are a few more samples of the posters.
Sodapop by Ellie and Lucas.Two Bit by Amber and Phoebe.Dally by Cecilia, Lade, and Angela.Sodapop by Daksha and Riana.Darry by Avni and Ashleen.Johnny by Hannah and Ferris.
When a parent asked if I could contribute some booklists to a weekend cultural fair she was planning, I was thrilled. The event offered an excellent opportunity to further the library’s promotion of reading culture at the school, as well as to share our dedication to building a diverse collection. In addition, it provided motivation to review and reflect on our previous collection development efforts. As I’m passionate about building a diverse collection, I decided to go overboard, knowing I could use the results in future aspects of my work. I focused on two things: 1. Our vision of having mirror, window, and sliding glass door books, as described by Rudine Bishop Sims. 2: Avoiding a “single story” collection, in which, for example, we only had Jewish books about the Holocaust, or Native American books about the frontier.
In the end, I brought the following lists, items, and links to the fair:
Printed articles about mirrors/windows/sliding glass doors, and the “single story.”
Two poster-sized grids, one for middle school fiction and one for upper school fiction. These featured diversity on one axis and genre on the other. I filled the grids with covers of relevant books from our collections, either print or eBooks. I felt proud that out of about 162 books, only three did we not own. I wanted to demonstrate that if you wanted a fantasy book with Native American characters, we had it. If you wanted a horror book with characters with disabilities, we had it. I realize that the categories are broad strokes, and you could get more and more granular, just as with a diversity audit. In addition, what if you wanted a science fiction book featuring a Black character with a disability? So the grid is not perfect, but it was a start to represent what we value in building our collection.
Double-sided printouts of the grids with only the titles and authors.
A LibGuide featuring all of the books in tabbed boxes, with summaries and links to the eBook if we had it. I created boxes organized by diversity and by genre. The LibGuide also included the DEI list for parents and families, and other sources of diverse booklists.
Bookmarks created by my colleague with a QR code to the LibGuide.
A cart with thirty middle school and thirty upper school books, plus a scanner so I could check out books at the event.
I ferried many of the items to our Campus Center on the Friday before, including the cart of books, my easel with the two grids, and the booklists. On Saturday, I arrived early with the parents who were setting up. They assembled a cornucopia of tables representing various cultures, including a ton of delicious-smelling food! The event itself was lively (and tasty!), and I did get on the “stage” to present a one-minute explanation of what I’d brought. Though I didn’t get a lot of attention, I talked to a number of people and checked out a few books. I now have the grids posted in the library, and hope my work will be featured in one of our weekly parent newsletters. I really enjoyed the opportunity to consider the diversity of our collection, and look forward to using what I’ve learned to further build a collection that will best serve our students.
Overlake’s seventh-grade English teacher, Kacie Simpson, is passionate about reading. “Establishing a culture of reading, where students are excited to read, has been something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” she says. One issue she considers is how students can find good books to read. She knows parents also wonder about this, as they often request book recommendations for their children. While Kacie loves reading, of course, she knows that, “collectively, my students have read more books than I have.” Thinking how she could harness this resource, she decided to create a classroom “display where students could give book recommendations and share the types of books they are interested in with their peers.”
For her display, she created a large wall poster of a bookshelf. Next, she printed blank book spine templates in different sizes, to vary the height of the “books” and make the shelf arrangement look more natural. Students copied or recreated the spine of a book they would recommend to their classmates, choosing the template that made the most sense for the book. For in-class work, Kacie provided scissors and colored pencils, though several students also worked at home to have more time and add more detail.
While the students worked in class, Kacie noticed a lot of “great conversations about books.” She heard many positive comments, like, “Oh, I love that book!” That worked well for her goal of instilling in the students the knowledge that “the best source of what to read is their peers,” because seventh graders know what other seventh graders tend to enjoy reading. In the finished spines, Kacie found it interesting to see that fantasy was the most popular genre by a mile, and that Rick Riordan scored as the most popular author. The titles that surprised her the most were the non-fiction titles Blue Chip Kids, by David Bianchi, and Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, books that she doesn’t “always associate with 12-13 year olds reading.”
When students finished the spines, Kacie organized them roughly by genre on the poster “shelves.” To add to the display’s welcoming appeal, Kacie added a picture of her cat sleeping on a shelf, as well as some “additional decorative touches.” As a librarian, I love it, and think it was an amazing project!
Partial Booklist
Note: I couldn’t read all of the titles, which is why this is partial
Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
The Martian, Andy Weir
Scythe, Neal Shusterman
Space Case, Stuart Gibbs
The hunger games, Suzanne Collins
Catching fire, Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
The ballad of songbirds and snakes, Suzanne Collins
Atherton:the House of power, Patrick Carman
One piece, Eiichiro Oda
The ultimate hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, Douglas Adams
Legend, Marie Lu
Foundation, Isaac Asimov
The lion of Mars, Jennifer Holm
The giver, Lois Lowry
Ready player one, Ernest Cline
Iron widow, Xiran Jay Zhao
Animal farm, George Orwell
Home body, Rupi Kaur
What if?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, Randall Munroe
Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari
Little white lies, Gemma Townley
The naturals, Jennfer Barnes
The inheritance game, Jennifer Barnes
The final gambit, Jennifer Barnes
Spy school, Stuart Gibbs
One of us is lying, Karen McManus
Five survive, Karen McManus
A good girl’s guide to murder, Holly Jackson
The land of stories: the wishing spell, Chris Colfer
The Penrose Series, Tony Ballantyne
Wings of fire, Tui Sutherland
Throne of glass, Sarah J. Maas
The theft of sunlight, Intisar Khanani
The tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
Keeper of the lost cities, Shannon Messenger
The school for good and evil, Soman Chainani
The hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
Harry Potter and the sorcerer‘s stone, J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the half-blood prince, J.K. Rowling
Summoner 3: The Battlemage, Taran Matharu
Red queen, Victoria Aveyard
Heartless, Marissa Meyer
The lost hero, Rick Riordan
The house of Hades, Rick Riordan
The lightning thief, Rick Riordan
The sea of monsters, Rick Riordan
The last Olympian, Rick Riordan
When you trap a tiger, Tae Keller
Two Degrees, Alan Gratz
The silent patient, Alex Michaelides
Ink and ashes, Valynne Maetani
Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown, Steve Sheinkin
Front desk, Kelly Yang
Seaglass summer, Anjali Banerjee
Out of my mind, Sharon Draper
Simon sort of says, Erin Bow
The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Far from the tree, Robin Benway
Escape from Mr. Lemoncello‘s library, Chris Grabenstein
Blended, Sharon Draper
If he had been with me, Laura Nowlin
The Explorers Academy: the nebula secret, Trudi Trueit
Restart, Gordon Korman
Darius the great is not OK, Adib Khorram
Imogen obviously, Becky Albertalli
Wonder, R.J. Palacio
Posted, John David Anderson
The summer I turned pretty, Jenny Han
Prisoner B, Alan Gratz
Projekt, Alan Gratz
Grenade, Alan Gratz
The book thief, Markus Zusak
Little women, Louisa May Alcott
Pride and prejudice, Jane Austen
World in between: based on a true refugee story, Kenan Trebincevic, Susan Shapiro
At the start of the year, wanting to build our reading culture, a few teachers and I formed a reading culture committee. For our first action, we decided to survey the students about their reading. We would use their responses to determine our next steps. With the bribe of being entered into a raffle for homeroom cookies, over 70 of our 200+ middle schoolers responded, and here are their responses. For questions about “other” responses, if the responses were minimal or uninformative, I omitted the results here.
Anything else you’d like to say about your reading?
• I love reading, and I read mostly young adult fiction, fantasy, or romance. I don’t read as much as I used to because of the amounts of homework. • I love to read and it is fun to see all the different ways the author wrote the book. • I love finding out the answers to the mysteries performed by the book and author!!! • I love reading ([My friend] made me write this, but it is true) • I like reading adventure books and mystery books. • I read a lot and like reading! but sometimes other things get in the way. • I love reading especially when I need a break so I might join the focus club. • No but I want to know why we are doing this survey. • I get thirty minutes of reading time, because I listen to audiobooks in the car. I get no actual reading time at home, because [of other obligations]. • I really like to read on my own, but when someone tells me to read, I feel like I don’t want to read anymore. • I like reading, but do less if I have too much other work or activities. • I like writing books. • Nothing about reading, but I love cookies! • I especially love historical-fiction/fiction.
Conclusions We can see that for students who read, while regular print books are still the most popular reading material, they are also reading multiple other formats. I find that encouraging, and hope by listing all of those options as reading, students who might not have considered themselves readers will re-think that.
Many students do not read a whole lot each week. We found their reasons telling, as the top two were too much homework and too many other obligations. Based on this, we decided we needed to find them more time to read at school. We are planning a “drop everything and read” wellness event, in which they will all read in their homerooms for a block. In addition, students who choose not to join an affinity group will instead join a “drop everything and read” group during fortnightly affinity group meetings. We are also working on setting up an evening for student writers to read from their works, since so many are writers.
Building reading culture is certainly a marathon! It’s especially so when all of us are so busy that our reading culture group finds it hard to meet. However, we are moving forward bit by bit, and plan to keep at it. If you have some great ideas that have worked at your school, please add them in the comments!
Last month, I covered (no pun intended) books about female-identifying kids’ struggles with excess body hair. This month, I thought I should cover some male-identifying kids’ puberty struggles. Many books address the emotional struggles, with a side of the physical struggles, but I couldn’t find too many with a strong focus on the physical struggles. I suspect there are many more than I found, but the issues are embedded in the story as a whole and don’t merit their own subject heading. If you know of other titles that address these issues as part of the story, write them in the comments! Summaries from Worldcat or GoodReads.com.
“The voice actor for a hit animated series, thirteen-year-old Nikhil must find the courage to speak out about what’s right when a group of conservative parents protest his openly gay status.” –Publisher. Note: Nikhil’s voice is changing, which means he can no longer play the character he loves so much, and he’s struggling to face that reality.
“Still struggling with a home life edging on the poverty line, Rex can’t afford to buy the acne medication or deodorant he needs, and bullies are noticing Rex’s awkward transformation.” –GoodReads.com.
“As twelve-year-old Duane endures the confusing and humiliating aspects of puberty, he watches a newborn bird in a nest on his windowsill begin to grow and become more independent, all of which he records in his journal.” –Publisher.
“Thirteen-year-old Bobby Connor is a normal adolescent boy–at least he hopes he is–just trying to survive middle school. But it seems he’s being foiled at every turn, and even his own body is conspiring against him. And when his math teacher is seriously injured from the shock and fright of witnessing just how out of control Bobby’s changing adolescent body is getting, he starts to worry he’s anything but normal.” –Publisher.
“Jack Sprigley isn’t just a late-bloomer. He’s a no-bloomer. It’s nearly the end of Year 8, and with puberty still a total no-show, Jack’s in serious danger of being left behind by his friends. But then he comes up with a plan to solve all his problems. It’s simple: all he has to do is fake puberty…” –GoodReads.com.
“Inspired by the angelic sound of Yutaka’s voice, [his middle school] choir eagerly accepts him into their ranks. But when Yutaka’s voice begins to change as he enters puberty, the journey ahead will be one of self-discovery and reflection for not only himself, but also for those around him.” –GoodReads.com.
“Unable to accept or explain his family’s newly acquired wealth, his growing interest in sex, and a friend’s shoplifting habit, a thirteen-year-old finds the pains in his stomach getting worse and worse.” –Publisher.
“When Jay starts eighth grade with a few pimples he doesn’t think much of it at first…except to wonder if the embarrassing acne will disappear as quickly as it arrived. But when his acne goes from bad to worse, Jay’s prescribed a powerful medication that comes with some serious side effects.” –GoodReads.com.
Short story collection. Specific story: “How a Boy Can Become a Grease Fire.” A boy likes a girl, and his friends decide to help him with his BO, dry skin, and chapped lips, as well as accompanying him to her house so he can ask for her number. This one was just funny, and sweet/obnoxious of the friends. Those middle school crushes are aptly named.
I was sitting at my desk as the year wound up, students and faculty scattered to the winds, wondering what to write about for my July blog post. It was then that I heard my colleague, who was busy in the stacks, chortling away. Like me, she’s an inveterate audiobook reader, so I knew she was listening to something (rather than plotting nefarious pranks involving fake books and glitter bombs, not that I’ve ever thought about doing that, nope, never—do you know what glitter abatement costs? Me neither, but I can imagine my admins’ response to receiving that check request…). While I enjoy many books with humor, it takes a lot to get me laughing out loud, so a book with that capability becomes a precious favorite. Thus for the lazy days of July, what could be better than a book that makes you laugh so hard you re-separate a rib cartilage injury from your teens (for example)? Here are my favorites, starting with MS books and moving to YA and Adult books. I’ve included either my own GoodReads summary or a publisher/WorldCat summary, and a link to my full TL;DR GoodReads reviews. Please share your own favorite laugh-out-loud books in the comments!
The war started over Poptarts. Maybe. Whatever; the start doesn’t matter so much as what followed. Claudia and Reece were out to get each other, and things just keep escalating. There was the fish episode, and the ill-conceived video episode, and the Megaworld episode…where will it end? Told by Claudia as an audiobook, with frequent interruptions to add in text threads between the parents, chapters by Reece or just commentary by Reece, and other characters as well.
It’s 7th grade, and Rahul, an Indian-American boy from Indiana, has a pretty good life. He’s got great parents, an extended “family” of other Indians and Indian Americans who’ve known him forever and love to feed him, a wonderful grandfather who lives with them, a younger brother who can be annoying but is basically ok, good grades, and a super-best friend in Chelsea. But there are down sides, primarily Brent, the local bully, and his football cronies, one of whom used to be a friend of Rahul’s, but they drifted apart. Lately, though, Rahul finds his eyes keep drifting back to Justin, and he doesn’t know why. He does know that he’s feeling the need to be “best” at something, though, and his attempts are both hilarious and painful to watch. He’s gamely supported by his parents and Chelsea, but more and more Rahul finds himself pushing everyone away, and has developed some worrisome OCD habits. 7th grade is not turning out to be his best year…but is there a way to save it?
Ninth graders T.C., Augie, and Alejandra tell the story of their most excellent year. During this year, they all fell in love (Augie first had to realize he was gay, and T.C. had to stop taking dating advice from his dad), fought for social causes (T.C. taught Alejandra how to spam the Senate to get a baseball diamond built at Manzanar), performed brilliantly onstage (Augie’s interpretation of “Too Darn Hot” brought down the house), adopted a deaf six-year-old foster kid obsessed with Mary Poppins (he kept expecting her to come rescue him), and generally grew into their potential.
My Lady Jane. Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows. (YA)
Let’s face it: Tudor history has needed a reboot for a long time. Everyone knows all the scandals and battles and wives and what have you. Time for something new. Imagine that the world includes two kinds of people; those who can turn into animals, and those who can’t. The Tudors include many of the former, including Henry VIII (a lion who eats messengers). Because humans are human whatever their shape, there’s tension between the two types of people, which is about to come to a head. Henry VIII is gone, and his sickly teenage son Edward is on the throne, but dying slowly of ‘The Affliction.’ In a moment of weakness, he is persuaded to do two things: order the marriage of his book-loving cousin Jane Grey to the son of his most influential counselor, Lord Dudley. Gifford (or G, as he prefers), is a fine young man–when he is a man. From sunup to sundown, he’s a horse. So, Edward orders Jane to marry G, then appoints Jane his successor. What do you think the odds are for Edward at this point? Well, better than in the history we know, is all I can tell you.
“Stop. I won’t let you take your trousers off in the middle of the street. That is a terrible idea.”
“Right. Well. Shall we keep kissing until we think of a better one?” In the 1700s, 18-year-old Henry Montague, Viscount of Disley, is a terrible rake. Expelled from Eton, he spends his time drinking, gambling, and tumbling in and out of bed with boys and girls rather indiscriminately, all while nursing a painfully unrequited crush on his best friend Percy. Their last hurrah–and Monty’s last chance at his inheritance—Is a year-long Grand Tour, at the end of which Monty and Percy will likely be parted forever and Monty will be stuck at home with his monster of a father. Despite being saddled with a “bear-leader” determined to make the boys—and Monty’s younger sister Felicity, who will be dropped off (most unwillingly) at finishing school)—behave, it doesn’t take Monty long to make some spectacularly bad decisions (nudity and theft are involved) that have them fleeing Paris. Beset by highwaymen, the three young adults lose their guardians and their possessions, and then find themselves being pursued across Europe by armed guards (thanks for that, Monty). Will they survive? Will Monty and Percy ever get together? Will Felicity sell them both to pirates for being SO annoying and useless? Stay tuned…
YOLO Juliet. Brett Wright, William Shakespeare (YA)
“Imagine: What if those star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet had smartphones? A classic is reborn in this adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays! Two families at war. A boy and a girl in love. A secret marriage gone oh-so-wrong… and h8. A Shakespeare play told through its characters texting with emojis, checking in at certain locations, and updating their relationship statuses.” –WorldCat.org
Linus Baker is different than all of the other drones—uh, case workers—at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth. For one, he’s been there 17 years. For two, he actually cares about the children in the orphanages he investigates. His job is pretty much his life. He’s 40 something and lives alone with a cranky cat and nosy neighbor, and only vaguely dreams of more. So when he’s assigned to spend a month on an island, investigating the highly classified Marsyas Orphanage, he’s puzzled, dubious, nervous, and very slightly excited. The children on Marsyas are like nothing he’s ever encountered—a female gnome who wants to bury him in her garden, a tentacled green blob who wants to do his laundry, a sprite who wants to turn him into a tree, a wyvern who wants all his buttons, a were-pomeranian who hides from him, and, of course, the antichrist who loves doo-wop. Then there’s the master, the enigmatic, kind, slightly rumpled Arthur Parnassus, who sees something in Linus that he’s never seen in himself.
Elliott’s mother left when he was young and his father basically stopped living—and stopped being a father—at the same time, leaving their snarky, too-smart, redheaded son to bring himself up, and he’s not doing the greatest job. He knows he has an abrasive personality and has no friends. Then a strange woman takes his class on a field trip to a, well, a field, and Elliott can see an immense wall the others can’t. He’s offered the chance to attend school in the Borderlands beyond the wall, and, having nothing to lose, he takes it; maybe he’ll get the chance to see mermaids? The camp that serves as a school for the Borderlands guards is nothing like what Elliott thought it would be, and he flat out refuses to be in the Guard side of the training because violence never solved anything—he’ll do the Council training course instead. His loathing of violence doesn’t stop him falling madly in love with a gorgeous elf called Serene Heart in the Chaos of Battle (“That’s so badass!”), and he pledges himself to her immediately, which doesn’t turn her off because in elf culture, women are the strong ones and men stay at home and embroider. Elliott’s not thrilled with most of the other recruits, including the impossibly charismatic Luke Sunborn, who reminds Elliott of all the boys who have everything and like to bully the kids who don’t—including Elliott. Unfortunately, Luke and Serene have already bonded over their love of sports and battle and everything else, and Elliott will have to put up with Luke if he wants to stay close to Serene. And so begin their years of training.
In the 1940s, Brooklyn Jewish kid Joey is plagued by nasty bullies and the lack of a father. He decides that Charlie Banks, third baseman of the NY Giants, will become his best friend and fill that gap. Through cunning, deceit, and smarts, he finds Charlie’s address and starts writing him. Charlie is less than thrilled, but just can’t seem to shake Joey. There’s just something about this persistent, annoying, resourceful, fearless kid that Charlie (like many, many others) can’t resist, much as he might want to. The book consists of their letters and notes, Joey’s notes to his local best friend Craig Nakamura, Joey’s report card (Obedience: F), letters to Joey from the White House Press Secretary in response to Joey’s letters, letters from Hazel, the Ethel-Merman-hating singer who is Charlie’s “Toots,” and so much more. Life is exciting and profane and sad, and a world war is just on the horizon.
“This is the story of Arthur Dent, who, seconds before Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, is plucked off the planet by his friend, Ford Prefect, who has been posing as an out-of-work actor for the last fifteen years but is really a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Together they begin a journey through the galaxy aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with the words don’t panic written on the front. (“A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.”).” –Publisher
Gus sometimes wonders how this got to be his life. He runs a video rental emporium (who even rents videos anymore? Very few people, which is still more than Gus wants to interact with) in a tiny town in Oregon, he has an accidental albino ferret named Harry S. Truman who goes everywhere with him (you really don’t want to deal with a pissed-off ferret if you don’t), he reads encyclopedias for fun, has a flip phone and no internet, can quote all the Oscar winners in any category for any year, and his “best” friends are three elderly, possibly-sisters-possibly-polyamorous-lesbians who drive Vespas and wear pink leather jackets (I think). It’s an okay life, it is, really, but he can’t even quantify how much he misses Pastor Tommy, his sweet, loving, outgoing, usually-totally-stoned father. Gus doesn’t interact with many people, and he’s beyond awkward when he does, so when he encounters Casey, an asexual stoner hipster who seems to think Gus is beyond awesome, Gus is completely flummoxed. Maybe the Internet could teach him how to be a normal person?
Hapless time-travel historian Ned Henry is in search of a horrendous Victorian artifact called ‘The Bishop’s Bird Stump,’ as part of a project to recreate Coventry Cathedral exactly as it was before it was bombed in World War II. Unfortunately, Ned has been doing so much time travelling that he’s suffering from time-lag, which disorients its sufferers and starts them quoting melodramatic poetry. Ned needs a rest, but the project’s financer, Lady Shrapnel, is ruthless in her pursuit of perfection–and the historians who will get it for her. Ned needs a safe place to recuperate, so travels to the Victorian era for a peaceful holiday drifting down the Thames River. Of course, nothing goes as planned, and Ned is soon embarked on a hilarious series of misadventures closely related to those encountered by the hapless heroes of Jerome K. Jerome’s hilarious ‘Three Men in a Boat, To Say Nothing of the Dog.’
“Set to have a vacation away from her home life and the tax man, young barrister Julia Larwood takes a trip to Italy with her art-loving boyfriend. But when her personal copy of the current Finance Act is found a few meters away from a dead body, Julia finds herself caught up in a complex fight against the Inland Revenue. Fortunately, she’s able to call on her fellow colleagues who enlist the help of their friend Oxford professor Hilary Tamar. However, all is not what it seems. Could Julia’s boyfriend in fact be an employee of the establishment she has been trying to escape from? And how did her romantic luxurious holiday end in murder?” –Publisher.
The town of Caerphilly, VA, finds itself in a unique position this July; their rat of an ex-mayor mortgaged the town buildings then fled, at which point the ‘Evil Lender’ evicted all town employees from the buildings–except for Mr. Throckmorton, who barricaded himself in the courthouse basement with his beloved Archives. Unbeknownst to the Evil Lender, there is a secret tunnel into the Courthouse, through which those town residents in the know have been ferrying supplies and information to Mr. Throckmorton for the past year. Now, though, the Evil Lender seems to be stepping up its efforts to get Mr. Throckmorton out–including getting him accused of murder. It’s up to blacksmith Meg Langslow and her town friends to find out the truth and save not only Mr. Throckmorton, but the whole town.
Travis and Craig met at boarding school and fell in love their senior year, 1978. After a passionate summer together in NYC, they went to the opposite sides of the country for college, and fell out of touch. Travis became an unorthodox professor of American literature, who asks his students about Alexander Hamilton and baseball, as well as what to do about his 27th boyfriend. Craig becomes a lawyer, falls in love with Clayton, and they’ve been together 12 years. Then Travis finally has a revelation in 1998 that Craig is The One for him, and starts off on a picaresque journey to find him and get him back. What does Craig think about that? Well, that would be telling…
“‘We agree that we are overworked, and need a rest—A week on the rolling deep? —George suggests the river—’ And with the co-operation of several hampers of food and a covered boat, the three men (not forgetting the dog) set out on a hilarious voyage of mishaps up the Thames. When not falling in the river and getting lost in Hampton Court Maze, Jerome K. Jerome finds time to express his ideas on the world around—many of which have acquired a deeper fascination since the day at the end of the 19th century when this excursion was so lightly undertaken.” –Publisher.
As I followed the “reading culture” thread on the listserv last month and scrawled lists of related books I need to investigate, it got me thinking about all the ways I read nowadays. More specifically, I thought about how differently I read now than I did when I was a kid. When I was the age of my current students, reading meant a print book, or maybe an article in a print magazine or newspaper. Now, though?
In the morning and evening, as I get ready for work or bed, I listen to audiobooks. I also listen to audiobooks on long car trips. For short trips, I prefer podcasts, though often that means reading-adjacent storytelling podcasts like The Moth or StoryCorps.
Professional articles I mostly read on my computer, though my school does subscribe to print versions of SLJ and Hornbook, which makes for a nice break from staring at screens all the time!
In my father’s last years, I called him daily to read him articles from The New York Times, Smithsonian, or BBC Travel, all of which I read on my computer (though I do maintain a print subscription to Smithsonian).
I review books for SLJ and Kirkus, and these days, I read all those on my computer.
For travel, or for books I need to read as soon as possible, I have a Kindle, or the Kindle app on my phone.
Before I go to sleep, I catch up on Webtoons, and read fanfic recommended by my friends’ kids or my students.
And yes, I also still read print books and graphic novels!
I’m sure that most of your reading lives are equally diverse, and I can only imagine what my students’ reading lives include! So often I think our students don’t consider themselves readers because they don’t read print books except for class, but they may well devour (or write!) hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction online, or listen to serial stories on podcasts, or read articles in areas of interest online, etc.
So how do we celebrate all kinds of reading as we build a reading culture at school? Chris Young mentioned a few things in their recent post on using Beanstack to foster a culture of reading, with Book Bingo that included articles and audiobooks. That’s a great start! Perhaps I could start the year with a board inviting kids to write down all the ways they read, and then work from there? Perhaps I’ll get amazing ideas from books about reading culture, as well. I don’t yet know how I’ll approach it, but I know I want to take into account all kinds of reading.
Tell me in the comments all the ways you and your students read!
Covers of all the books I read in the last twelve months, flanked by my favorite Webtoons.
Every fall, when we do our big middle school book fair, my high school students tell me fondly of how much they loved the book fair and ask me why we don’t have one in the high school. The reason for that, of course, is that none of the big book fair companies offer a high school option and I was worried that working with an indie bookstore would require a lot more work on my end (let’s face it – Scholastic makes it pretty easy). When our on-campus bookstore decided it wasn’t going to purchase summer reading books for students, I decided it was the perfect time to try it out. My friend at our local indie was totally game, and it turned out she had just attended a bookseller conference session about how to do book fairs with schools! We did 3 days in the middle school at the beginning of the week then finished the week in the high school. My goal was to get students excited about books and reading before school ended in May and also have a convenient option for families to buy summer reading books.
Prep and set up was really easy. We made a list of titles that we knew students would like or listed genre-type things like “realistic fiction graphic novels,” “Karen McManus-style mysteries,” “romances like Caraval or The Selection.” Over a few days, we went back and forth with the store adding things to the list and changing up titles as needed, and we ended up with a list of 35-40 different titles for each division. I opted for a variety of titles with a few copies of each, rather than tons of copies of just a few books, to give our students lots of options. I also knew that we could easily order anything we ran out of and just deliver to students later. The bookstore ordered the books and set up a Square that we would use for checkouts during the fair. They also ordered some “treasures,” as Nicole so aptly described them a few weeks ago. I made a joke at one point about how we’d have fun pencils and bookmarks but nothing that smelled like chocolate, only for chocolate-scented erasers to show up – needless to say they were a hit. Once everything arrived, the bookstore rep brought everything to campus and we set up the books on a few tables, making levels with some display stands.
In addition to taking cash and card, we allow students to charge book fair purchases to their student accounts, which means a lot less handling of cash for all involved. In order to do this, we require students to have a form signed by a parent that gives them a budget they’re allowed to spend. All middle school students got a paper form to take home, high school students could grab a paper form in the library, and all parents in both divisions got an email with a link to an online form. We then keep a spreadsheet of purchases that we can turn into our business office and can pay the bookstore in one lump sum. The Square app that the bookstore set up allowed us to put students’ names in the purchase notes, so we could easily keep track of who purchased what, and the Square also made it really easy to pull a quick report and make sure our spreadsheet matched actual sales.
So how did it all work out? Our middle school fair was pretty par for the course – lots of traffic from 6th grade, less from 8th – but I did have one kid come back in the afternoon to say how much he was enjoying the book he bought that morning! For me, the high school was the really fun part. See, my fiction and narrative nonfiction books are in a “Reading Room” on the opposite side of the building from the Research Library where I spend most of my day, so I don’t often get a chance to have impromptu conversations about just-for-fun books with students. I loved being able to have these readers advisory conversations, and both students and teachers were excited to come shop for books. I had conveniently read most of the books on offer, so I was able to make lots of recommendations, and I had several students who would just sit and talk to me about what they’d been reading lately. We have a lot of discussions about how our students aren’t reading, and there are plenty that aren’t, but a lot still love it and just lack the time to read during the busy academic year. This was a nice reminder of that.
The only thing I would change is scheduling the fair during the high school field day. Our Research Library, where the fair was set up, is right off the football field, and my plan had been to be open during the field day powderpuff game as a nice break from being outdoors. However, it rained all day, the powederpuff game was postponed, and students were dismissed early, so I had very few visits that day. In a perfect world, I’d also move the fair to May, but that’s up to my business office and not me.
I loved working with our indie store, and we plan to make this an annual fair. It was so much easier than I was anticipating, and I left with all the warm fuzzy feelings, plus a few new books for the library. Have you worked with an indie bookstore for a book fair? How did it work for you, and what else would you recommend to those looking to try it out?
I recently read Daniel Willingham’s The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. The book leads readers through each aspect of cognition that contributes to being a successful reader. And, perhaps of no surprise for librarians, the constant message was that folks who are good at reading are folks who read a lot. So, I was particularly interested in Willingham’s suggestions on how to get students to read more. It boils down, in many ways, to this: kids need to have books in their space all the time, it needs to be easy, otherwise the things that are easy (tik tok, anyone?) will win their attention. What I’m sharing here is one small step I’ve taken to help smooth the path between “I have some time on my hands” and “I’m reading.”
There are readers who always have a full TBR queue, and then there are those who go deer-in-the-headlights when they close the back cover on their latest book. While some of us are skilled at articulating what we like about the books we love–intense worldbuilding, deep character development, particular storylines, found family, etc.–there are also those who have a harder time putting their finger on what part of a book caused a connection. What better way to help figure that out and find their next book than a bit of gentle prompting by way of a decision tree!
Another way to reduce friction is to find the right attention getters. When we meet our students where they are at, like getting excited to see the next installment of Dune, and guide them to options that they may not have considered, we make it just a little bit easier to get a book in their hands.
My goal for now is to build out decision trees and mind-map style book finding aids for each of our genres. Genrefication made it easier to get out students to a subset of books they might find interesting, hopefully these diagrams can help a bit more.
What are you doing to make books easy for students? What are the books that win your students’ attention?
Truth is stranger than fiction. This saying is cited often, and now with advances in AI, it may well be more apt than ever. However, lately, I find that novels can call us to consider the features of our new world in innovative ways.
Seemingly unconnected to each other, two novels have some similar themes, related to concerns of our “real world” and a possible escape to better ones. For example, The Ferryman by Justin Cronin and Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land each feature certain similar plots relating to “new worlds” that aren’t quite as they seem. At the same time, each of these bears similarities to The Truman Show, in which Truman realizes he lives in his own artificial world. I am sure there are even more books and films that share these ideas of simulations. It is clear that the idea of space travel to another alternate safer place is buzzing our collective imagination. And yet, there is often an important catch to that dream, according to these works. Sometimes, we can’t quite reach our destination. And what collective knowledge should we bring with us on the journey as we begin anew?
These novels also share a concern with preserving knowledge, or discovering lost knowledge. Each has a secret trove of literature stored just in case. I wonder if there is a collective concern for a new era of information richness and clarity as our current information sources become muddled and distressed. This fiction coincides with at least two relatively recent nonfiction titles related to the idea of lost knowledge: The Library: a Fragile History by Andrew Pettegree and Richard Ovenden’s Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge. Meanwhile, Simon Winchester’s Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic details the changing ways society views the concepts and conveying of shared knowledge. Interestingly, issues with disinformation and misinformation lurk throughout the centuries; they are not new. But perhaps more prevalent now.
These titles, nonfiction and fiction, could constitute an interdisciplinary course on these interrelated themes. At the same time, the rise of AI will add new dimensions to these issues, and how we address them. As the use of AI chatbots increases, there could come a time when we will no longer reference one standard “body of knowledge.” At least the newer iterations add live links to their cited source material. Meanwhile, a related worry is that of “model collapse” in which the data sets are distorted and unreliable; another concern is “Catastrophic forgetting” which “refers to the phenomenon where neural networks lose the ability to complete previously learned tasks after training on new ones.” Each of these issues highlight real anxiety about the future of knowledge in our new age.
In these revolutionary times, fiction can open new avenues for deliberation and exploration of these important issues. A central plot feature in Cloud Cuckoo Land is the discovery of a missing Greek text–does this portend our own future scramble for lost sources of information from within our constructed new worlds? When coupled with relevant nonfiction, these fictional texts offer engaging and thought-provoking ways to explore solutions to current concerns and they are also fun to read.
