Feeling lucky

This month, since St. Patty's day is a part of the spectacle, my assistant and I decided to do a Fame and Fortune theme and focus on books that deal with that topic.  Our board, the luck of the Irish.

As many know, we are a genre based library and one of our themes is Fame and Fortune.  We highlight books there that deal with being famous; books about actors, musicians, teens with a famous family, etc.  A lot of them are girly chick lit, with a focus on LA drama, but, they read it.

We decided to pull titles from this genre and make our display relate to the fame.  We have noticed when we do these special themes, the kids are excited and they gravitate to the titles.  It has to be because the kids are seeing the front of the books. 

We are seeing the success of our program and will certainly continue it!

Blind date with a book, part 2

I posted recently that we were going to do Blind date with a Book in the library.  I had absolutely no idea how AMAZING it was going to be!  We finally came back to school two days ago.  We had wrapped books last week before the big storm hit, since we knew it was coming.   We started with maybe 10 or 12 titles that we were using as new releases that week.  Since Monday, we have already wrapped 20 more books.

We have been keeping track of our circulation statistics and we have checked out 18 books so far.  Some of you might be saying, 18 books, that isn't too many, but, we are a district of 200 7th-12th graders with only about 45 to 60 permitted to visit the library on any given day.   I have never, in my four years in the library seen such an overwhelming response to a theme!  It is amazing.

I have learned a few things with the concept. First of all, no series books unless it was book one.  A few of the books we grabbed were series books and some of them were later titles.  (Can't read a series if you haven't seen book one.)  Secondly, label books that are strictly female.  We had about five boys refuse to get books because they were afraid to get a girl book, so we labeled them as "Great guy reads" or Great Book for Boys too! We will see how much we get tomorrow!

I may have to rethink this and do another Blind topic (Don't judge a book by its cover or something like that!)

Overall, this is by far the best monthly promotion I have done. The students are really enjoying it and I am so excited to see it work.  Anyone out there thinking about a unique way to get kids reading something new, definitely consider doing a Blind Date with a Book theme.

Blind date with a book

Anyone who has looked at Bulletin Board displays on Pinterest has seen the Blind Date with a book display featuring a fancy board with some text and then a stack of books covered with paper to unwrap after checkout.   We decided to jump on the band wagon and do that theme for the month of February.  We added a little bit of a twist, all the titles we wrapped are new releases that have never made it to the shelves. We thought it would be a fun way to get some new titles out there in a fun way.

We are working to make the board setup. (The three cancelations last week have made it impossible to complete a bulletin board, so I have no photos to share, just my thoughts)  We wrote the call number on the books and will manually check them out.   We are telling students they have to read at least 30 pages of the book before they return them so they can give them a chance. We are hoping to see a few people turned to a new genre or author.

We are hoping the fancy twist on checkout will make it a fun month for our students and readers.

A Doctor Who Themed December

With a new season of Doctor Who quickly approaching, my assistant and I decided it would be great fun to create a Doctor Who Themed month.   We decided to pull books that cross several of the genre Doctor Who represents:  Time Travel, Science Fiction and Historical Fiction.

Doctor Who has become a classical cult icon to several of our students and staff.   There are numerous Whovians amongst us who have our favorite character, favorite Doctor (Mrs. Wells thinks David Tennant is the best)  and even favorite episode.  Our devotion to the Doctor led us to our December Theme.

Because Doctor Who travels through time in his TARDIS (for non Whovians, a TARDIS is a machine shaped like a Police Box that is enormous and never ending on the inside, think of Hermoine's purse from Harry Potter but capable of transporting through space and time.  Doctor Who and his companion travel to various points in history to solve problems and outrun Daleks and Weeping Angels. Long story... you have to watch to see. )  Since we moved our collection to a genre style, we pulled titles that Doctor Who would experience- historical fiction books set in various eras (We pulled Chain by Anderson, A Northern Light by Donnelly, The Springsweet by Mitchell, Crispin by Avi, just to name a few.)  We also grabbed some Science Fiction books that fit a typical Doctor Who experience (Delirium by Oliver, Ashfall by Mullin, Starters by Price, Search for Wondla by DiTerlizzi, and XVI by Karr.)  Our final genre of choice was none other than Time Travel.  We grabbed books by James Dashner, Margaret Patterson Haddox and The Time Traveler's Wife.  We even shared the new Infinity Ring Series.

On Friday, we decided to have a Doctor Who themed day, wearing our Doctor Who shirts and maybe a Fez.  Cause like Books, Fezes are cool.

So, Read a book:  As Doctor Who says, "We are all stories, in the end just make it a good one!"

Donna Noble has left the library, and Donna Noble is safe!

Our themes so far this year

My assistant and I have been constantly trying to create new and innovative ideas to get kids to the media center and to get them motivated to read.  We were fortunate enough to be able to get some buy in from the kids for a few of the programs we thought about doing.   We have started hitting this goal hard this year because we were finding a lot of great titles but not a lot of kids enjoying the books like we felt they should.  We spent some time collaborating and talking to a few kids and searching our Pinterest account and got some fantastic ideas.

First off, we started doing monthly themes with displays. We had done boards and posted covers and ideas but never created a specific display to go with it.  We also didn't have a blog or a site that we updated often with things.  Secondly, we have had some release themes.  (Some of our Seniors even welcomed House of Hades by Rick Riordan by wearing togas.)

In August and September, we had a ReadBox with books that have hit the screen (both big and televisions) and saw several titles, young and old fly off the shelves.    We put together the display and a bulletin board to match.  It was neat to see kids coming in and gravitating to a display that had some new titles.

The second full month of school was October so we hit the Zombie theme head on.  We made a cryptic bulletin board loaded with visuals of titles and creepy things.  Our school had a special zombie program where kids tried to turn others into zombies.  It fit perfectly with our theme and we even saw a few students go die hard and dress in Zombie clothes and makeup for Halloween. (Only those who had been turned wore the clothes, however.)

We rolled into November with a theme for males- we thought of No Shave November and decided to pull titles that boys would enjoy and place them on the shelves.  We made a catchy theme and added a selection of titles to the spindle.  We decided to shorten November because my assistant and I have a love for Dr. Who.

With that in mind, we decided to end November and roll into December with a Time Traveling Theme. We have found a large amount of Historical Fiction and Time Travel genre that don't circulate, so we pulled several from those genres and are building our own Tardis with some Daleks and Weeping Angels for display.  We decided the theme would be a tribute to the debut of the next season of Dr. Who which starts tomorrow. (Photos to come, as we have designed and built our Tardis, but it is unfair to display it before the actual date.)

We have some great ideas for things to come. Keep checking back as we will be adding more of our ideas soon.