Book+displays

A number of you wanted me to post a hit of my responses. Some of you gave the same ideas or different versions of ideas. I have listed them below: It is a pretty long list!

I received so many great ideas. Thank you for all of the response. My mind was "book display boggled" for a few days. Now I am excited to plunge in and see what I can come up with.

Thanks again!

Have students write down their favorite book on a note card with a few sentences of why they liked it so much. Then, I retyped them out on publisher and put them in the general vicinity of the book on the shelf. The kids who liked to "roam" the shelves looking for a new book really gravitated towards those and I had more than a few ask if they could make a recommendation as well.

Why not have the students create them?

Books that are each the first in their respective series. Otherwise unrelated books with a word in common in their titles (night, sisters, great, etc.). Books about a theme (time travel, people stuck on islands/out in the wilderness  Fiction and non-fiction books that go together in pairs (a novel that has Mark Twain as a character and an actual biography) "If you liked....." (taking a popular book and surrounding it with read-alikes) "On this day in history" (A selection of historical fiction books labeled with the date the relevant historical event happened that could be put out on that day/in that month).

Top 15 circulating books. The kids like to read what everyone else is reading.

"Dive into a series" with diving pictures, etc. The series idea has worked because it keeps the secondary kids reading into the year.

On my shelves I stack books horizontally, once they are checked out I display those on the top of the shelves, etc. This is more like a bookstore feel and seems to generate more interest.

We made some ppt reviews and also some book trailers and loop them on a couple of old computers.

We made some posters for some books and some reviews mounted on construction paper. We bought cubes for $2 or $3 bucks at Walmart in their picture frames and did some cute small displays of series books. I have cubes for the Twilight books, Lightning Thief and Ender's Game. Make author posters and put all of their books on display. Hang posters around the school when new books arrive. The art teacher had his Art Club students choose a book from the library and create a movie poster for the book.

With the Academy Awards around the corner I decided to make a "Before the Movie.....There was Book" display.

Set up a website and/or a blog. On the blog upload book trailers that I had made and I embedded others that I found from people like Naomi Bates who have encouraged us to use hers from School Tube and Teacher Tube. I try to grab as many kids as possible coming in to direct them to the blog and ask them to tell their friends. I've also begged the teachers to do the same. Then, I download a bunch of book trailers from YouTube and other places and removed the sound. Since with those, I've modified them (taken out the sound), and can't always give proper attribution, I'm not sharing them on  the Internet. But, our TV production teacher has added them to the rolling announcements that are on the TV's in all the classrooms, and I'm projecting them on a wall in the library. Our literacy coach has really pushed to get book clubs going, facilitated by teachers, but essentially student led.

Have parent volunteers help with the displays. I came up with the ideas for the displays, (themes, often based on current events or on special celebrations). I then meet with this small group of parents about once very three months to discuss the themes of the displays and the timetable for changing the displays. Some of the children liked seeing a mother or neighbor carrying out this work and actually started to ask questions to  these people about the next display. It builds a (small) bridge between he library and the community.

"Now playing at your library". Another one to display movies. On an old computer I'm running a slide show of book covers together with their respective movie posters. I put it in my display case with some white tube lights and movie popcorn boxes with a selection of books sprinkled through. I've had some good response to it.

With the abundance of post-apocalyptic books I have a display that has the lyrics from the popular REM song, "It's the end of the world as we know it...." this is also a great chance to display classics that showed views of the future, 1984, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Ender's Game, etc.

"Books so good they were made into movies". Romance novels, mystery books, scary book, etc. Displays I keep going all year: graphic novels, our state readers books, and Junior Library Guild Books which arrive each month.

You could try a book display of debuts-first books by new authors. Match the teacher to their favorite book (or the book their reading now).

In a display case, I display personal autograph books and a picture of me with the author. I have collected the books from conferences. Since my budget is being cut I accept students and parent volunteers donations of books when they finish reading the. I received a complete series of Twilight form a parent volunteer. I am sure that students would donate books for free homework passes or extra points in class. My English dept. works with Barnes & Noble as a fund raiser for their class set of novels and give students free English homework passes when books are purchased during the weekend.

"If you liked (insert book here), then try (these books) and put books by the same author, similar themes, genres, story lines, etc. on display.  "Bet you can't read just one!" and put out series books. (I have done this  before using empty stuffed potato chip bags)

Have students design new covers for your oldest, dated-looking books. Student poster contest. Loneliest book in the library (least circulated) "Seen the movie, now read the book"

How coincidental! I just posted to my blog several websites FILLED with book lists for YA! Go to www.naomibates,blogspot.com or google "YA Books and More" and look at last nights ( March 4, 2010 ) post. Hook up a larger computer monitor to a laptop and play your trailers there on the circ desk. How about digital picture frames? Running backgrounds on computers?

Something fun we are doing right now is a March Reading Madness bulletin board (you wouldn't really need a bulletin board, you could keep score on a poster or something) I created 16 brackets (32 books) like they do for March Madness basketball. I pitted like books against one another (Twilight vs. Bloodline, Where the Sidewalk Ends vs A Light in the Attic) for the first round voting. Not all the books are Middle School level - I used some old favorites. I have great teachers who do the voting during reading class - it only takes a minute. I created ballots and students had to circle the book in each bracket they liked the best. They the votes were tallied and the winner of each pair was then paired off with the winner of the bracket next to them. The kids have gotten really excited about it and stop by the bulletin board all the time to see who is ahead. Some favorites have already been voted out