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

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.

Snow Day Reading Challenge

Well, we are on day three of being out of school due to cold and snow, so, Mrs. Wells has decided to offer a special Snow Day challenge.

Here are the rules:
1.  Read a book (any book that is your level. It could be from the library at school or your personal collection.)  It can be a book you checked out last week when we were in school as well.
2.  Google or check YouTube for samples of book trailers.   There are some AWESOME ones out there. Book trailers are quick and easy grabbers to a book.  They are like the trailers you see at the movie theater before the actual movie begins.
3.  On your school device, you have a program called MovieMaker.  It is built in.  Play around with it.  It is very easy to use.   Find some pictures, find some video, find some audio.  Look for Creative Commons, like I have mentioned before.   Assemble a movie about the book.  It only needs to be 30 seconds to a minute.   You can do clips and a voice over, you can record yourself talking about the book, whatever you feel is the way to get people excited.
4.  Save the document on your computer and stop in the library when we get back from weather days.  Mrs. Wells will help you transfer it to her.

The library staff will watch the trailers and choose the best one.  The winner will get 2 coffee shoppe coupons. Everyone who submits one gets their name in a drawing for a coffee shoppe coupon.

So... what are you going to read Hamilton?  Mrs. Well is finishing Beautiful Darkness and Insurgent.