Day 7: Book Talks LIVE!

The Ravenel Library is set up with a section for popular series, to make frequently circulated books easy to locate and shelve. Many of the students go first to this section which contains series titles such as:

• Big Nate
• Spirit Animals
• Magic Tree House
• Geronimo Stilton
• Series of Unfortunate Events
• Junie B. Jones
• I Survived
• Bad Kitty
• etc.

While this is an excellent system for helping kids easily find titles and interesting books, the series with less books or with less familiarity are often overlooked by the students. Cindy asked me to conduct book talks over some of those series that she felt could be well-received by Ravenel's upper grade population.

Using Amazon’s Editorial Reviews sections, Goodreads reviews, the book jackets themselves, and the upcoming Book Fair previews, I combined some information to present to the students live in Mr. Dent’s 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade "gifted literature" classes. I tried to vary the books I presented within the list that Cindy suggested of less-circulated books, appealing to both boys and girls, offering shorter and longer stories, and ranging story contents. I decided to pick four titles per grade level, using one title to mention the Book Fair availability.

I first generated mini "speeches" that I would give during the book talks and then created handouts to go along with each presentation. My original intent was to create bookmarks with these titles on them; however, my computer and copy skills did not quite follow along! You can see that my handouts became more like my original vision as the grade level (the day's schedule) increases. Despite my tech-flubs, the students did not seem to notice one way or another the way the pages were written.

Booktalk Handouts 3rd
Booktalk Handouts 4th
Booktalk Handouts 5th

Once I was in the rooms to present, I found that the script I had created was too rigid to "perform" live. I still plan to record these book talks, so the scripts can still be useful; however, the reactions/interaction with the students required more flexibility. In this situation, I found the students both engaged and potentially excited in response to the titles. In the moment, I realized that the students needed some interactive piece to these book talks: STARS! I directed the students to draw one to five stars based on their interest for the title. This spur-of-the-moment thought worked exceptionally better than I expected, as the students enjoyed trying to draw stars, added twenty-two stars for some they were VERY excited about, and talked with their table-peers about which book interested them the most. Both the students and the teacher seemed excited about at least some of the titles which had them talking even as I was leaving the room!

I knew that the book talks were at least some success when several students came to the library to either check out or reserve the titles I had suggested. One student even came in with the handout to remind him of which one he wanted! Though a little intimidating and requiring a good bit of energy to hype the books up, this seems like a practice worthwhile for a few times over the year in my own library career.