A New Year

The new school year has begun, and oh, does the second year feel smoother than the first! Always the case, I think. I love seeing faces I recognize and knowing many of the students as readers.

A goal of mine this year is to advertise books more. Here are a few things I'm working on this year to be more visible in promoting literacy: (first two ideas taken from the AAIE conference last summer)

1. Wearing a lanyard around my neck and sticking a book through the lanyard as a book necklace of sorts. (this can be painful with thick books!) Kids now know that whatever I am wearing is something I recommend, and they can ask me for the book. It's working well so far as it gets people's attention.

2. Having a sign on the library door showing what I am reading. LOVE this idea, and then I take the book cover and add it to my recommendation bulletin board when I change it. In the future, I'd love to get more teachers to put something like this outside their classrooms.

3. And lastly, I'm trying to house all the books I recommend for various units of study and genres in one place. I tend to come across something wonderful and then forget what it was later on. Hopefully, my new Fabulous Books wiki will be utilized by teachers this year. I'm still using 22books as the platform with which to add the book covers. Easy, cheesy!

Feel free to share any ideas of how librarians are promoting books in school.