The Brooklyn Public Library just celebrated its 125th birthday and released a list of its top 125 most borrowed books ever.
I have a middle school book club, the Any Book Book Club (or ABBC), and I decided to share the BPL 125 list with my students. I created a document on Canva with screenshots of the titles on the list and offered space at the end for students to take notes or write down books they wanted to add to their TBR list.
I didn’t anticipate how excited the kids would be at seeing some of the books on the BPL list! My group of 6th graders grabbed markers to check off all the books they’d read while reminiscing about picture books they love: The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom got the most exciting reactions.
My 7th and 8th grade students commented on how the list was heavily populated by children’s picture books, and they were amazed that some of the older classics were still in the top-circulating books.
I also printed a list of the top 50 checkouts from our school library and had them compare the two. We talked about what each list said about who visits and uses the library, and the ways circulation statistics can be used by librarians to serve their patrons better.
Sharing book lists is a great way to expose kids to books in a different way. Why not capitalize on the social media trend of challenges by sharing or creating a book list and asking kids to check off the titles they’ve read or inspire them to pick up something new? It’s almost impossible to get a book list without immediately checking off mentally what you’ve already read.
Book lists can also work well in conjunction with teaching kids to keep a reading journal. I don’t think I started keeping track of the books I read until I was in college, and I wish I had: there are books out there that I know I’ve experienced but can’t remember whether or not I’ve read them. By tracking what they read and how they felt about it, reading journals can help kids identify their reading preferences through reflection, which in turn will help them find similar titles. Reading journals also give kids a chance to be creative and interact with books in ways they may not want to or feel comfortable with doing, in a classroom setting, whether it’s through actual journaling, sketching, or whatever their imagination wants them to create. If we want to create a culture of reading, we need to spark and foster a love of it: encourage them to collect books like they collect pokemon cards…even if it’s just through a series of lists.
Solia Martinez-Jacobs, Oakland Unified School District
This is a fantastic idea. I’m going to copy it! Thanks so much for sharing.
Hi Erica, Thanks for the comment!
I think I started keeping a ‘read’ list in high school, and looking back I really wish I had done it earlier! There were so many awesome books I read as a kid, and so many of the titles are just lost to time and memory. A 7th-grade student and I recently had a discussion about re-reading books as an adult. She wanted the experience of re-reading something from childhood and having a new perspective on it, and I talked about some recent re-reads I’d done, and encouraged her to start keeping track of the books she read because I really wish I had!