Engaging Teen Readers with Our BCPL Partners

Karen Turek, Library Media Specialist, New Town High

Our library partners at BCPL Owings Mills are an incredibly valuable resource to our teachers and students. This post will describe two of the ways our partnership is promoting reading and literacy skills within our school community and the positive benefits this collaboration has produced.

Teenagers love to read graphic novels. Last year, it was the highest circulating section in my library collection. In the winter of 2019, our school BCPL liaison put me in touch with two young adult librarians at the Owings Mills Branch because we shared a mutual interest: we wanted to engage more teens in reading for pleasure. Overall, my library circulation numbers were fairly low, and the public library was facing a challenge with low attendance at teen programs. By March, our Graphic Novel and Manga Book Club was born!

Our first step was to hold a planning meeting where two young adult librarians and I discussed specific details: when and how often to hold the book club meetings, a list of potential books to read, and marketing this opportunity to the students. Our club meets on Tuesdays, twice per month, after school from 2:30-3:30. I handle the in-school advertising with flyers, morning announcements, and talking to students in the library while one of the BCPL young adult librarians, named Jake, facilitates each of our club discussions with questions he has prepared in advance.

One wonderful aspect of our partnership is the access that BCPL provides to the books. We read two graphic novels or manga for each meeting; most students read both, but this allows them some choice if they only want to read one. The two books are usually selected thoughtfully, with a connection between them or a common theme, and some have resulted from student suggestions. At each meeting, Jake bring copies from BCPL of the next graphic novels we will read. We sign the books out to the students using their school account information and students return the books at our next meeting. No need to buy extra copies for book club! And students interested in reading more of a series can check out our school collection or visit the library branch.

The Graphic Novel and Manga Book Club meetings are a good opportunity for Jake and me to advertise other activities and teen programming at our libraries. He has documented an increase in participation at BCPL teen events, and the students attending our book club are now frequent visitors, and readers of other books from our school collection. Based on the positive results we have had, Jake is now partnering with another local school librarian to start a similar club at her BCPS high school.

We are currently planning to expand our partnership in a new way with a series of book talk presentations this spring to promote summer reading. Jake, and perhaps another YA librarian, will be visiting our school in late May/early June to promote the BCPL summer reading program for teens by bringing a selection of books and asking the students in the audience to choose books they would like to hear about during the book talk. This will be a great opportunity to hear about the books that interest students and remind students about summer checkouts from our school library as well. I’m so excited to start this new venture with BCPL!