Memorial School Library

This month in the library---

September is "library card sign-up month" so we'll be encouraging our students to do just that (and you can here). At the tail-end of September is also Banned Books Week: "an annual celebration of the freedom to read that has been happening since 1982" (ALA). With that in mind, this month I'm urging you to reconsider any policies in your classroom or at home that dissuade children from reading what brings them pleasure.

As we try to get kids excited about reading, the bad news is it's going to be hard for us to compete with YouTube, but the good news is that kids' reading habits soared during the pandemic (read about that here). You can find out why that matters here. So when they bring joke books, I Spy books, picture books, and graphic novels back from the library, treat it like what it is: an opportunity to develop a lifelong love of reading. The author of the first article I've linked to said it best when she said, "Don't panic if they pick graphic novels or books about seemingly frivolous topics—the many benefits of reading are still being achieved and as their reading confidence and enjoyment grows, so will their interests, [...] Graphic novels also do offer kids several benefits, including introducing them to more complex words, better reading comprehension scores, and better recall." (Halkidis, 2021). The right book for these times may just be more light-hearted, uplifting, comforting books, and each child gets to decide what meets that criteria for them.

See you in October and until then---happy reading!

Ms. Garcia