REFLECTIONS

INTRODUCTION

After reading Professor LaGarde's blog post "Six Tips for Building Book Displays That Matter," we were inspired to include student voice and choice in our discoverability project. The books our class is reading this week focus on real world issues that we think teens are interested in, so we wanted to draw on those issues to capture their attention. Hey, Kiddo also got us thinking about how art can be a powerful way for teens who feel isolated or misunderstood to communicate and connect with others.

With all of these considerations in mind, we decided to design a monthly book display with an art prompt based on the book of the month. These art prompts will explore how characters in the books express themselves, and invite teens to use similar techniques to express their own feelings and experiences.

Teens are invited to co-create the displays by contributing their original artwork. They can also use our templates to share recommendations for other books that contain similar themes and express their opinions about the books. Each month could be kicked off with a program where participants work on their art projects together and discuss their book recommendations, but people could also contribute to the display independently throughout the month.

In addition to promoting student voice and choice, we like this plan because we think it is very versatile. It could be used in a school library or a public library, and the displays could be virtual or physical. On the rest of this website, we’ll demonstrate how the virtual version might look. But the materials could easily be adapted for use in a physical display.

Thanks for reading. If you decide to use some of these ideas in your own library, we'd love to hear how it goes!

Sincerely,

Molly Reinero and Jackie Galton

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