Intro
Hi everyone! And welcome to Books Between - a podcast for teachers, parents, librarians, and anyone who wants to connect kids between 8-12 to incredible stories. I believe in the power of books to bring communities together. And my goal is to help you connect your children and your community with fantastic books and share inspiring conversations with the people who make that magic happen.
I’m your host, Corrina Allen - a mom of a 9 and 11 year old, a 5th grade teacher in Central New York, and glad to be back with you after a short hiatus to focus on school and supporting some local candidates in the mid-term elections! Before this year, I had NEVER done any phone banking or canvassing, but after being inspired by so many of YOU - I knew I had to get off my bum and get to work.
This is episode #62 and Today’s show is all about promoting literacy in your community. First, I’ll share some advice about launching a community book club based on my experience starting a ProjectLIT Book Club at my school. And then I’ll share a conversation with Harper & Maggie, two young girls who’ve launched Books & a Blanket - an organization to promote literacy and well-being among young children in need.
Before we get started, I have a BIG announcement that I am delighted to tell you about! For the whole month of December, Annaliese Avery and Jarrett Lerner and myself from MGBookVillage are teaming up with Lorie Barber and Erin Varley to bring you #HappyPottermas - a month-long celebration of all things Harry Potter! There will be daily Twitter prompts and all the 9pm EST Monday night #MGBookChat topics throughout December will be all about Harry Potter! And…. I’ve got some special guests lined up for the December episodes of the podcast to talk about the Wizarding World. And I would love to feature YOU on the show as well. So if you have THOUGHTS about Hogwarts, Snape, the books vs. the movies. If you have OPINIONS you want to share - I really, really want to hear what you have to say! So, if you are interested in being featured on this podcast, just check out the link posted in the show notes, and I can’t wait to hear from you!
Main Topic - Launching a Community Book Club
This week I’m sharing some things I’ve learned about launching a community book club based on my experiences starting a ProjectLIT Book Club at my school. But whatever type of book club you might already have going or are considering starting - whether that’s a ProjectLIT club or not - I think you’ll get some good ideas from today’s discussion. And - just know that every document I mention (flyers, surveys, discussion guides, etc…) are all available for you to download right in the show notes and on this episode’s post at MGBookVillage.org. And all of them are editable so you can download and adjust them however you need.
Today I’ll be talking about the difference between ProjectLIT and other traditional community book clubs, including the pros and cons of each. Then I’ll share some ideas about how to prepare to launch your club, some ideas about how to decide what books to read and how to get copies of those books, how to get students and the wider community involved and excited, and then I’ll get into some specifics about planning meetings and hosting a community-wide book celebration.
That’s a lot to cover! So let’s dig right in!
What is the difference between a traditional book club with community involvement and a ProjectLIT Community Book Club - and what are the pros and cons of each?
ProjectLIT is a grassroots literacy movement with community book club chapters all over the country. As of this week, there are now 592 chapters. Their goal is to increase access to culturally relevant books and promote a love of reading in our schools and communities. Each spring the ProjectLIT team consults with chapter leaders and announces a list of 20 books from middle grade to YA that include topics that will generate lots of discussion and bring awareness to issues in our society. Since this is the second year, there are now 40 books to choose from. The books feature characters from a wide variety of backgrounds and are usually #ownvoices - written by authors who share the marginalized identity of the main character. For example, some ProjectLIT books are Amina’s Voice by Hena Kahn and Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Some of the YA choices are Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime and Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. ProjectLIT is all about bringing together a community to discuss the big ideas put forth in these books and to encourage students to take a leadership role in planning community meetings and doing community service projects to promote literacy. It’s beyond just a book club that might meet to read and discuss books. If you want to know more about ProjectLIT, their founder, Jarred Amato was a guest on this podcast on episode 54. So, if you are considering whether or not to launch a more traditional book club in your school or to be a ProjectLIT chapter, here are some pros and cons to keep in mind.
Cons:
PROS:
How can I prepare my launch to make the book club successful?
Doing some work ahead of time can really help get your book club started off on the right foot and get some community behind you from the very beginning. One of the first things I did was to decide who I might strong-arm into, I mean…. invite to partner with me. In most schools there are at least a couple book lovers who would be down with helping out. At my school - that would be the amazing Kelly. So I emailed Kelly - who was totally excited about launching a club at our school! Sometimes you just have to ask people. Then I emailed our local public librarian, the PTO, our principal, and let them know about the awesome new club for kids that was coming soon.
Then, I needed to decide how often we would meet, when, and where. And that really depends on two main factors - time available at your school or library. And YOU! Because honestly - you are the one who needs to be the main force in making this work. So just...decide and promote the heck out of it! Since our school day starts early, a before school time was not going to work. So I decided to offer the club to 4th and 5th graders after school from 2:10 to 3:15. The reason I went with 3:15? Because that’s the time that Drama Club and the Book Cooks let out so I decided to be consistent with them so parents wouldn’t be confused about pick-up times. I also decided to go with Thursdays to avoid those other club days as well. Now, I will say - I’ve had to do some push back against getting sucked into meetings on Thursdays. But I am holding firm. I don’t want the job to get in the way of my actual work - expanding literacy and love of reading in my school. So if there is a meeting on a Thursday? I’m not going. I’m with the kids doing THAT important work.
The next thing to decide is how many books you want to read throughout the year and when you want to hold a community-wide celebration of those books. Again - this all depends on YOUR availability and how many books you think you can get. Maybe you start small with just 4 books and 4 events. Maybe every other month works for you. Since I have no chill whatsoever, I decided to go for once a month but to use our first month of school to let everyone get settled and start promoting it, and then officially launch in October. Kudos to ANYONE who can jump start something the first month of school - I just can’t quite manage the logistics of that. So - cut yourself some slack and give yourself a month head start.
After looking at the calendar and our school schedule, I decided that our community-wide celebrations would be the first Saturday of every month from 10am to 11:30am. I went with this for a few reasons -
That being said - there is absolutely no possible way you can accommodate everyone’s schedule and avoid hockey tournaments and dance recitals and the plethora of other obligations people have. So - no worries! If kids can’t come to the Thursday after school meetings, they are always welcome to just attend the celebration event! And if they can’t attend the community celebration, they are still welcomed wholeheartedly to the after school meetings. And if November doesn’t work out - come join us when your schedule frees up in the spring! I really try to make it as socially and emotionally easy to join us as possible - whenever they can.
Okay - so once you’ve decided the meeting days and when your community book club celebrations will be - figure out a place to meet. We meet in my classroom after school because I know that location will be available and I am not inconveniencing anyone else. And we meet in the school library for those Saturday celebrations. I had considered meeting at the local public library, but opted for the school library for a couple reasons - one, I am familiar with that space and have access to it so I can set up the night before. Perhaps you are noticing a theme here - make it as easy as possible for YOU. Also, I want the school and our library to be a literacy hub for the community. And I wanted access to the technology in that space - Promethean Board and Chromebooks. And the public library didn’t have those options and the students and I were comfortable with our school’s space and technology.
Alright, so your prep phase should include the Who, When, and Where. Who - figuring out who will help you and who you will reach out to to let them know the amazingness that is coming. When you will meet with students and when you and those students will host the community book club celebration. And where -the location of these meetings.
How do you decide which books to read?
Picking awesome and interesting books are what’s really going to get people excited. And I recommend letting kids have some ownership of that process. Kelly and I decided to pick the first book ourselves so we could do some work ahead of time to get copies and then have the kids vote on the other middle grade ProjectLIT choices. You might decide to have the students pick from a list you provide or have them pick every other month so there is some variety but also honors student choice. We launched our book club with Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes. For us, this seemed like a good start for a few reasons. It was one of the books with an easier reading level and being in New York, our families have many personal stories about 9/11 that this book club would give them an opportunity to share. So I’d recommend picking a really high interest book to start that will get a lot of support in your community.
During our first after school meeting, I had the students do a book tasting of 15 ProjectLIT books that I thought would be a good fit for our 4th and 5th graders - Ghost Boys, The Wild Robot, Amal Unbound, Wonder, The Crossover, Rebound, Booked, Ghost, Patina, Sunny, The Parker Inheritance, The First Rule of Punk, Wishtree, and Refugee. Perhaps you could give some choices that align with your goals and that ensure a variety of perspectives. So - I had scrounged up multiple copies of each book and printed out evaluation forms. (Those are available to download right in the show notes!) Kids sat in groups of about 4 and examined and previewed about 3 books at a time. Just like any other book tasting, I encouraged them to look at the cover, read the teaser material on the back cover or inside flaps, and read the first page. And I framed this for them as - don’t JUST think about what YOU like. Think about what books you like and what titles you think would be important and interesting for our community to discuss. So - then they voted on their top choices. I had intended this to be done on a Google Form (which I will share with you) but our internet went down so we went old school and they wrote down their lists and we tallied them up. The seven books that got the most votes were The Wild Robot, Wonder, Amal Unbound, Ghost, Sunny, Wishtree, and The First Rule of Punk. And… I’m not gonna lie. I was a tad heartbroken that a certain book I really, really wanted to read with them didn’t quite make the cut. BUT - I had committed to honoring their choices. Also - Sunny was chosen but NOT book 2 of that series (Patina), so I just decided to go with it since each book can really stand on their own.
After that, I matched each book to a month - putting the two Jason Reynolds books (Ghost then Sunny after each other later in the year since their reading levels were more challenging) and timing Wishtree so our celebration would fall close to May 1st since that date plays a big part in the novel. So, as you schedule the books, think about what seasonal connections you might make and consider putting those more challenging books later on in the year. Also - some books will be available in softcover later in the year, so you might want to schedule those then to reduce costs. Speaking of costs….
How do you get copies of the books?
This is the big challenge. Ideally, you want to gather enough copies for each student who wants to participate AND some extras for those in the community to borrow as well. (But that’s not always possible.) So, here are a few suggestions:
How do you get students and the community to join your book club?
Alright - now that you’ve built something amazing and have everything organized and have a plan to get those books - you need to build that excitement so kids will come and continue coming! And the community will read the books with you and come to the celebrations. Let’s start with the kids:
So - how about getting the staff and community to come to your celebrations? That can be a bit trickier, but I do have some ideas for you:
How do you run the student book club meetings?
One thing that I did on a whim was to start our very first meeting with a quick get-to-know-you activity. I definitely didn’t know all the students and I’m certain they didn’t know each others’ names, so we did a quick round of “When the Cold Wind Blows”. Basically each kid takes a turn standing in the center of the circle and says their name and something about themselves. Like, “My name is Corrina and I like Harry Potter!” And if that applies to you, you stand up and move like the wind to another seat. That went over so well, that each month, when we have a new mix of students, we start with a new ice breaker. During that first meeting, I pass out the reading schedule (and yup - that’s right online for you!), and we start reading together! Sometimes we listen to the audio book and sometimes Kelly and I take turns reading it out loud. For the meetings after that first one, we take the first 10-15 minutes to discuss the reading we did last week - talking about any confusing parts, big ideas, connections, questions, favorite parts, or favorite quotes… and then I read aloud or we listen to the audio book for the next 20 or so minutes. And the last 20-30 minutes is planning time. This is when the kids take care of invitations, come up with discussion questions, trivia questions, brainstorm new ideas together - and basically take care of all the things that come up when planning an event.
After that, we pack up and I escort the crew down to the main hall to be picked up and take that opportunity to connect with parents and answer any questions. So basically, our after school book club meetings are discussion, read together, plan together.
How do you host a great community book club celebration?
Honestly, I wasn’t sure this was going to work out at ALL. The Saturday morning of our first event, two things happened that did not bode well. First, despite the fact that I had requested the room through the proper channels and filled out all the school-required paperwork, the library was locked and NO ONE with the key was available. Okay - so we just relocated to my room, and I scrambled to get the space organized. Second - several of the kids and staff had volunteered to come in early at 9:30 to help me set up and it was 9:50 and NO ONE was there but ME. And I thought - well…. I’ll just hang out here and grade papers and eat the cider and muffins I brought myself. But - then…. EVERYONE showed up!! And our final count was over 40 people and it was an amazing event! So - here is the schedule we followed.
A few things I would change - we forgot to explicitly ask people to fill out the surveys and return them to us. Oops! And I forgot to take a big group picture! Next time, I’d also make sure that at least one of the book club kids were seated at each group. We also didn’t get as many community members who weren’t directly connected to the school as I had hoped. So, we are going to keep reaching out! And our next steps are to do more community service events like book drives and to find ways for the students to be literacy advocates in other ways in our community.
So, overall - it was REALLY successful and a TON of fun! Our new principal came - even though he hadn’t technically started until the following week! We had almost all the book club kids come with at least one family member - including bringing older siblings who were former students which was wonderful! About six staff members came, including one with her new baby.
I was truly overcome with the passion and excitement and generosity that our community showed. And really - all I did was provide an outlet and an opportunity for kids and the community to express their passion for reading and literacy.
I know, if you decide to start a community book club in your school, you won’t regret it! And if you have any questions at all, I’d be happy to chat more with you. You can email me at booksbetween@gmail.com or reach out on Twitter or Instagram at the handle @Books_Between. And if you have some suggestions or tips about how to run a successful community book club - I’d love to share your ideas so we can all learn from each other!
Maggie & Harper from Books and a Blanket - Interview Outline
Our special guests this week are sisters Maggie & Harper - founders of Books and a Blanket! We talk about the origins of their project, their favorite books, and how you can help them promote literacy and well-being among young children in need.
Take a listen…
Books & a Blanket
What is Books and a Blanket and how did it get started?
How has Books and a Blanket changed from when you first came up with the idea?
How do you get all the books and blankets? And do you accept both used and new?
What are your plans for the future of Books and a Blanket?
How do you decide who gets them?
If our listeners wanted to get involved and help you out, what could they do?
Your Reading Life
One of the goals of this podcast is to help educators and librarians and parents inspire kids to read more and connect them with amazing books. Did you have a special teacher or librarian who helped foster your reading life?
We have a lot of teachers and librarians listening. What is something you want them to know?
What is something you wish teachers did MORE of?
What is something you wish teachers did LESS of?
What are some of your all-time favorite books?
What have you been reading lately that you’ve liked?
Links:
Books & a Blanket website - https://booksandablanket.com
Books & a Blanket on Twitter
Books & Authors We Chatted About:
Mr. Lemoncello’s Library (Chris Grabenstein)
The Penderwicks (Jeanne Birdsall)
Penderwicks at Last (Jeanne Birdsall)
The Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)
The Hunt for Red October (Tom Clancy)
The Mysterious Benedict Society (Trenton Lee Stewart)
The Candymakers (Wendy Mass)
Nevermoor (Jessica Townsend)
The Land of Stories (Chris Colfer)
Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
Artemis Fowl (Eoin Colfer)
Closing
Okay, that wraps up our show this week! I hope you’ll head over to BooksandaBlanket.com to help support a great cause.
And remember to check out #HappyPottermas throughout December for some magical fun.
If you have a question about how to connect kids between 8-12 to books they’ll love or a suggestion about a topic we should cover, I would love to hear from you. You can email me at booksbetween@gmail.com or message me on Twitter/Instagram at the handle @Books_Between.
Books Between is a proud member of the Lady Pod Squad and the Education Podcast Network. This network features podcasts for educators, created by educators. For more great content visit edupodcastnetwork.com
Thank you so much for joining me this week. You can get an outline of interviews and a full transcript of all the other parts of our show at MGBookVillage.org. And, if you are liking the show, please leave us some love on iTunes or Stitcher so others can discover us as well.
Thanks and see you soon! Bye!