{"id":3013,"date":"2011-09-20T00:00:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T04:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=3013"},"modified":"2011-09-20T09:57:26","modified_gmt":"2011-09-20T13:57:26","slug":"book-club-kits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/book-club-kits\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Club Kits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking for a way to highlight your collection, increase circulation, put your expert knowledge of children’s literature to great use, and<\/em> remind your users that the library is the beating, pulsing heart of\u00a0your community? It may be as simple as a few duplicate copies, a handout of discussion questions, and a quiet corner for groups to meet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A few of our popular Kids Book Club Kits.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Launched last fall, Kids Book Club Kits have been an extremely popular (and easy to manage) new service at my library.\u00a0The kits are designed to make patron-led book discussion groups fun and easy. Each kit contains several copies of a librarian-selected title, a book summary, discussion starters and questions, further resources such as websites or extended reading opportunities, and suggested activities related to the book’s themes.\u00a0 In addition to the kits themselves, parents who register with the Children’s Library are also given the opportunity to reserve a meeting space\u00a0to host their discussion group.<\/p>\n

Choosing the Books<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

We began by surveying our Kids Fiction and Kids IRead (chapter book) collections, noting the titles\u00a0we owned in multiple. We decided to start by choosing ten titles\u00a0for\u00a0early elementary (grades 1 to 3) and ten titles for\u00a0older elementary (grades 4 to 6.) In addition to being available in duplicate, we looked for books that\u00a0were exciting, highly discussable, slightly off-the-radar, and that naturally lent themselves to extended activities.\u00a0\u00a0It helped that\u00a0we booktalk new titles each spring to our local elementary schools and purchase\u00a0multiple copies of those titles. As a\u00a0result, after a few years, we\u00a0are able to go back and resurrect these great books as Book Club Kits.<\/p>\n

Writing the Content\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A selection of our Book Club Kit handouts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The most time-intensive aspect of launching the Book Club Kits service was researching and preparing the handouts.\u00a0We decided to make a template consisting of a picture of the book cover, a brief summary, 1 or 2 discussion starters (or icebreakers), 4\u00a0to 6\u00a0discussion questions, a list of further resources (often consisting of the author’s website or related material), and an activity related to the themes or characters.\u00a0 As an example, check\u00a0out\u00a0\u00a0The Year the Swallows Came Early Kit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While getting the discussion questions together took\u00a0some time and consideration, it was one of the most enjoyable in the process.\u00a0The entire\u00a0children’s staff, including our summer intern, was encouraged to participate by reading and re-reading the\u00a0selected books and thinking of great questions and\u00a0activities to add to the handout.\u00a0When stumped, we were\u00a0often\u00a0able to find\u00a0questions and\u00a0discussion starters from several publisher websites.\u00a0Although we decided to\u00a0create our own templates, libraries could just as\u00a0easily print out discussion guides straight from\u00a0the publishers.<\/p>\n

Kits and Meeting Spaces<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Once we had our 20 initial kits ready to go, we had to figure out how we would store them and how patrons would check them out.\u00a0We decided, after a bit of trial and error, to keep the kits (the duplicate copies and the handout(s) in a library bag) in our storage area.\u00a0Patrons wishing to start their own book clubs are able to checkout\u00a0the number of copies they require (we stock each kit with at least 6 copies) and a discussion handout. They are also encouraged to reserve a meeting space. In order to accommodate our Book Club Kit users, we have several evenings per week\u00a0that are reserved for book discussion groups. We make sure that our programming space is open and available during these times. To keep chaos to a minimum, we ask that every patron-led book club using the Children’s Library to meet has a designated adult group leader.\u00a0This is typically a mom or dad who takes responsibility for both the materials and the children using the space. Book Club Kit users may take advantage of the meeting space\u00a0registration, or opt to simply check out the kit and host the\u00a0group at their home.<\/p>\n

Keeping it Fresh<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Now that we’ve established a loyal group of kids and parents who use this new service, we add ‘new’ titles each year to keep the selections fresh.\u00a0Sometimes\u00a0we select slightly\u00a0older books (including\u00a0titles we have booktalked in the past)\u00a0and\u00a0resurrect them as Book Kits.\u00a0 Other times we look into which titles are newly available in paperback. For minimal cost, we can purchase six brand-new paperbacks and created a\u00a0rather spiffy-looking kit.<\/p>\n

At any given time, several of our kits are checked out.\u00a0Parents and kids return eager to check out more and hear about the newly added titles.\u00a0We like to hear about what books they’ve read recently and what titles they’d like to see added to the list. It’s an ever-evolving service. So far, we have yet to add\u00a0an eBook kit.\u00a0 But\u00a0we’ve been brainstorming….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looking for a way to highlight your collection, increase circulation, put your expert knowledge of children’s literature to great use, and remind your users that the library is the beating, pulsing heart of\u00a0your community? It may be as simple as a few duplicate copies, a handout of discussion questions, and a quiet corner for groups to meet. Launched last fall, Kids Book Club Kits have been an extremely popular (and easy to manage) new service at my library.\u00a0The kits are designed to make patron-led book discussion groups fun and easy. Each kit contains several copies of a librarian-selected title, a book summary, discussion starters and questions, further resources such as websites or extended reading opportunities, and suggested activities related to the book’s themes.\u00a0 In addition to the kits themselves, parents who register with the Children’s Library are also given the opportunity to reserve a meeting space\u00a0to host their discussion group….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[82,22,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-kiera-parrott","category-childrens-literature","category-collection-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}