Book Tasting Cafe

I’m always looking for ways to get my students interested in new books. When I received the new books this year, I decided to make introducing them to the students a little more fun. Normally I just pull them from the boxes, process them, and put them on display. This time I decided to start with unboxing videos. While the video of the unboxing of non-fiction books was too long to post online, I was able to post the videos for the other books so the students could see them. I also posted them on my Instagram.

Then I made plans. I decided to do a tasting with the books, allowing them to look at and preview all the books before anyone checked them out. At first, I wasn’t sure how I was going to allow everyone to look at the books and finally decided on a cafe. Students would be able to visit the cafe and make their own menus of books that they thought looked interesting.

The Set Up and Event

I purchased red and white checkered table cloths to cover our tables, arranging them so there was enough room to move between them. I also removed the chairs so that the students weren’t sitting at one table.

I created “menus” that the students could fill out. For third through fifth graders, I made a simple one with space to write eight titles. For the kindergarten through second graders, I took pictures of all the books, then arranged them on a series of sheets according to the tables. Unfortunately, this meant that the younger students had multiple pages that they had to sort through.

My students had a great time looking through the books and bringing different ones to me to show me which ones they liked. This is definitely an event they enjoyed and I will do it more often in the coming years. I may even set up an ongoing table to highlight different genres for my older students.

Positives

This really let all of my students see the new books. I will say that one class didn’t get to see them because of the way the schedule fell. The classes that did enter the cafe really enjoyed wandering around the tables, calling out to classmates when they found a book or bringing them to me to see the books they liked.

I liked that this allowed them more ownership in their choices since they now know what new books are available. I am hoping that a lot of the books will be checked out quickly once I put them on the shelves.

Negatives

The younger students got very confused by the menus. There were too many choices and they were not in any order so I quickly ditched those. Instead of having them circle their choices, I just allowed them free rein to look at the books.

I also have a couple of books that I need to repair ripped pages where the students got a little over excited over finding a book and turned the pages too fast.

Other than that, it went much better than I expected and the students really enjoyed the experience.

The Future

I will absolutely be doing this again when we get new books next year. Next time I’d like to incorporate more of the non-fiction books, but felt at this time that it was too overwhelming to include them. I think that allowing them to browse new books before they reach the shelves will increase circulation.

I’ve started choosing three students per class to check out a new book when the classes visit. While this means that not everyone gets to check out a new book, it will allow more students to check them out.

I have limited display space in the library and with the success of this program, I am considering creating a permanent table that has different books on it to highlight them for the students.

Overall, this was a great experience for both me and the students and I look forward to trying it again.