Highlighting Books!

April 19, 2025

by Amber Miller

We all love books, and we want the children in our lives to love them too. How can we highlight books and start to create a community of readers?

Book Displays

We often think of 'recommendation' displays, but they can expand beyond that with these three ideas, among others:

• Learn something new every day - this allows you to include a wide variety of topics that appeal to a diverse range of student interests, casting a wide net!

• 'Adopt a shelf' - students can adopt a shelf and work together to curate a book display to share with their peers.

• Books that pair well - consider grouping books together to encourage readers to delve deeper into a topic.

Next Up Books

Once a student, especially one who hasn't been particularly engaged as a reader, has started reading a book and shown an interest, start thinking about the next book you'll recommend. Here to the left, for example, you have a student who has read some of the Eerie Elementary books (by Jack Chabert), and they are starting to stall a bit in the series. You know the student enjoyed the suspense and appreciated the illustrations, short chapters, and relatively short book length. So, you've identified the Notebook of Doom series (by Troy Cummings) as a potential next read.

Book Ladders

Similar to next-up books, but they go beyond a single next-up book. A ladder maps out many choices so you can 'keep a good thing going.' Another consideration is thinking about the books in the ladder as rungs with each one working towards incremental growth. This way, you build background knowledge, vocabulary, and familiarity to help your student move into more challenging texts along the way. For example, this is an illustration from Harvey and Ward (2017), where the authors share a story of a teacher capitalizing on her students' curiosity about dogs. This ladder starts with an accessible, shorter picture book to pique interest...followed by progressively more complex options.

Get-to-Know-You Book Stacks

Harvey and Ward (2017) recommend the get-to-know-you stack. This is a curated stack of books for you to share with students, offering some insight into what might interest them. They recommend you collect a variety of books to consider appeal by 1) amounts of text on a page; 2) length of texts with some shorter and some longer; 3) topics like animals or how-tos; and 4) reading experiences like graphic novels, cover-to-cover, or dipping in and out of nonfiction. Taking note of the books they gravitate towards and engaging them in conversation around the books (type, topic, etc.) will help you make recommendations and offer book choices. See the 'get-to-know-you' book stack below, which includes a variety of options, from biographies to procedurals, popular series, and compendiums.

Jump-Start Book Stack

Another type of book stack is a jump-start stack (Harvey & Ward, 2017). As you engage more with readers, you'll learn more about their interests and the types of books they tend to choose. Sometimes readers lose interest, get discouraged, or just simply stall. A jump-start stack pulls in options for readers based on what you've learned about them in an effort to offer choice, build interest, and jump-start their reading. In this jump-start stack, this particular class of first graders was interested in all things animal. The jump-start book stack below reflected this interest, as well as supportive book elements (e.g., words per page, book length), and introduced some variety, bridging nonfiction and fiction. Notice, too, that this stack pulls in compendiums for in-and-out options.

Book Talks

Book talks are designed to sell a book to a reader. They can range from reading a short 'hook' selection to giving a prepared book talk, following a set of steps. Keep a running list of your book talks for readers to refer back to (if you have recorded talks, even better!). See below for more information on book talks.

Additional Info on Book Talks

Start by reading Ontarian Librarian: Engaging Reluctant Readers During Book Talks (2020) for a current take on using book talks (and library displays) to engage readers.