How Do You Pick Books with Limited Funds?

Another way I help generate interest in books, especially new books, is that I involve my students in selecting the new books for our room. Each day on my SmartBoard presentation for my classes, I include books or authors in some way. Because I have this presentation, it's easy to include a few slides that have prospective books on them, give a quick summary and ask students to rate them. So here's how it works.

1. I select some sort of book list to present to the class. I started with Becky Anderson's recommended books for teens from the  Illinois Reading Council Conference and Anderson's Bookshops. I get a new list each year at the conference and it's a great starting point. I've also used lists from Book Riot or from browsing Pinterest.

2. I honestly just go in order from the list and select 3 books per day. I put a picture of the book cover on my presentation. Each class period I show them the 3 slides with the 3 books and give a quick summary. For example...

"Red Queen is about a world where people can have red or silver blood. If you're red, you're common. If you're silver, you're royalty and have some sort of magic. However, our protagonist has red blood AND magic. It's discovered and the royal family decides to hide her to keep her safe. But there's a growing rebellion of Reds. Where will the protagonist's loyalties lie?"

So how do I decide what to say about books I don't have in my classroom and that I haven't read? I read the Amazon blurb and put it into my own words. Sometimes this works great, and sometimes it is horrible. Some of those are really awfully written and you can't get a good feel for the book. Mostly, however, it works out.  

I try to hide my own interest or disinterest in a book because I want the students to give me their own opinions, but I'm sure it seeps through sometimes. 

3. As I'm telling my students the summary, I've asked them to rate the book on a 1-5 scale on a little piece of paper I've given them. It's pretty simple. I ask them to put the title (or an abbreviation thereof) and choose a number with 1 being uninterested and 5 being very interested. My students like to be funny and put very long decimals sometimes or even write mathematical equations for me to solve. I enjoy this. (I round the decimals, if you wanted to know.)

4. After I've collected the slips of paper (and I literally just use scraps. Papers discarded in the recycling bin. Junk mail. Old DOL slips from when I used to do those. Whatever I can find with a blank side.) I take about 2-3 minutes to sort them during my prep. I want some very simple data. How many kids rated the book a 5, 4, or 3. I write that data in a notebook and recycle the slips. 

Why does this work?

My students hear about lots of stories (which is also great for their writing ideas!) They start talking to each other about books. When the book comes in later, they remember that we've already talked about it and now they're excited as soon as it comes in. The book will be in someone's hands within a day.

How do I display what books we're getting?

Using the data I've collected, I can determine which book is my next priority to purchase. I then have a small display at the front of the room. It simply has the next two books we're going to get, how much it costs, and how much money we've earned so far from Bing points. The top book, Playlist for the Dead has accumulated all $15 and has been ordered. The List will be next, but we only need $10 to buy that one.

How do you decide what books to buy for your room?