Posts on book displays

I've been a little lazy with the book displays the past few weeks. Or maybe I should say I've been very busy with other important things at work. That sounds better, doesn't it? And it's true, I swear.

Anyway, I had a realistic fiction display in our Junior High Fiction area all of November. High time for something different! We're getting out our Christmas (and Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, in much smaller numbers) books today, so to complement them I pulled out some wintry fiction.

Currently on display:
- Northlander, by Meg Burden
- The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper
- The Dreaming Place, by Charles DeLint
- Spud in Winter, by Brian Doyle
- The Winter War, by William Durbin
- Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
- Girl Overboard, by Justina Chen Headley
- Far North, by Will Hobbs
- The Winter Road, by Terry Hokenson
- Miracle on 49th Street, by Mike Lupica
- Brian's Winter, by Gary Paulsen
- The Winter When Time Was Frozen, by Els Pelgrom
- Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett
- The Trap, by John Smelcer
- Feathers, by Jacqueline Woodson

Not a bad combination of adventure, fantasy, realistic fiction, and even a little historical fiction, if I do say so myself.

Any suggestions of books to add when the supply is depleted? They need to be upper middle grade and/or tamer teen fiction. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe does not qualify in our library, alas!

Here's the promised book display to highlight our new GLBTQ list. "Different Families / Same Love"—that goopy enough for you?

The lit holder has copies of our Gay and Lesbian, Adoption, and Celebrate Diversity lists. And the books are a selection of picture books from those lists!

Sorry for the crummy (as usual) photos. I'd blame the camera, but—no, actually, I'll just blame the camera.

I'm playing catch-up with my book display photos (which are, I realize, probably more for my own archival benefit than anyone else's). Here's the one I took down this week...

...with some historical fiction, some mysteries, and some historical mysteries. Today, I put up this Halloween horror display...

...as well as this mostly realistic fiction display.

I'm unable to escape the irony of creating a book display for junior high kids with the heading "just be yourself," considering that it's hard enough to know yourself, much less be yourself, at any age—especially when you're in junior high. But hey, it's something to aspire to.

The "just be yourself"/"stand up for what you believe" display is full of books about individuality as it relates to exploring one's own identity and/or standing up for social causes. It also serves as an opportunity to include a larger-than-usual number of books with GLBTQ characters in a nod to National Coming Out Day on October 11.

ETA, 10/7/08:
Upon request, here are the titles I originally pulled for the individuality display: Stand Tall (Bauer), Walking Naked (Brugman), Born Confused (Desai), Crossing Jordan (Fogelin), Leaving Fishers (Haddix), Totally Joe (Howe), The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place (Konigsburg), Absolutely, Positively Not (LaRochelle), Peace Is a Four-Letter Word (Nichols Lynch), Going Going (Nye), Define Normal (Peters), That Fernhill Summer (Rodowski), How to Get Suspended and Influence People (Selzer), Stargirl (Spinelli), The Gospel According to Larry (Tashjian), That Girl Lucy Moon (Timberlake), Missing Abby (Weatherly), Adam Canfield of the Slash (Winerip), Make Lemonade (Wolff), The House You Pass on the Way (Woodson), and Am I Blue?: Coming Out from the Silence.

I'm not patting myself on the back with the post title, just being punny. I decided I didn't feel like doing a back-to-school display in the junior high fiction, so we've got dragons and faeries instead. Call it escapism if you want, but 18 years later, the thought of going to junior high school still makes me go, "Blech!"

The signs say, "Not all dragons are evil" and "Not all faeries are good." In spite of the proliferation of faerie fiction lately, dragons are still more numerous by far. We'll see how the two factions fare in terms of circulation...

It being the height of vacation season, I wanted to display some books that don't take place in the U.S. I wanted some books that feature American kids abroad and others that feature kids from other parts of the world in their native land.

While I'm not in favor of making reading a numbers game, with less than two weeks left of summer reading club I wanted to appeal to kids' sense of economy. Besides which, many of these books don't usually get much action because they're thin! (I've mentioned before how many parents and kids in this community turn up their noses at books that aren't doorstops.)

Kids finally took a couple of pirate books! But we're so wiped out of spy books now, I decided to refresh both junior high fiction book displays. (Besides, instead of "Spies v. Pirates," I had "Pies v. Spy Rats" in my head all week!)

Books to Make You Cry / Books to Make You Laugh

General as it is, this display was hard to choose books for! What makes you cry or laugh is sooo subjective, right? I especially had trouble with the sad books. It takes a lot for me to cry at a book—basically, a beloved pet or main character must die. Other readers aren't so callous.

(I promised Brenda Ferber I'd include Julia's Kitchen in this display, because she's always having girls tell her it made them cry! But when I went to the shelf, guess what? It was already checked out!)

Kids at War / Kids on the Homefront

This display was more straightforward, though I immediately hit on this problem: what about books taking place on foreign soil, when the main character is a native of that place? They're on the homefront, but that's where the war is. What a fortunate existence we Americans lead, in that so very seldom is the warzone and the homefront one and the same.

I know you've been lying awake at night wondering, "Spies versus pirates: who would win?"

After five days of my latest junior high fiction display, I'm here to tell you: spies all the way.

I can barely scrabble up enough spy books to keep the display semi-stocked. Meanwhile, not a single one of those pirate books has budged all week.

In fairness to pirates, our multiple copies of Kenneth Oppel's Airborn and Skybreaker are all checked out, as is Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson's Peter and the Starcatchers series.

Then again, so are 85% of our Alex Rider books, all our copies of Ally Carter's Gallagher Girl series, all our Young James Bond, and Jennifer Barnes' The Squad series.

I think the spies still come out ahead.

I love making book displays, and one of my disappointments with our Junior High area is its lack of space for displays. We have room for a few face-out titles on the window sills, but that's it.

Then, about a week ago, I was digging through one our storage closets and found three large plastic bins which were, apparently, used for filing once upon a time. But the dividers make them just the right size for displaying paperbacks and smaller hardcovers!

I cleaned them off, found a counter for them, and stocked them with books. The way I have it set up, each holds 16-20 books. It's so much fun to go back there, see the empty spots, and put new stuff in!

This week's themes are Magic Light/Magic Dark, with light-hearted and scarier fantasy, and Get in the Game Girls/Guys, with sports-themed books. (Get in the Game is the Illinois state summer reading club theme.)

There's an invitation on each sign for patrons to add books they think fit the category. When I came in this morning, I found a few questionable items in there (whether they were put there on purpose or because of laziness, I don't know), but also some that fit. We'll see how it goes! I'd certainly like to include more kid contributions to our displays. Many of them know the books better than we do!