16 School Library Activities for New Books
What are some school library activities to introduce students to new books? This question was asked in our Learning Librarians Facebook group, and our amazing online collaborators did not disappoint with their answers. We’ve all seen students get into a reading rut, where they are only checking out books in a single series or genre. Read on to discover 16 engaging school library activities to introduce students to new books, whether they are new to your collection or new to your students’ attention.
New Books Auction
Christine Jensen says that her favorite new books activity is a Book Auction. She give kids mini Monopoly money (found in Dollar Tree sets). Then she shows them the cover of a book and hypes it up for 30-60 seconds. Bidding starts at the lowest increment. It’s a live auction, so the first student to get to the highest amount wins and gets to check out that book. For example, for one class she gives them 10 one dollar bills and starts the bidding at $1. For other classes, she gives each student 10 ten dollar bills. This way she doesn’t have to sort out the money and repackage so quickly between classes.
She also features books with book trailers, and students sometimes watch those instead of her talking. She chooses some titles that are often checked out and others that are brand new to the library. When she has ties, she rolls a virtual die and if the student’s number is picked, they get to check out the book. New this year, she has a list she gives out where students can write down titles of books they didn’t win, and she puts them on hold for them.
New Books Would You Rather
Middle school librarian Krista Surprenant did a “would you rather?” activity where she had two options. After seeing the two options, her students talked about the choices, and then she showed two books that went with the options. She also did a four corners game and had books to go with four corners options.
Here’s how it worked. The first slide would have the would you rather question. For example, would you rather live in an amusement park or live on Mars? After the class discussed those two options, the next slide would have the books that go with those options (Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus and Rover’s Story), and she would do a quick book talk about those two titles. She had the books on the table with the students, and they enjoyed trying to guess which book went with the would you rather slide as they answered! You can see more in this Google Doc that she shared.
Brainrot Book Quest
Allison Webb started a new reading incentive this year. She found these brainrot stickers on Amazon and students earn a new one on their bingo card each time they read a book in a new genre. She shared this Google Drive link to her card template.
Eyeballs in a Bowl
For October, Vikki Heaney has plastic eyeballs in a bowl that have Dewey numbers and fiction letters written on them with a Sharpie. Students grab one and get a book based on the eyeball. She says there are lots of laughs with this activity! You could do this activity any time of year by using colorful ping pong balls instead of eyeballs.
Blind Book Bingo
Heidi Danuser shared a library activity called blind book bingo with her fifth and sixth graders, and they love it. She makes a 16 x 16 grid with first lines from books. She splits the class into two teams, but doesn’t tell them who is on their team. However, each team is given a color. She shows the bingo grid up on the screen, and when a student correctly identifies the book a quote came from, she writes their name on the square in the color of their team. As the game progresses and kids who have gotten their name on a square can see who’s on their team, they can then team up and work collectively to try and get more squares faster. She gives a Jolly Rancher to everyone on the winning team as long as they were trying and looking for the quotes. She does allow them to do Internet searches. The following week, she reveals the correct answers and gives a brief overview about what the book is about. She always gets a good amount of holds put on books after these school library activities.
Scholastic Storyvoice
Alexis Rojas recommends Storyvoice by Scholastic as an excellent resource for school library activities. This website has live author readings and illustration demonstrations, with replay links available after the live events. All the featured books from Storyvoice’s free, live read-aloud shows are available to order from Scholastic Books Clubs. There are new author/illustrator events every Friday.
Story Stone Connections
Tonya Lowe tried a new idea recently (a tweak on book tasting) to promote books from her Indigenous collection. Each group of students had a bin of books and a set of story stones (images on rocks to represent a journey, family, connection to nature, or learning). She modeled how she browses a book: look at the front and back covers, read the inside blurb, maybe look at author info, flip through and read a page. Then students browsed their book bin and decided which stone seemed to connect to a book, and each group shared one combination with the class. She rotated the bins around the groups two or three times. She found it to be pretty effective and to have a bunch of check-outs. If you don’t have story stones available to you, you could use Story Cubes instead.
Teacher Favorites
In the Picture Book Month of November, Alyssa Choraszewski asked teachers to share their favorite picture books and include why it is their favorite. She then created a display of the books and the teacher write ups. If she doesn’t have a copy, she tried to find a video read aloud of that picture book and link it by QR code. Students earn prizes for reading the teacher favorites.
New Books on your Badge Cover
Gabrielle Weininger changes her badge cover to reflect new books in the library (4-6 small images) and students love seeing the new book images during her lunch duty. Isn’t this a great idea for turning lunch duty into a new books promotion?
Mystery Books
Rayanne Polm does a play on a blind date with a book, but without wrapping books in paper. She calls it mystery books (instead of blind date) because she works with elementary students. For example, in October she has a small bucket with 30 numbered pumpkins in it. Behind the counter, she has 30 books with numbered Post-it notes. Students draw a pumpkin and whatever number they get she gives them the book that has the matching sticky note. She does this at Christmas with a mini Christmas tree and ornaments, at Valentine’s Day with little paper chocolates and a candy box, and again at Easter time with Easter eggs and an Easter basket. She says that it’s always a huge hit.
Hook Contest
Emily Denney does a hook contest! Students have 15 minutes to go to the shelves and use shelf markers to find the best opening sentence to enter into the “hook contest.” They vote, and she displays the winning books with their hooks attached! She says that the kids LOVE it!
Book Cover Match Contest
Bernadette Roche plays a game where she shows book covers of two books on the screen, then reads the back of one. Teams compete to guess which book cover matches the description that she read aloud.
First Page Predictions
Lisa Rogers would often read first pages of a batch of new books, and ask students to make predictions about what might happen in the book. She says that the books would fly out after this activity! It’s also a good opportunity to use cover clues to predict what the book will be about. This school library activity supports reading comprehension skills, too!
Practice the 5 Finger Rule with New Books
Andrea Sprague puts a pile of new books out and has her students practice their 5 finger rule with the new books. They wind up trying out a bunch of different books, and she gets a glimpse as to whether those books are actually within their reading level. You can grab free 5-finger rule bookmarks here.
Lonely Books
Gigi Michaels does a “Lonely Book” activity. She makes special bookmarks that the student gets to keep, saying “I’m a hero; I rescued a lonely book,” with a superhero graphic on it. She displays on tables books that have not been checked out in over a year. She starts the activity by talking about what it feels like to be lonely, and then she talks about the poor books that never get to go home for a sleepover. The students shop for the book they want to check out. The next week, students bring their lonely books back and share with their class why they think it is a lonely book or talk about why they think it is a great book. Then she holds each up and asks who would like to take this book home this week. These lonely book school library activities will help you to see which books should remain in your collection.
Musical Chairs
In addition to these school library activities, you might like playing musical chairs with books, as explained in the linked blog post. It’s a fun way to introduce students to new or overlooked books, keep students moving, and no one gets “out” in this library game!
Happy reading!
