Summer Reading List for Librarians

Hi friends!

What will librarians read this summer? You might be looking for books for fun or for professional learning. I’ve got some super suggestions for you!

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Want to engage your readers?

I heard about Pernille Ripp’s latest book on this Cult of Pedagogy podcast episode. I bought it to read and study this summer.

The title is Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child. Pernille Ripp is a seventh grade teacher in Wisconsin and the creator of the Global Read Aloud. Like The Book Whisperer and Reading in the Wild, both by Donalyn Miller, the author writes from the perspective of a classroom teacher. Her ideas can easily applied to the school library.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book, and I’ve only read to Chapter 2:

• “[W]e cannot rely on the years to come…we must take responsibility for the year that we have with our students.” (p. xxii)
• “I have learned that for all of our students to have a chance of becoming the readers they were meant to be, then we must believe it more loudly than they do. At least in the beginning.” (p. xxiv)
• “Show students that reading is not something that just magically happens but instead is something you plan for.” (p. 13)
• “Make sure that you speak of the different ways to be a reader and not just [your] way.” (p. 17)

Want to shake up learning?

Kasey Bell’s book is full of strategies to make any classroom, including your library, a more dynamic learning environment.

Whether you feel like you’re a technology novice or an expert, you’ll be challenged by the questions Kasey Bell asks, like:

• How are mistakes treated in your classroom?
• Why not give [students] questions that they can’t do a Google search for?
• Why do we create the schedule first and then decide how to make time for the learning?
• Do you have a Personal Learning Network?
• Is your classroom a tribe of learners?

Want to read for fun?

Do you love summer reading like I do? When I don’t have that 5:30 a.m. alarm to wake me up, I feel free to enjoy staying up late to read just one more chapter. I’ve gathered suggestions from my Learning Librarians Facebook group.

Kid Lit

• Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow (A cursed girl escapes death and finds herself in a magical world with a Magnificat, a Wundrous Society, and the Hunt of Smoke and Shadow)
• The Real McCoys (Moxie McCoy is the world’s greatest fourth grade detective, trying to find her school’s stolen mascot and a new best friend.)
• The Tiny Hero of Ferny Creek Library (A brave young bug named Eddie saves the school library from a substitute librarian who wants to get rid of all the books.)

Young Adult

• Everything, Everything  (A diseased teen can’t touch anything in the outside world, but her life changes when a new guy moves in across the street.)
• The Librarian of Auschwitz (Based on the author’s real life experiences, a 14-year old is responsible for hiding the 8 books prisoners have smuggled into the Nazi prison camp.)
• War Storm (Book 4 in the Red Queen Series, with Mare Barrow allying herself with the boy who broke her heart)
• The Cruel Prince (Book 1 of The Folk of The Air series, about a mortal girl drawn into royal faerie intrigue)

Adult Fiction

• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (A mute young man lives on a farm in northern Wisconsin where his family raises a remarkable breed of dogs, but tragedy strikes and Edgar must flee into the wild.)
• Surprise Me (Shopaholic author Sophie Kinsella wrote this novel about a married couple who tries to bring surprises into their lives, causing comical disasters to ensue.)
• Meddling Kids: A Novel (The Blyton Summer Detective Club solved its final mystery and unmasked its final villain in 1977, but they’re getting the gang back together again to find out what really happened in that last mystery.)

Adult Non-Fiction

• Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis (A book about white working class Americans from Kentucky’s Appalachia region, told by the author about his own family.)
• The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50 (Research shows that our happiness rises again in our fifties, rebooting our brains for a season of gratitude and compassion.)
• Butterfly: From Refugee to Olympian – My Story of Rescue, Hope and Triumph (The inspiring true story of a Syrian refugee who saved fellow refugees from drowning, then went on to become an Olympic swimmer.)

Please share in a comment the books that YOU look forward to reading this summer!