Display: Blind Date with a Book

My director decided for the month of February to create a "Blind Date with a Book" display upstairs in the adult area. All staff are to pick five books and wrap them up, and write the barcode on the outside. I thought it would be fun to do something similar with the kids books downstairs!

I chose 16 books to start, all from my "J" (chapter books) section, and I tried to choose ones that are part of a series or at least have more available by the same author. This will hopefully get kids interested in a new author they might never have tried before. Some of the ones I chose are Frindle by Andrew Clements, Redwall by Brian Jacques, Magyk by Angie Sage, and Clementine by Sara Pennypacker.

Inside each book is a "Rate Your Date" bookmark for kids to fill out and let me know what they thought of it. As an incentive for kids to participate in this, each time they turn in a bookmark their name will be entered into a drawing for a prize on or around March 1.

There was quite a bit of prep work for this display, in choosing the books, looking and typing up read-alikes, wrapping them, setting their status to "display", creating the header. But I really like making displays, and I think this one will be lots of fun!

"Don't judge a book by its cover!"

"Check out a wrapped book, take it home, and unwrap it. Show it your favorite spots to read. Get to know each other. If you hit it off, introduce it to your friends! There won’t be any awkward feelings if you don’t like your date, but you might find the match of your literary dreams!"

"Fill out the “Rate Your Date” card inside the book, and turn it in by March 1 to be entered to win a prize!"

Lots of ideas for this display were found on Pinterest.


Edited to add: Two days after putting up this display, 14 of my 16 books are already gone... Guess I have to find some more!!!