Erika Earp created an awesome resource and a cool book group that she would like to share on the Young Librarian Series. She is 29 years old and is an Information & Referral Librarian in North Carolina. If you have any questions you can contact her at earpel[at]gmail[dot]com and you can also check out her blog, Erika STILL rules the blogosphere. Thanks for contributing Erika!
My friend, and coworker, Linette showed me an awesome website. I thought it was great and thought it might be a good idea for a book club. Linette and I decided to make a teen book club where the teens created the facebook plot feed. We put together a list of the books we thought would be good to do. We had a short list of requirements. Things like no flashbacks, since that would be more complicated, not too many characters, in case not a lot of teens showed up. We decided to do Twilight as our first book in the hopes that that would bring in a good number of teens.
We made a set of guidelines like only plot points from Twilight are to be included, nothing from New Moon, Eclipse, or Breaking Dawn. Our publicity campaign for the book club included not only signs and posters up at the branch library, but also mailing the information to the high schools in the area.
Our first meeting only two girls showed up. We figured this was because of the branch where we were doing the book club–it’s hard to get people to come to programs there. We had made cupcakes that were filled with cherry pie filling, so they looked like they were bleeding when bitten into. We also made a beverage called something like Vampire Blood or something like that. (If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll send you the recipes.)
We decided to go ahead and still do the next month, where our book was New Moon–we had decided to do the entire Twilight saga. That meeting had higher attendance–three girls showed up, yay! Those girls were also more involved in the process. The first month, the girls hadn’t read the book recently, the second month, the girls had just read the book, so it was fresh in their minds. Since so few girls attended each month, Linette and I each got to do a character’s facebook feed. The first month I was Jessica and the second month I was Alice. Unfortunately, Linette’s husband got re-stationed (or whatever it’s called) from Fort Bragg to Fort Knox, so she and her family had to move, which meant we were going to cancel the next two months.
Now that I’m back at my normal branch (that’s a whole other story), where we have better turnout for teen programs, I’m tempted to try it again, but I’m involved in two other book clubs that are starting up this fall. I don’t have the time to do a third one. Perhaps at a future job…
To view and/or download the twilightbook feed for Twlight click here.
To view and/or download the twilightbook feed for New Moon click here.
You can also view full screen by clicking on the small display icon on the bottom right of the viewer on Slideshare.
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