This is a guest post from Karen Miller, school librarian at Bertha-Hewitt School. Want to read more about the exciting materials our members have purchased with their mini grants? Read past mini grant reports here.

I first would like to say thank you for accepting my grant submission!
I purchased 5 book series for our school library.

I had a 6th grader read the first book from each series and give an “advertisement” for their book during Character Building which is a program for K-6 that happens every Friday morning. They presented their advertisement and they all were very happy with the book series they chose.

The most exciting thing to me was all my library classes on Friday as the kids came in they asked to check these books out! I actually have a waiting list on a couple of the series that have to be read in order.

I think it made a difference to have students present to their peers with their book reviews. That is exactly what I was hoping would happen after doing this!

Now I am hoping to do book “advertisements” monthly with different books in our library. Sometimes that is all it takes to get students interested in different genres that they might not normally read.

Some of the students who volunteered to do the advertisements were not ones I thought would be interested in it. So it also was a huge learning experience for me!

Once again I would like to thank you for giving me this opportunity!