This is a guest post from Brian Krause, Media/Technology Integrationist at Melrose Area Public Schools.

The Melrose Area Public Schools would like to thank the Central Minnesota Library Exchange for its generosity in granting us a Mini Grant for this school year!

This is my first year working in this school district so it took me a while to realize what books we had and where there might be some areas to improve.

One day I decided to read a Choose Your Own Adventure book to several groups of students and the kids really enjoyed it. Many were asking if we had more, but unfortunately once we checked we found out that we did not. Through this grant we were able to purchase several different series of Choose Your Own Adventure books and they have been flying off the shelves!

The students really enjoy the chance to make decisions to see where the story goes and to see the different outcomes that might happen. We now have an entire section of shelves filled with Choose Your Own Adventure books; or they would be filled if so many weren’t checked out!

Besides purchasing Choose Your Own Adventure books, this grant also allowed us to improve two other sections of our library – Graphic Novels and several brand new series we didn’t have.

Graphic Novels are very popular among students here like I’m sure they are everywhere, but there were several incomplete series that now we were able to fill out, and there were several other book series on student’s wishlists that we were now able to purchase.

For our youngest readers we were able to purchase many books from three popular series that we didn’t have – Otis, Splat the Cat, and There Was An Old Lady.

Thanks again for your generosity! Our students have really enjoyed the new books. It’s always fun to see how so many student faces light up when they find out there are new books on the shelves.