It's a Forever Book

The Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving Break were parent conference days at my school.  Normally the library would be pretty quiet during conferences - a time to catch up on the always overflowing shelving or spine label repair.  Not this time though.

"Are you the librarian?"

"We brought our ticket."

"They said you had a book for us?"


December marks the beginning of our 5th One School, One Book celebration.  If you're not familiar with One School One Book - it is a family literacy program where every family and staff member receive a copy of same book during the same time period.  It's like nightly reading, only better.

For the next three weeks we will be reading and sharing Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and the Motorcycle with our school community.  I love this program.  It's a pretty amazing feeling to hand a student or a family a book, and explain, " It's a gift, a forever book.  You don't have to return it."

Five boxes just like this - ready to go!

Books sorted by class

We do lots of things to encourage students to read from the book each night with their families.  We introduced the coming book to families during a literacy night with a staff skit.  There's nothing quite like wearing paper mouse ears  and singing "Three blind mice" in front of your school community to make you feel like a celebrity during lunch duty the next day!

I'm lucky to work with some amazingly supportive colleagues!

During parent conferences families received a ticket that could be brought to the library in exchange for a copy of the book.  What an incredible experience.  I've never had the chance to talk with so many families about reading to their kids before.  Over two days I was able to personally encourage nightly reading with almost 150 families. AMAZING!  During these conversations I also shared a reading calendar that marks out how the book will be read and explained that daily trivia questions that go along with the reading would be announced every morning over the intercom.  It was great to see how many parents had fond memories of reading this same book when they were younger and watch them exclaim to their child that "They'll love this book!"  It was even better to watch them walk out with the book in hand and smiles on faces.

To help pique interest I always create a display outside the library that goes along with the book.  This year I'll be posting pictures of trivia winners on the display as well.  When we finish reading, we'll celebrate the end of the book by hosting a Family Movie Night and we'll show The Mouse and the Motorcycle movie (Yep  - 1986, Fred Savage, stop-motion - the very one and the same!)

Best of all though, will be the conversations over the next three weeks.  The discussions that will happen as we read the book.  The chance to laugh together about a character's antics or shake our heads collectively in disbelief at the turn of events. It's about building a community of readers and the forever habit of reading.  This is what it's all about.