Meeting notes from March 31st

This afternoon the group began by brainstorming ideas for the middle level summer reading list. The thing we want to keep in mind as we put this list together is that we want to lean toward suggesting recently published titles to students so that the list is something people get excited about. We want to avoid creating "the same old list" that people will ignore. Last year's list included the following:

• Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Eighth Grade Bites by Heather Brewer (YA)
• Thirteen Days to Midnight by Patrick Carman (YA)
• Incarceron by Catherine Fisher (YA)
• 13 Treasures by Michelle Harrison
• Life Strategies for Dealing with Bullies
• The Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez
• Morpheus Road by D.J. MacHale
• Spies of the Mississippi by Rick Bowers
• Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn (YA)
• Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass
• Gone by Michael Grant (YA)
• The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan
• Brain Full of Holes by Martin Chatterton
• The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
• Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (YA)
• Fablehaven by Branon Mull
• The Name of This Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch
• The Lab by Jack Heath

With that said, the list of book titled we brainstormed for this year's list is below. After looking over this list I was thinking we might want to create two summer reading lists, one of recently published books (within the past year or so, perhaps?) and another of titles for the category of "older, but good."

• The Girl Who Could Fly
• The Red Pyramid
• The Face on the Milk Carton
• Under the Watson's Porch
• Beauty Rules
• Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie
• House of Dark Shadows
• The Alchemyst
• Flipped
• Gathering Blue
• Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
• Boys Without Names
• Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
• The Red Fire
• Island of the Blue Dolphins
• The Edge Chronicles
• Epic by Conor Kostick
• Found by Margaret Peterson Haddix
• Missing children
• Eragon
• The Name of this Book is Secret
• Throne of Fire
• Book Without Words
• My Secret Boyfriend is Better than Your Secret Boyfriend

After we generated ideas for the summer reading list, then we brainstormed ideas for submitting a picture for Excedrin's "What's Your Headache?" contest. The idea here is to submit a picture of something unfavorable about the library that we'd like to change. Then, of course, if we happen to win, we would use the money to change the library for the better. We had two ideas: 1.) A picture of a messy desk (perhaps inspired by Ms. Miller's), but then realized that idea didn't necessarily benefit the whole library and therefore the whole school. 2.) A picture of old, dusty books. We never quite identified what message we were trying to get across (i.e. how we'd like to change the library for the better) with the image of dusty books. We'll keep thinking on this.

After we talked about the "What's Your Headache?" contest we discussed the library's role in Space Day (April 8th). We're planning on the following:

• Having a guessing jar full of candy for people to guess in throughout the week
• Displaying books having to do with space
• Having an alien drawing contest. Students started work on a flier to advertise the contest, but didn't finish. Per student request, click (here) to access the Publisher document we started.

Please post to the blog or email me if you have any questions, ideas for the summer reading list, etc.

Great meeting all!