My husband and I spent Labor Day weekend at the TX coast. We towed our boat down to Rockport. We’ve done that three times now and it is heaven on Earth. Rain or shine, that was our weekend to be there, and truth be told, there was some rain. I of course brought a book with me, but I had not expected so much time to read (I was actually supposed to be doing work on the drive down there, but my computer BROKE at the 30minute mark of the 5 hour drive, so I read the rest of the way).
All that time for reading meant I finished my book. So I found myself in Rockport, in the rain one morning, without anything to read! And that just wouldn’t do!
I was with my friend Jessica who is a teacher/reader/leader like myself. So what do you imagine two reading people would want to do on a rainy day of their vacation? We went to the used bookstore of course! A quick google search- and VOILA! We packed in the car (my husband as our driver) and headed out on the town!
Lori’s Book Nook- in Rockport, Texas! Woo-hoo!
I realized something on this trip to the Book Nook… navigating a used book store is challenging! It made me wonder as a teacher if we are preparing students/readers to know what to do should they find themselves someday in the same boat (pun intended).
Let me explain…
The first thing one needs to know in a used bookstore is what genre they like to read. Right? I headed right away to the fiction section. It was probably (lucky me) the biggest section in the store. Romance might have been 2nd! (#notmystyle) Fiction found… I started to browse.
Then I realized… our students need to have favorite authors in order to navigate this favorite section of books. Books were just swimming in front of my eyes on the shelves so I decided to narrow my looking to my favorite authors.
I started looking for my favorite authors… Charles Martin… Nicholas Sparks…. John Grisham…. Dean Koontz….
And look what I found…
Another thing that I realized, in order to be successful in a used book store, like Lori’s Book Nook, our students/readers need to have a list of books to be read! I started to think of my Shelfari page… and what is waiting on my TBR (to be read) list.
What have I been wanting to read for some time now? This might be a good place to buy those books and add to my TBR (to be read) pile. That started to guide my decision making… I started to look for books that I have been planning to read and found a few. Do our students have plans like that? Do they have TBR lists so they could hunt for specific titles in a used book store like Lori’s Book Nook?
We owe it to our students to prepare them for a day when they too might find themselves without a book to read, and heading to a used book store! What we’d really be preparing them for… is the life of a reader!
One of the first things I do with my students is have them create a "Want to Read" list. We do this by destroying and recreating my classroom library, lol. They pull out the bins and go through the books and then sort the books back into bins by how they think they should be sorted. It's one of my most favorite days of the beginning of the year and it gets my students VERY excited about their independent reading time. Now I can share with them a connection to real world by sharing your story. Thanks 🙂
Thanks for reading… and commenting Marcie! Love your classroom anecdote! Keep doing what you are doing and happy reading!
Melissa