The Brown Paper Book

Nearly all the books
were gone before
 I got around to
taking a photo.

Here is a picture of a little event we had in our library for World Book Day last March. We wrapped up some books in brown paper, stuck photocopies of the barcodes on the outside and let borrowers check them out. They had no idea what they were getting.

It was great fun. The kids especially loved it. I had Alice in Wonderland-esque "Read Me" stickers on the front. It was like getting a present, which we wouldn't let them open until they got home. They were very excited at the thoughts of opening it and seeing what was inside. You know that feeling, when a parcel arrives in the post, or you get a wrapped gift?

The whole purpose was to get borrowers to try out genres and authors they wouldn't normally go for.

We find, in particular with children, our borrowers go for the same authors all the time. They find an author they like, read everything by that author and then are at a loss where to go next. Sound familiar?

They come to the desk desperate for some ideas but are reluctant to try something new if it's any way different to what they're used to.

Or, they're so used to reading series that they're immediately suspicious of a stand alone book. 'It must not be very good if there's no follow up' I see them thinking.

So enter the brown paper book, or the Mystery Check-Out as we called it. It was a huge sucess. I completely underestimated how enthusiastic the children would be about the project. We had two class visits the same day and had to limit them to one book each. We ran out of books after an hour!

I was stuck with a dilemma when choosing titles as I had to keep them pretty gender neutral. That wasn't too difficult with the adult books, I stuck to mostly classics or biographies. With the children's books it was a little harder. In the end I chose a lot of non-fiction, mostly poetry.

I think children's poetry is great but try convincing a child that and you have a battle on your hands. Some of the poetry books came back to us pretty quick, the next day or even that night they were flung unceremoniously into our dropbox.

However, we got some great feedback from parents whose children had the fortune to get a novel rather than a poetry book. They were delighted with what they got, it was an author they had never heard of and they loved it. Result!

Next time around I'll stick to novels. I was trying to conquer too much by introducing poetry into the mix.