What Are They Reading for Fun?
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Compiled by Marlene Charnizon -- School Library Journal, 06/08/2009
In the elementary grades, longtime favorite series
Sarah Provence, Churchill Road Elementary School, McLean, VA:
Our library serves approximately 740 students in grades K–6. Some series are always checked out: Rick Riordan’s “Percy Jackson” (Hyperion) and D. J. McHale’s “Pendragon” (S & S), sure. But also Daisy Meadows’s “Rainbow Magic” (Scholastic), Cornelia Funke’s Inkheart trilogy (Scholastic), the Yotsuba&! manga volumes (ADV Manga), and R.A. Montgomery’s “Choose Your Own Adventure” books (Chooseco), with interest all spread by word of mouth.
While weeding our fiction section, I pulled a number of treasures abandoned to the shelf checkers and the dust. After I booktalked them, they were snatched up, and I haven’t seen much of them since. Resurrected favorites include Susan Cooper’s The Boggart (Macmillan, 1993), Caroline B. Cooney’s The Face on the Milk Carton (Delacorte, 1996), and Jane Yolen’s Girl in a Cage (Philomel, 2002). Fantasy fans keep Silvana De Mari’s The Last Dragon (Hyperion, 2006) and Eva Ibbotson’s Island of the Aunts (Dutton, 2000) circulating. I also booktalked Andrea White’s Surviving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083 (HarperCollins, 2005) as well as a number of titles on explorers to the poles and the trip it's based on. Students would have a better chance of actually surviving the cold there than checking out one of our copies of Antarctica.
Barbara Auerbach, New York City Public Schools:
My library in Brooklyn caters to the needs and wants of some 1300 students, many of them children of immigrants. Aside from the obvious superhero and “princess” requests (after repeatedly combing the shelves for fairy tales, I realized that what they actually meant was “Disney Princess…” books), students ask for authors, titles, and subjects that their teachers get them excited about. These range from ESOL fourth graders going wild for Mo Willems’s “An Elephant and Piggie” books (Hyperion) to fifth-grade reluctant readers demanding sequels to Lois Lowry’s The Giver or Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy. Yes, little girls love Dora, and TV prompts requests for Susan Meddaugh’s "Martha" titles (Houghton) and “Pokémon.” Books about animals, racing cars, wrestling, and magic lead the nonfiction requests. The kids have also made it clear that they prefer photos to illustrations in their “real” books. So much for my new complete collections of Gail Gibbons and “Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out” (HarperCollins). Graphic novels are also in demand. I have some influence, but it’s hard to compete with friends, media, and teachers.
Jessica Marie, Renton Public Library, WA:
Renton is a city near Seattle with a population of about 80,000. The elementary-age children who use our library are still drawn to perennial series favorites: Barbara Park’s “Junie B. Jones” (Random), Mary Pope Osborne’s “Magic Tree House” (Random), Jim Davis’s "Garfield" (Ballantine), and, of course, "Geronimo Stilton" (Scholastic). They also like Sara Pennypacker’s "Clementine" (Hyperion), Annie Barrows’s "Ivy and Bean" (Chronicle Books), Lauren Child’s "Clarice Bean" (Candlewick), and the new, interactive adventure/mystery series “The 39 Clues” (Scholastic), each written by a different author. Ted Arnold’s "Fly Guy" books (Scholastic) are quite popular with early readers, as are Cynthia Rylant’s "Annie and Snowball" titles (S & S). Annie Bryant’s “Beacon Street Girls” series (B’tween) is starting to garner interest with fourth- to sixth-grade readers, and, yes, The Diary of a Wimpy Kid (Abrams) is quite popular. We have lots of fans of the “Pokémon” and “Naruto” graphic novels (both Viz Media).
