Photo by Kevin Kerr

Adam Marcus, the library teacher at PS 32, a PK–5 school in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn, NY, admits that he wasn’t much of a book lover as a kid. Back then, when a book mentioned an unfamiliar term, that meant getting up, finding a dictionary, and looking it up. If the story referred to a little-known piece of music, “I would have had to go to a music store and buy the record,” he notes. Then if he wanted to share the tune with a friend, it would’ve meant making a cassette recording and then mailing it. Years later, when he realized he could instantly look such things up without breaking his stride, he was hooked. “Reading really changed for me as an adult with the advent of technology,” he explains. It stands to reason, then, that Marcus, who was named a 2016 Library Journal Mover & Shaker as a community builder, is leveraging technology to enrich his students’ reading experience. His program, Social Readia, is aimed at engaging kids by creating a convivial atmosphere, both online and off, that lends itself to talking about books. “Most of my favorite books and authors come from the recommendations of other people,” he says. Why shouldn’t the same method work for kids? “When they start to talk about the books they love, they’re sharing the experience, as well as discovering new authors and genres from their peers,” he adds. One aspect of Social Readia involves the summer reading book club he created using the platform VoiceThread. Marcus created a multi-paged VoiceThread dedicated to this year’s title, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, and then, to open up the dialog, he uploaded a video of himself inviting the kids to post their opinions and feelings related to the story, as well as other media related to the story. “Students were encouraged to talk about their thinking and feelings about the book, as well as discuss other books they were reading over the summer,” says Marcus. To dovetail with the story, which is about a great ape, he adopted a baby gorilla on behalf of the school through the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. The highlight was when Ivan himself made an appearance on the page (spoiler alert: it’s Marcus, in costume). Another perk to the platform is the ability to post reviews and then create a link with a corresponding QR (quick response) code to place in the physical book. “Then, the next kid who takes that book from the shelf can scan the code with an iPad and hear a review from his peer,” explains Marcus. There’s also an analog side to Social Readia, which is just as important when it comes to engaging young readers, stresses Marcus. He hosted a reading marathon one evening to introduce the summer book, which ended up drawing parents and teachers in addition to 125 students. The kids were broken up into 10 groups, given team t-shirts, and competed in various timed activities related to the Ivan tale, including an obstacle course and a matching game. Marcus particularly likes to combine the “high tech and low tech” aspects of his program to come up with new activities. “I recently ran a kind of March Madness for poetry, with 16 poems going head to head,” he says. A couple were read over the PA system each day and then the kids voted for—and hopefully talked about—their pick. The poem with the most votes moved on to the next round. At that point, a VoiceThread page was set up to accompany the fun, with links to the poets and their poems; kids could post their own poetry, too. Who was victorious in the end? “Shel Silverstein’s work took the honor, for two years running now,” reports Marcus. The excitement generated over which poem was in the lead at any given time was gratifying to Marcus, but getting students to bond with each other through books, whether of poetry or any other genre, is the ultimate goal.