1. With a blind date with a book: We wrapped up 10 brand new books, marked them with an appropriate age group and promoted these to our students (and staff!). 10 books gone in 10 minutes! (I also ask them to write a brief review of the book, which I'll use in my e-newsletter in the future.)
2. With a romantic book display: We picked out 50 books with romantic themes and put them up on display. I also promoted this in our e-newsletter, selecting a few books with 'love' in the title to get the love flowing!
It does help that my students are all girls! What promotions do you do over Valentine's?
Some great feedback from Janet King at Northlands Girls' High School: I also ran the Blind Date idea and on each wrapped book was a 'Rate Your Date' slip for them to circle if they had a great, not-so-great, so-so or terrible time and if they would go out with another book by that author.
ReplyDeleteIn the past I have had a Lonely Hearts corner with books that haven't been taken out for years and I asked the girls to take pity on them.
I've also run a Matchmakers 'service' where based on their replies to a quiz a la teen magazines I have then matched them with different genres e.g. romance, mystery, adventure etc.
I am so 'stealing' your Lonely Hearts corner idea - I'm on a big push this year to promote neglected books, and this will work wonderfully!
DeleteI did something similar to your Matchmaker two years ago, but it was met with a so-so response - I think I"ll give it a go again this year and see how it works out...