There are so many things that teachers and librarians do every day that help kids learn to love reading. Classrooms are full of books, class time is spent with silent sustained reading periods, or D.E.A.R time (Drop Everything And Read), authors come to visit, and teachers and librarians, and even kids, spend time talking about the books they like. This last one, the book talk, is one I want to focus in on.
I love book talks. I love seeing authors, librarians and teachers do them. I love doing them. I really love watching students do them. If you talk to a child or teenager about how they decide what book to read, it often comes down to the fact that someone had told them to read it and had sold it to them somehow. Often kids don't even remember who told them they should read it, or why, but they remember the enthusiasm, and the book. That is all that really matters.
You have probably book talked before without even realizing it. Any time you have run into a friend or colleague and had a conversation that goes anything like this--"Oh my goodness, I just finished Brown Girl Dreaming. You have to read it! It was so good, and here is why..."--then you have done a book talk. Book talks can be completely informal like this, or they can be more formal. They can be about one book, or you can bring in a whole cart of books and give a short book talk on each one.
1. Plan your talk. While informal book talks happen all the time without planning, if you are going to be speaking in front of a class, you want to decide what it is you want to say. Do you want to talk about the mood of the book? The characters? The plot? It doesn't have to take long to plan, but since you don't want to spend too long on a book talk, it is helpful to know exactly what you want to focus on.
2. Watch the clock. Speaking of not taking too long, this point can't be stressed enough. You want to get the kids engaged as quickly as you can, and don't want to spend more than a minute or two on any one book.
3. Have a copy of the book with you. If you get a kid hooked, they are going to want to read the book right away, and you don't want to disappoint them.
4. Bring more than one book. You can do a book talk about several books that are all similar in one way or another. Bring several books from one author, one genre, one mood, or one time period. This works especially well if you have a lot of students, all of whom might like to take a book with them.
These are more guidelines than rules. Making a book talk your own will have the most power, and being comfortable is vital. However, there are a few rules you should stick with.
5. Never book talk a book you didn't like. You might think you can fake it, but you probably can't. Enthusiasm is important, and kids can tell when you don't have it or it isn't real.
6. No spoilers! If you haven't thought about what you are going to say before you start, it is easy to give one too many plot points away. You want to give teasers that encourage questioning and make kids want to find out what happens. You don't want to ruin the book.
One of the best parts of the book talk is that anyone can do one. You don't need to bring a librarian in (though I bet any librarian you ask would be happy to do one). Teachers can do them, too. One of my favorite teacher bloggers, Pernille Ripp, recently wrote about her daily book talks with her students. She gives the perfect example of how to get kids engaged with books with minimal planning, and can start a whole chain of kids sharing books with each other.