As advocates for reading, librarians cannot help but love a reading program. In this article, the author talks about the Battle of the Books, a reading enrichment program that had been in place since 1996. Battle of the Books promotes reading among middle school students by offering interesting books and a trivia-type competition. The author…

This article illustrates how the use of the basic elements of a story can help create an event that will stimulate imagination and encourage further reading. Margaret Robison, the librarian at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind (VSDB) in Staunton, Virginia, decided that for Teen Read Week she would use a popular series as a bridge to…

Norfolk Detention School is an alternative school for juveniles under the age of 18 who are awaiting adjudication by the court and those who are awaiting transfer to another facility. This article describes the author's experience as a library media specialist in this juvenile detention school. She describes how she has promoted and encouraged…

Eighth graders offer librarians and language arts teachers the greatest challenge of matching the student with just the right book. These duplicitous creatures have a foot in two worlds. They are both children and young adults. While sixth graders may be emotionally immature, three years later, they are usually prepared for the young adult world.…

A family reading night is the ideal way to introduce the library media center and actively involve parents in their child's reading success. This event is an opportunity to explain how a reading program works and provide parents with strategies to encourage further reading at home. Parents can sit down with their children and read in the library,…

"Title Trekking program" is a young adult reading program that encourages students to read books from a carefully selected reading list and reflect about them in a journal. The program's momentum comes from personal communication and encouragement, which includes staff sharing good books with their students, sharing them with each other, and…

A One Book program called "Building a Community of Readers" encourages reading and discussion of a book in a casual setting and not as an assignment to earn a grade. Some suggestions are provided that would help in establishing such a program and encourage a community-wide participation that includes choosing the book, choosing the committee,…

Library Media Specialist and outside consultants provided several reading workshops for faculty and the reading program at Farmington High School, the school being fortunate among a limited number of schools that provide a true reading time for its students. The faculty has begun to assign books and their expectation for students to read is…

Discussion of the mission and roles of library media programs and teacher-librarians focuses on promoting books and reading, through which students become effective users of ideas. Highlights include reading proficiency; reading advocacy options; motivation approaches, including the ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction) model;…