Running a book club: growing your club
Ideas for taking your book club to the next level, including author visits and making books come alive
One common theme amongst colleagues who have run book clubs for a while is that for the first year or two they embed the club and create its identity. After a while, if it is working, children want to become part of the project, they start reading more themselves and making recommendations, and a reading culture is created. At this point, the question is where to take it next?
Try author visits
As an RT=RP school we have been privileged to meet authors and read to them through sharing events. This year, now my school has become an Independent RT=RP group, we are intending to club together with other schools and their book clubs to set up a sharing day for our pupils with an author, thus splitting the cost.
Pupil-author face-to-face contact is expensive but creates magical connections that are never forgotten. An alternative to this is a virtual school visit, like those run by BookTrust.
Virtual school visits
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Bring an author into your classroom! Schools can register to join virtual author visits with BookTrust Represents, allowing your children to ask authors questions and find out more about the books they love.
Bring the book to life
It’s also great to look for opportunities to bring the book alive and make it real. A couple of years ago my group were reading October, October by Katya Balen. One child wondered how easy it would be to adopt a barn owl.
The next thing we knew we were researching owl sanctuaries, setting up book sales and adopting an owl from the proceeds. The book became far more than a book, but then, as we know, so many books can, and book clubs are a great place to make this happen.
Good luck creating or enlivening yours!
Related resources
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Bringing a writer, poet, illustrator or storyteller into your school is a great way to inspire children and bring reading to life
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Waterstones Children’s Laureate Joseph Coelho’s speech, read at The Arboretum for the BookTrust Represents Report Launch.