Happy National Poetry Month

We've never gone out of our way to celebrate National Poetry Month, but this year we've made an effort to focus on poetry. A celebration means a display and this month is no exception:
Our April poetry display in the library.


I don't know if this is true everywhere, but our poetry collection was starting to rot (metaphorically). For the most part, it just sat on the shelves, buried deep within non-fiction or randomly scattered throughout our "Teen Fiction" section. Students who wanted it couldn't find it, and many others didn't realize it was even an option.

Our solution? We created a poetry genre. Our library is already organized by genre, so it made sense to pull out all the poetry books (I'm including novels in verse) and give them their own special shelf. Here are the genre stickers our secretary came up with:
Poetry genre stickers on book spines
Since creating a special section devoted to poetry, we've seen circulation increase -- always the ultimate goal, right?

We're also celebrating National Poetry month with a research project that combines the iPod, biology, animals, and poetry. Stay tuned for details!

Comments

  1. karafribApril 5, 2011 at 8:21 AM

    Your poetry display is beautiful! It's fantastic that you've seen a rise in circulation. I always feel like tweens and teens would actually enjoy and relate to poetry if they just checked it out. Brilliant idea to put poetry in its own section.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LindsayApril 5, 2011 at 12:35 PM

    Thanks! I'm hoping our kids who like novels in verse will venture into to other types of poetry since they're now all in the same section. Fingers crossed!

    ReplyDelete

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