Ideas for Using Blue Spruce Books

Public Libraries | Book Clubs | School Classrooms | School Libraries |
YA Committees

Public Libraries

Create a tabletop display for your YA area.

Gather your library's copies of the Blue Spruce nominees, or request a traveling set of books from the Blue Spruce Committee. Make a poster with the large headline, "Does this book deserve to win the Blue Spruce Award?" In smaller print provide more information about the award and voting. Stand one of the nominated books on the table with a Blue Spruce brochure or your own informational flier tucked inside. As each book is checked out, replace it on the display with another title.

Use Blue Spruce books in your YA Summer Reading Program.

Many YA Summer Reading Programs are designed to have teens read from several different genres or categories throughout the summer, such as science fiction or Newbery winners. This summer, add a "Blue Spruce" category to your program. If you only require them to read one book for the summer reading program, remind them they have to read three Blue Spruce books in order to be able to vote for their favorite.

Start a Blue Spruce Reading Buddies program.

Call a colleague across town or across the state and see if you can hook your teens up with the YA group in that library. Have your kids email each other, exchanging comments and reviews on the Blue Spruce books they read.

Have a Blue Spruce Film Fest.

Some of the past winning titles (e.g., The Client, Jurassic Park) have been adapted into movies. Check copyright guidelines first, then show the films to YAs. Have an all-day Saturday festival, or watch one movie a month. You can just watch the movies, or tell everyone to read the book before they come see the movie--then have a "Was the Book Better?" discussion afterwards.

Hold a bookmark contest.

Your teens should decide what information needs to be included in each entry, such as the award name, or the medallion. What should the prize be? Print up the winning bookmark. See if your local bookstore will distribute it!

AND

Link to the Blue Spruce website from your library's pages. Shelve all Blue Spruce nominees together in the YA section. Tell your library administration how your teens are involved!

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Book Clubs

Parent/Teen Book Club

Start a Blue Spruce Book Club for teens and an adult in their lives. Promote it at the library, through reading-tutor programs, in the local papers. You might start in September, with plans to run through March. Then if the group is successful, you can start again in April or May with the new nominations list. Decide how often you'd like to meet, and which books you will read together--or decide as a group at your first meeting. Explain to the group what the Blue Spruce Award is, and that even though parents and adults will be reading the books for the book club, they are not eligible to cast a ballot! Make sure to schedule at least three books, so that the YAs who participate will have filled the requirements to vote. At the second to last meeting, have the teens fill out the ballots. In March, have a wrap-up party to announce the winner.

YA Book Club

If you have a group of teens that meets regularly for book discussions, approach them to see if they'd like to spend a few months reading Blue Spruce nominees. Or start fresh. Look at this year's nominations list. Are the titles better for a middle school group or for high school teenagers (the nature of the list changes every year, reflecting the previous year's group of voters)? Don't limit yourself to after-school meeting times: is there an evening that would work? What about Saturday morning, with doughnuts? At the first meeting, talk about the Blue Spruce award and the voting process. Make a big deal over the fact that no adults get to nominate books or cast a ballot! Get online and check out the Web site (http://cal-webs.org/bluespruce/). Choose at least three books as your book club's goal, and set a wrap-up date. After you've read your target number of books, have a tally meeting to fill out ballots. Throw them a party after the awards are announced in March.

Discussion starters & ideas

Have the readers list their favorite and least favorite parts of the story. Lead a discussion based on a question you yourself have about the story. Find reviews of the title, and read them aloud to the group. Who agrees or disagrees? Have one reader research this month's author and present a short bio to the group. Have a reader who's read other books by this month's author talk about the current title as it relates to the author's other work. Select one aspect of the book: plot, characters, setting, etc., and discuss how the story would be affected if that one piece were different. Can this story be told another way? Look for publisher's study guides or teacher aides on each title to help you plan.

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School Classrooms

Spontaneous Voting!

Try this on the spur of the moment if the deadline to turn in votes catches up with you. Read the list of nominees to the class and asked them to raise their hands if they had read the book. If they raised their hands for 3 or more titles, give them a paper ballot, and explain how to mark it as well as the option to write nominations. Now the kids who got to vote are tuned in to Blue Spruce Books and the kids who didn't are curious!

Read aloud!

Set aside some time every week to read aloud to your students from a Blue Spruce nominee. Read one book all the way through, or choose excerpts from a number of the nominees to spark interest.

Search out reading journal partners for your students.

One Blue Spruce Committee member coordinated a reading journal project between education majors at a local college and 8th grade language arts students. The students were paired up and each couple read the same book from the Blue Spruce nominations list. They took turns journaling in the same notebook (ferried back and forth by the teachers), writing their responses to the book, to specific thought questions, and to each other's comments. The college students had the chance to interact with a "real, live" 8th grader, and the 8th graders had the heady experience of having a college student pay serious attention to their thoughts. What other match-ups would work in your community? High school/middle school? High school/senior citizens? Students/parents? Students/teachers?

Letters and reviews.

After reading a Blue Spruce book, have the students write (and acutally send) a letter or an email to the author, or have them write a book review and submit it to the school paper or the local newspaper, or post it to an online bookstore's webpages.

Have the class choose.

Divide up the nominations list so that each book will be read by one or two students. Have the students read their book and prepare a booktalk to present to the class. After hearing all the booktalks, the students vote for the most intriguing title. Whichever title wins is the title the class reads together and discusses together next. Or, if your budget won't allow for mid-year multiple-copy book purchases, you could read aloud the winning title to them.

Check with your colleagues.

Talk with your school librarian, or the young adult librarian at your local public library, about their plans to promote Blue Spruce. Let your students know what they are!

AND

Link to the Blue Spruce website from your classroom page. Make a poster for your classroom listing all 20 nominees. Tell your students' parents about Blue Spruce!

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School Libraries

Hold a competition for participants between classrooms, grades, or even schools.

Give points for each portion of the ballot and the group with the most points wins a prize. For instance, 3 points for each vote submitted and 10 points for each vote that is for the official winner; 1 point for each book read from the nominations list; or 1 point for each nomination given and 4 points if their nomination is in the nomations list for the next year. You could also give points for the school's winning title, especially if it's different than the official winner.

Hold a Blue Spruce Book Week.

Make a display with a poster-sized drawing of the Blue Spruce Award Medallion and as many copies of past winners and current nominees as you can. Tell each class that visits the library about Blue Spruce and booktalk or read segments from selected titles. (Booktalks available for all current nominees, from Blue Spruce, from the web site.)

Have a Blue Spruce online scavenger hunt.

Have your students look for reviews, author webpages, and publisher information related to titles on the nominations list on the Internet. Do different search engines find the same sites? Which titles are the easiest to find information on? Have any of the books won other awards? Have the students share the tips and tricks they used for searching.

Create a real-life research question.

Ask your classes to figure out which of the nominees is selling the most copies--either locally or nationally. (Or create your own challenge.) Use the Big 6 system or another guide to direct your students through the research process--from creating their question, to determining where to find the answer, to going out in the community via phone, mail, and the Internet to discover the answer.

Hang 'interactive' posters.

On a big sheet of paper, list all 20 of this year's nominations, with plenty of room in between each title. (If you don't have room for one big poster, make 20 skinny mini posters with one title on each.) Hang up the posters, and tell your students that as they read the books, they can write down on the poster short comments about the titles they've read. When you prepare your school's tally in February, cut out a construction paper star that reads, "Our Favorite" and glue it on the poster next to the right title. After the award is announced in March, cut out another paper star that reads, "This Year's Official Winner" and glue that on the poster, too. Students can keep track of their nominations for next year's list on a different poster.

AND

Link to the Blue Spruce website from your library page. Shelve all Blue Spruce nominees together in the library. Tell the teachers at your school about Blue Spruce!

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YA Committees

If you are looking for something new to do with your YA group or advisory board, you might invite your teens and their friends to form a Blue Spruce Committee. The Committee can go above and beyond reading the nominated books to reviewing and promoting the titles within the library and the community. Of course, if you don't have a YA group at your library, but have been wanting to get started, a Blue Spruce Committee is ideal: it's a focused activity that gives you a programming "blueprint" to follow, allowing you to spend more time and energy recruiting kids and building relationships. There are all sorts of activities and projects that can become a regular part of your Blue Spruce Committee. Here's a sample monthly schedule, with different ideas for each month. The Blue Spruce year runs from April-March, but I've started with January here.

January

Nominee Round Table. Teens gather and talk about their favorite book from the nominations list and why they liked it.

Tally Meeting. Compile and count all votes; make list of nominations for next year; fill out official ballot form and mail it in.

February, March

Awards Bash! Have a party: provide food; invite parents, friends, library administration, local bookstores, local newspapers; thank teens for their hard work; list/show their achievements (posters, notebooks, published reviews, etc.); announce Blue Spruce winner; have copies of winning title if possible. Maybe your bookstore will bring copies of the winner to have to sell; maybe they'll donate a small percentage of the sales money to your library!

New Nominations List. Go over the new nominations list for this year. Teens use library resources (OPAC, Booklist, Internet, etc.) to research titles on list, find reviews and other information. Create a Blue Spruce Notebook with the information they discover to keep in YA Dept. See which titles the library owns. Make recommendations to Collections Development Librarian of which books they'd like to see purchased by library.

April, May

Prepare for Summer Reading Program. Create posters, fliers, and other materials for promoting Blue Spruce books during YA Reading Program. Set up a Blue Spruce area on tabletop or bookshelf where all copies of nominated titles are shelved along with Blue Spruce Notebook.

June/July/August

Time off for Summer Reading! Read those nominations! Make sure your Reading Program includes Blue Spruce titles!

September

Half Bash! Have a "half-way to awards announcement party:" provide food; have each member try to bring a new friend to join committee. Create a poster to tally how many committee members have read each book on list. Have the members commit to reading at least one book that hasn't been read yet.

October

Publicity Meeting. Brainstorm ways to let your community know about Blue Spruce...then take action! Post fliers, write articles for school/local papers, check out areas for library displays besides the YA section, talk to bookstores. Maybe your bookstore will put a shelf sign that says, "Colorado Blue Spruce YA Book Award Nominee for 2000" (if they can fit it all on one piece of paper!) near each of the nominated titles they stock. Maybe they will pass out bookmarks you create.

November

Reviews and Booktalks. Teens write reviews and/or give each other booktalks of the books they've read so far. Add them to the Blue Spruce Notebook. Call your local paper and see if they'll print them in their Books or Entertainment section.

Host a "Book Gift Idea" Program. Have your teens prepare a booktalk for parents of teenagers, suggesting to them what books might be good ideas to purchase for their kids as gifts for the holidays. Have it in an evening early in the month at the library. Provide snacks and bookmarks. Make sure to include some Blue Spruce titles in your recommendations!