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Attention middle school library folks! Flamingnet is for you and more particularly, for your students. The site was originally c
reated by a fifth grader (with the help of his dad) eight years ago. Seth Cassell got acclaim and attention from publishers and authors who requested that their books be reviewed by the young bibliophile. One thing led to another, and now the site is known nationally as a source for teens and preteens to get suggestions from their peers on good books to read.
Student reviewers, ranging in age from middle school to college, live in almost all 50 states as well as Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The books on the site are recommended for readers aged 8-18. Reviews include a enjoyment rating (0-10) based on the reviewers personal opinion of the work and a content rating based on the maturity of the content.
Consider making Flamingnet the homepage on your student computers in the library and encouraging students who come to you asking, “Do you have anything good to read?” to check out the site and look for recommendations from their peers. Your avid readers may even want to look into how to become reviewers for Flamingnet themselves!
It seems I find new means of gathering booklists so often these days, it makes my head spin!
One I learned of this morning is particularly nifty, and it’s called tag mashup. I know–what a name! I’m not talking about mashed potatoes here, folks. According to the all-wise Wikipedia ;), a mashup is “a digital media file containing any or all of text, graphics, audio, video, and animation, which recombines and modifies existing digital works to create a derivative work.” I suppose you could think of a digital mashup like mashed potatoes– you combine two or more unique entities (potatoes, butter, and milk) to create something new and better (yummo mashed potatoes).
Many of you may be familiar with the website LibraryThing. It is a virtual bookshelf, where you can list the books you own, the books you are reading, books your dog is reading… you get the idea. It’s basically an online catalog for your personal collection.
Another feature of LibraryThing is the ability to search through the titles and title lists others have created… You do not have to have an account to do this, people!! It is F-R-E-E!! Here’s how.
Go to LibraryThing’s Search Tab. It looks like this:
Now, because we want to do a tag mashup, we’re only going to use the tag field, but feel free to play around with the other search options… There’s no telling what you might turn up!
So, let’s say I work in a middle school library, and I have students that keep requesting more vampire books. I might type into the “Tags” field these words: “middle school, vampire”. Then hit Search. LibraryThing will retrieve books on lists that have been tagged both “middle school” and “vampire.” Here’s what my results page looks like:
Look at all the helpful info I received! Not only do I get a list of linked titles and authors, but I get sidebar widgets (those green boxes below) that allow me to search for other tag mashups, suggest related tags, and suggest related tag mashups that others have used.
This is a great way to provide a quick suggested reading list for avid readers, reluctant readers, etc. Would I suggest buying books solely because you find them on a list like this– NO!!!! Sure, it’s a great recommendation, but I would never buy a book from a publicly generated list without doing other research like checking professional review sources like Booklist, The Hornbook, SLJ, Publishers Weekly, etc.
Have you used this resource before? Where do you go for booklists?
One last thing for elementary library folk while we’re on the topic of vampires. I read an article/list from SLJ this morning with suggested titles for younger readers interested in vampire fiction but not ready for Twilight. Again, I wouldn’t use it as a direct purchasing guide, but it’s a starting place.
Happy listing!
And the winners of this year’s ALA Youth Literary Awards are…. Read here to find out!
I imagine all your favorite vendors have been emailing you already with their prepared “Winner Booklists” ready for you to order. Happy shopping!
If you’ve already got some of these titles on the shelves, how are you advertising them to students? How are students liking these titles?
The Virtual School Library Handbook 