At my school, it’s been a long tradition that every class prepares a Book Week display for the library. The displays, either 2D or 3D, stay up until just before the next Book Week, and help the library to be a colourful and fun environment. Here are our displays to celebrate Book Week 2009. Theme: “Book Safari”. Click photos to see bigger versions.
Collecting colour by SCLB
“Book Safari” culture pod by SCHM – “It’s culture – in a pith helmet!”
Every picture tells a story by 6P
Nobody owns the moon by 4/5M
Puffling by KFM
Pull to see 1C
“Book Safari” poster by 4W
Tuart dwellers by 1S
How weird is that… by 2CH
The wizard of Rondo by 5/6D
Sunday Chutney by KB
The big book of happy sadness by 3G
Tom Tom by 2KS
“Book Safari” tree by 3M
How to heal a broken wing by KI
“Book Safari” decorated box by 5B
“Leaf” by SCHC
Shoot animals with a camera, not a gun! by 6W
Safari print balloons
FANTASTIC displays! Congratulations to you, your students and the teachers. Such creativity—wish I had half of that!
Wonderful displays! Congratulations to everyone who was involved in these colourful and unique displays. Your library must be “alive” with all this involvement! I am envious…
Absolutely fantastic displays!
Love the balloons. Such a simple but effective idea. Well done!
Other teacher-librarians’ comments, via email and Facebook, included:
* “I love your Book Safari display! I’m sure everyone at the school did too!”
* “They look fantastic…”
* “My computer (on wireless network) is too slow tonight to see all your pictures, but it looks wonderful. You must have plenty of space to do this, I contented myself with decorating the front doors and the mezzanine balcony.”
* “As we are a secondary library it is great to see the creativity and wonderful cooperation from all classes in your wonderful display. Loved the idea of many classes just featuring one of the shortlisted books in such clever ways.”
* “I loved your display especially the Culture Pod. ‘The Librarians’ is a favourite [TV show] of mine but my family don’t always see the humour!!”
Thanks everyone!
Some afterthoughts to my original post:
My school hasn’t done a book parade in over a decade. Instead, what I have described above is a now-longstanding tradition (long before my time) of each class producing a poster, set of artworks or a 3D display that arrives at the library in time for Book Week and stays as part of the decore – until the end of Term 2 of the next year, when it all comes down and is replaced by brand new efforts. Some teachers love to anticipate this time of year. The CBCA theme provides inspiration, while others select a shortlisted title.
This is not necessarily a compulsory thing but we do have 100% participation almost every year because the students are really inspired to help their teachers “come up with something” for Book Week. There are no prizes, but the work gets admired over many months. There is great excitement if a class has predicted a winning book by choosing it for their display.
In 2010 we have no library, so we are planning to decorate the school hall instead, then if the displays are still in good condition, they’ll go into the new BER library when it’s built.
Last year, based on the ideas of “shoestring renovator” Kevin Hennah, I suggested that all hanging poster displays be of the same-sized cardboard shape, which gave the displays some uniformity while still permitting classes’ imaginations to go wild. If you don’t insist on a few parameters, you can end up with walls of clutter that start to look rather tatty before the next Book Week.
In my previous school, I was never game to suggest any kind of mandatory participation with displays. Instead, I used to do the rounds of the school a few weeks before Book Week and ask to borrow/recycle any existing room displays that vaguely fitted the theme (or one of the topics covered by the shortlist). But they only stayed up in the library for Term 3. It gave the displays a renewed purpose and some classes were inspired to tailor-make a Book Week display instead.