Last October I began working as an assistant Librarian at my local library. One of my tasks was to begin rebuilding our teen program and section. I have a nice little section in our library that holds our Young Adult and Juvenile books. These books basically cater to our High school and Middle school students.
As summer reading began to approach I decided I wanted to start a Teen book club. We have an adult book club called Rowdy Readers and we have a preschool story time for the younger kids... but nothing really to cater to our communities teens and tweens. I talked it over with my Director and she told me to go for it! After hammering out the details I finally got a time, place and book nailed down... now it is time to wait on the bodies.
Let me just say... starting a book club for teens is not so easy. Teens are a hard group to appease and seeing as I am starting from the bottom up, I knew this was going to be a long road. If you have ever thought about starting your own book club.. teen or otherwise you know it can be rather difficult. Below I want to share how we got started and how you can get started too.
STEP ONE:
Figure out your audience!
What ages do you want this book club to cater to? Adults? Teens? Tweens? Men? Women?
I went with the Teen/Tween age group. Depending on how many people we get to sign up will depend if I decide to break the two groups up further into Teens and Tweens separately.
STEP TWO:
How often do you want to hold your group?
Our Adult club meets once every two months. To start off this is how often my teen book club with meet. If they decided they want to change how often we meet we will change it then.
You might decided that weekly works best for your group or even bi-weekly works best. It all depends on the group that you have and how often your readers finish reading their book.
STEP THREE:
Where should your group meet?
Being as we are a library putting the group together we are holding it in our library. However, we have had our Adult club meeting in the bistro in our little town also. If you are not part of a specific group that is run by a business you could always host it somewhere else.
We have thought about having it at our park, the ice cream place, someone's home, a restaurant, coffee house... really anywhere that would hold your entire group for an hour or so would be perfectly acceptable. If it's a public place like a restaurant I would clear it with the business, just for courteous purposes.
STEP FOUR:
What types of books does your group read?
You can decided with your group if there is a purpose for your club... such as to read a specific type of book and discuss how to change things in your community. You could also read for fun.
The purpose of our club is too read for fun. I want to encourage the young minds of our community to read and enjoy reading. Not just a read that is for class and gets you through your requirements. I want to show them that reading can be fun and also introduce them to kids that may not necessarily be in their circle, but has the same interests as them.
STEP FIVE:
Who decides which books you read?
As I am starting the book club and doing it for the library, I chose the first book that we will be reading. Nevermoor: the Trials of Morrigan Crow written by Jessica Townsend. I fell in love with this book last year and I feel it caters to both Teens/Tweens, and thought it would be a good starter book. After we have completed this book, I am going to allow the group to decide what they feel their next book should be.
However, if you are just starting a club with your friends you could always decided on a book together that you will read for the first club and then have each member choose a book after that.
STEP SIX:
How do you get the books?
Getting a group of people to decided upon a single book is hard enough.. but how do you go about getting all the books that you need? For my group it is simple. I work at a library. We are partnered with over 200 other libraries. We place a hold on the book we want and how many holds we want for that book. Then we wait for them to come in.
If you are getting a group of friends together or starting your book club outside of a library. You can either have your friends/group purchase their own copy or they can go and place a hold on a book in the library. However, there are many ways to go about getting the number of copies that you might need. Place an order at your local bookstore, place a hold at your library, you could get donations if you are a business doing it, or you could each buy your own copy.
Our local school librarian had begun a book club at the school during lunch time. This is how I knew it would be a good idea to start a Teen summer Reading book club for our teens. She has really laid the ground work for me to begin. We have a great community of people and our teens have a thirst for reading and have been asking for a Summer reading program for teens specially. This is where I come in... to help fill this role. I am still new and have not begun our first club yet [as I have stated before, I am still waiting on the bodies], but our first discussion is set for June 25th and I am excited to get started.
I will keep you posted to our progress and let you know how our first discussion turned out. However, the above basics is how we got started in creating our first Teen book club. I hope you find it helpful and gives you ideas for starting your own Teen/Tween club.
