Summer Reading: Book Love Foundation

I want to encourage my students to be lifelong learners, especially through reading. Reading allows us to learn new information, build empathy, relax, and so many other benefits. If I am to offer recommendations to my students for any of these reasons, I must continue to be a lifelong reader too.

That's why I joined Book Love Foundation's Summer Book Club for the first time this year, and as I wrap up the last week of this experience, I'm sharing why I plan to do this again!

What is Book Love Foundation?

If you teach ELA, you have probably heard of Penny Kittle who is the founder of this foundation, a teacher, and an author herself. Kittle believes in the power of reading and created The Book Love Foundation to help other teachers to create or enhance their classroom libraries so that there are diverse books for students. Yes, The Book Love Foundation raises money to present grants to teachers to buy book for their classrooms. Even better: It is organized by volunteers! This means every donation goes towards books for students.

Do you want to learn more? Check out the Book Love Foundation website to learn more about the organization, to see how they've impacted classrooms, and more. Their Summer Book Club is their biggest fundraiser to go towards this 

How does Summer Book Club work?

Five weeks. Four books. Daily written discussions. Author and education interviews.

You get access to all of this by joining the Summer Book Club through their website. When you register, you get the ability to choose what grade level of books (high school, middle school, elementary, or all) to receive the books - no shopping on your part! - along with the swag, which this year included a lightweight cooler, notebook, pen, and metal bookmark.

Already have the books? Or want to mix-and-match the grade levels? You can choose to have access to the online content.

Once the Book Club begins, each book typically gets one focused week to be discussed. You can either read the books prior to the week or throughout the week. During that same week, the author has been available for a live session that is later posted for those who weren't able to join at the scheduled time. There are other conversations with teachers, literacy experts, and authors to explore our interests and needs as educators.

This design makes it easy to tailor your Book Club experience to your teaching and your level of commitment for the summer.

The online experience takes place on a less known platform Mighty Network. The benefit of this is to help us be focused on our Book Club without being pulled into the notifications from other social media platforms.

What are the benefits of Summer Book Club?

For my first summer, I chose to receive all grade levels for a couple of reasons: I teach both middle and high school students; I want to increase my picture book collection; I believe in supporting this foundation. Here are three benefits I have experienced in the past four weeks.

Book exposure:

My first benefit is increasing my book exposure. I had only heard of one of the high school choices before registering: Me (Moth) by Amber McBride. This meant that I was exposed to nonfiction (The Other Talk by Brendan Kiely), a graphic novel (Surviving the City by Tasha Spillett and Natasha Donovan), and picture books (We Can: Portraits of Power by Tyler Gordon and Dad Bakes by Katie Yamasaki). 

Some of the books also shared topics that I am not well-read on or did not have text versions appropriate for the readers in my classroom, such as Kiely's book sharing his experiences of white privilege and Spillett's graphic novel that brings attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women while also demonstrating strength and beauty of the indigenous culture. 

We often are suggested books similar to what we have been reading, so it has been good to have these books not only recommended and to have the encouragement of a book club to read them.

Your pace:

The book club is structured for a book a week (or three if you're interested in all three age-levels), but once the book club gets started, you are able to go at your own pace. Some readers have finished reading the books even before the book club began. Some are reading them at the daily pace of the discussions. And there are those who are like me and try to keep the weekly pace but am catching up at the beginning of the next week. I know that at least one novel will carry into next month.

This is fantastic to make it work for you around your family vacations, long weekends at the cabin, your summer job, your children's nap times, or whatever! 

Access to the discussions and author talks is all available to us afterwards, so we can take our time with the books, take a break, or wait until we're ready to look at a specific book for our class.

Your choice of involvement:

Want to support this foundation and have new books in your classroom? Great!

Want to read some good books and listen to the authors? Great!

Want to come look at the discussions later in the summer or year for lesson ideas? Great!

Want to answer every discussion question and join in on the live chats? Great!

This is flexible so it can be the professional development you want for the summer. 

Just getting started!

The Book Love Foundation also has professional development opportunities that I can take into the school year, such as the Book Love Podcast, resources for reading, research, and more. This Summer Book Club is just the beginning.