#HaikuReviews

I read a lot. As a child, my favorite Saturdays were spent at the public library, selecting piles of books to cart home and read. The librarians knew me and would often suggest books they thought I might enjoy. Thanks to them, I broadened my horizons, trying genres that I’d probably not have selected without their guidance.
 
Fast forward to adult life and after several years in elementary and middle school classrooms, I am now the librarian trying to match readers with books. {I suppose I should have seen that one coming.} One of the perks of my job is that I get to read and call it work. I’ve tried to remember those librarians who guided me, and read widely in order to best support all of my readers.
 
During my years in the library, I’ve struggled with how to best share book recommendations to the widest audience. Book talks and one-on-one conferencing with students have been successful over the years. But timing can be everything and I’ve puzzled over how to make this information readily available to students when they need a book, not just when their class comes to the library. I thought that if I wrote reviews and linked them to the media center web page, students would have access at their discretion.
 
At the time of year I came up with this idea, I was almost 50 books deep into my 2018 reading challenge and the thought of writing 50 reviews was a bit daunting, and that is how #HaikuReviews were born. Summing up a book in 17 syllables seemed as though it would be a quick and easy way to share books with students and I was able to compose haiku for each of the books in a little over a week.
 
Once I started posting the #HaikuReviews, just the words on the page appeared plain and uninviting, so I logged into Canva.com and created images for each haiku. This grabbed my intended audience’s attention, but slowed the process of posting as I looked for just the right copyright free/Creative Commons image to pair with the words.
 
At this point I’ve posted close to 30 of my #HaikuReviews and some of them have even garnered a few likes. You can check them out here on the blog under the #HaikuReviews tab or on Twitter at http://tiny.cc/haikureviewsmoment. In addition to writing more #HaikuReviews, I’m looking forward to using this as a springboard to have students create their own to share on our school webpage.
 
Do you have ideas on how to share student and teacher book reviews?
Please share them in the comments!