Go on a Blind Date with a Book

Found displayed in the St. Tammany Public Library in Madisonville, LA
On Saturday, I trekked north across Lake Pontchartrain to visit a friend. As a fellow library lover and user, she wanted to show me the brand new library that recently opened in Madisonville, LA in St. Tammany Parish. The library is a stunner. She had an agenda for our visit, but I mostly wanted to check out the teen section. I found this sign on display and knew that I had to do the same thing in my library. This sign that you see above was posted on a rack with books wrapped in tissue and paper hearts encircling the display. Adorable.

Display that I created
I decided to bring paper with me to school today to wrap some novels that I love and see if anyone takes the bait. I used plain paper but covered each package with heart and cupid stamps. In each package I slipped a paper that asks you to Rate Your Date. I forgot to see what the public library form looked like so I created my own.

Form I created for students to Rate their Date
I wrote the barcode number on the outside of the wrapped book so I could check out the book before the kids could do the unwrapping. What fun! I had several checked out today. The students loved the idea and couldn't wait to get reading.

The first student to attempt a blind date with a book
He read this book already, so he went on a second blind date

Comments

  1. Island LibrarianJanuary 23, 2018 at 12:24 AM

    I am a new Teen librarian at a public library and am trying this idea out soon! I realize this post is old, but what did you do with the "Rate Your Date" slips? I also want to have something like this, but I don't want the filling out of slips after reading their books to be busy work... Thanks in advance!

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  2. ElizabethJanuary 24, 2018 at 6:21 PM

    I just displayed the rate your date slips on the ends of the book shelves. I taped them on as I wanted them as recommendations for the books. The hardest part was wrapping new books after the "old" ones were checked out. That took a lot of time. When I had student helpers, the job was easier, and they loved doing it. Wrapping was fun for them. You definitely need to list some characteristics of the books on the wrapped packages so that the kids don't go in totally blind. I wrote a more recent blog post about blind date with a book when I did the wrapping differently to make my life easier. Here is that post: http://www.talesfromaloudlibrarian.com/2017/02/revisiting-blind-date-with-book.html

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