When I worked within a school library it was one of the best parts of my job to connect those students who didn’t think they could read a full novel or they didn’t enjoy reading with a book that they ended up connecting with. At the start of the school year we would get a largeish intake of year 5 students from surrounding schools and most of them came from a school who didn’t have a strong reading culture. We didn’t mind so much because we knew that sooner or later even those reluctant readers would be able to find something from our many collections. 

We had one particular student who we noticed that was borrowing a bunch of cookbooks each week, she wouldn’t make any of the recipes but loved looking at the pictures and reading the recipes. After 3 weeks we decided that we would try to engage and get her to borrow a fiction book. We had an informal chat about what types of books she liked and I got her a selection of graphic novels for her to have a look at. She ended up taking the whole bunch because she thought she would just give them all a try. The following weeks she ripped through our graphic collection and then came and asked for chapter books that were similar to what she had been reading. From there she became one of our most frequent borrowers and each week she was so happy to tell us about her favourites. 

I think the most important thing when working with children is understanding both the collection you manage and the types of readers you have. Working with a whole school can take some time but if you are invested then you will start to form connections and then are able to suggest the best ones for them. When children see you being passionate about literature and showing an interest they will also reflect that back to you and this can build a strong reading culture. You don’t need to read every single book to know what they’re about but it is important to invest time in knowing about these things. 

Librarians are there to support and help both students and teachers, by working with the classroom teacher alongside your own personal knowledge all these little things can help build the library and your own confidence with the literature.