As a teacher librarian I am constantly making informal observations about students’ reading habits and choices. At the end of every school year I also run extensive data to see what my students are reading and borrowing. I use some of this data to create infographics (see below) which serve as part of a library report and I use a lot of this information to drive collection development.

A few months ago I was approached by Professor Chin Ee Loh from the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore to work on a research project. We have worked together with one one of her PhD students, Suijia Gan, to analyse the reading habits and practices of the students in my Junior School Library. This project has allowed me to delve deeper than I ever have into students’ reading habits and a lot of the results have confirmed what I know but it is useful to have hard data to back up this knowledge. But there have also been some surprises. Our project has involved a mixed methods research study that has involved a digital survey which was completed by 761 students (84% of the junior school), focus group interviews and analysing data using Follet Destiny, our library management system. We are working on finalising the report now and we are hoping to get some articles published with some of the results. For now though, I wanted to blog some of the findings to show what has been ‘hot’ in my library this year.

There are lists below that could be useful lists for library staff to use to develop their library collections. However, I think it is important to understand the context of the library and students. My school is an International School in Singapore with British Independent school values. The students represent up to 50 different nationalities with the largest representation from the UK, Australia, Japan, China and Korea. A different school in a different country or the same country with a different socio economic group or ethnic diversity would have some different preferences. However these lists do seem to have many titles that can transcend cultural and economic barriers. In the survey, the students were asked the name of the best book or series they read this year and the table below has the top titles. There are approximately 220 students in each year group so these tiles were all very popular.

My favourite book this year was …

From this data, I discovered some interesting findings that can be seen in the two tables below. It is worth pointing out that these findings are from the top 20 favourite books.

• Humour was a genre that appealed to more younger students and as they matured this decreased and their preferences were for adventure, mystery and realistic fiction.
• It was interesting to view the data on realistic fiction and also hear what some of the older students commented on in the focus group interviews. Many commented about how their reading preferences changed as they matured. We often have requests from year 6s for ‘more sad books’ or ‘books about someone who is struggling with an issue’.
• This table shows how in year 6 the top favourite books are all junior fiction and in year three the most popular format was graphic novels. It is worth noting that graphic novels are still very popular with our year 6 students so this is not an indication of borrowing data, just preferences for the book that was their favourite.

Genres of favourite books 

Formats of favourite books 

Graphic novels (or comics) were an area of huge interest to me because their popularity has grown enormously in my library. This is a widespread trend that publishers, book sellers and librarians are observing. It is also an interesting topic that Chin Ee Loh asked me and a number of others to speak about in her How We Read podcast. The table below shows how despite continuing to grow this part of my library collection, the demand is enormous. I have put in a massive order of graphic novels to arrive for our new school year.

Graphic Novels in the Junior School Library

Another piece of data I ran from Destiny was the top 50 borrowed books.

The Top 10 Books Borrowed from the Junior School Library 2020-2021

The table above shows just the top 10 but this data from the top 50 had some interesting findings that help to reassure me that all the work we do to help students discover new titles is working.

• Students enjoy books in a series! 84% of the books were part of a series. Most that were not in a series are written by an author who has written other popular titles.
• Recent releases are popular! 94% of titles were published 2015 or later and all are from 2010.
• Comics are King! 68% of the books in this list are graphic novels/comics (this includes the Little Dim Sum Warriors series which are bilingual comics in a picture book format), 16% are junior fiction (middle grade chapter books) and non fiction and early fiction (emerging chapter books) make up 8% each.
• Students love humour! Genres: 46% were humorous, 30% are realistic fiction(including historical fiction which can be considered a form of realistic fiction), 14% were adventure of mystery and 10% were animal fiction.
• Book awards and events raise awareness for new and different titles! At our school we have events related to The Red Dot Book Award and Dulwich Information Book Award. The library buys up to 10 copies of these tiles and students are encouraged to read at least one red dot book a year. The school hosts a red dot book competition, which involves students working in teams to answer questions about the books. In the top 50 most borrowed books there were 18 Red Dot Books. It is also worth noting we buy multiple copies of these titles so it is easier for students to get access to them.
• Author talks build the reading culture! Colin Goh did an author and Illustrator talk and after this his Little Dim Sum Warrior books flew off the shelves. They were also a fun option for students to borrow in mandarin library lesson time. Also in the top 50 list were 3 other authors who have done author talks in the last 2 years: Jaqueline Harvey, Dusti Bowling and Andy Griffiths.
• Book promotion works! All titles in this list are either graphic novels (which have needed no promotion) or been promoted in some other way. The rest have been promoted through author talks or book awards.

The feedback from the focus group interviews is also very interesting to analyse but that will be for another post. Hopefully this post has given readers some suggestions on ‘what’s hot’ to help develop library collections for this age group.