It is the time of year to look at top checkouts.
Most of the time I just look at our top 10, but this year I looked at our top 50, and I saw definite patterns with the titles in the list.
5 things I learned from looking at our top 50 checkouts for the year:
1. My role has power. Mwa-ha-ha-ha!
Books I love and "sell" to kids regularly are top check outs.
2. Kids like graphic novels and comics. Duh.
38% of our top 50 are comics or graphic novels, 56% if you include hybrids like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Bad Kitty. I'd call that statistically significant.
3. Author visits and skypes connect kids to their books.
14 of the books in our top 50 are by an author students have connected with in person or virtually.
4. The Maud Hart Lovelace Award (our state student choice award) is truly part of the reading culture at our school.
12 of the top 50 checkouts are nominees from our state award this past year.
5. There is no saturation point for Garfield or Star Wars
Every year there is a certain portion of my budget that goes to support the demand of stories about a fat, orange cat and stories set long ago in a galaxy far, far away.
I'm not sure who would win in a fight, but when considered as a collection of titles (all the Garfield books or all the Star Wars books) either could easily take down the collected checkouts of the monstrously popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series. And that's saying something.
Did you notice trends with your top checkouts?
What factors made a difference in your library?
The Top 50
