Athena’s Banquet

One of the first projects I completed this summer was the book order for our uncataloged paperback collection. My supervisor was going to be on vacation for the last two weeks in June, and she left this as a project that I would be able to work on in her absence.

The complete list of titles compiled is attached here:  titletales

She showed me how to use the bwibooks.com site to construct a list. This is a particularly useful site as it aggregates a large number of editorial reviews for books, allows the creation of lists, and gives prices for all books (including the library discount). Over several sessions, I compiled a list of approximately 80 titles that I felt would work well to support our existing collection and serve our patron base.

I had several considerations that I kept in mind while compiling the list. I wanted to include:

• books for a variety of reading levels within the “chapter book” guideline


• books of local interest, especially books set in Seattle and in the Pacific Northwest


• books from a variety of genres and viewpoints to give our patrons a good range of options


• books that were attractive to both male and female readers


• books of interest to neighborhood residents (North East is in a neighborhood of Seattle with a large Jewish population and several synagogues nearby, so I wanted to reflect the neighborhood makeup).


• books that represented a wider range of experiences, including books narrated from an African-American or other minority experience.


• books that would support my historical fiction booklist (yet to be completed at that time).

Keeping all of these considerations in mind, as well as keeping our “less than $7 except in rare circumstances” price point in mind proved challenging but doable. I’m a heavy reader of fantasy and science fiction and tend to prefer books with female protagonists, so I had to make a conscious decision to put aside those preferences (although I did sneak the Coraline graphic novel in there). The method that worked for me was to search for books with a certain level of reviews (starred, ALA notable, etc.), add whatever looked interesting and met our price point, and then go through the list created to weed things out based on our cataloged holdings; if we already had many cataloged copies or if the book already didn’t circulate, I would generally remove it. At the end of this process, I went through the list again to ensure that it was roughly balanced between “boy” books and “girl” books – or at least between books with male narrators and female narrators.

I included several titles with the specific intention of supporting my historical fiction list, including Archer’s Quest, The Birchbark House, Bud, Not Buddy, The Crow Girl, Dave at Night, Elijah of Buxton, Encounter, The Game of Silence, Iqbal, and The White Giraffe (a few of which are also focused on the Jewish experience and so serve the dual purpose of supporting historical fiction and our local population). I also added several science-based titles (and several more were added by my supervisor), including the Martin Bridge series, various titles in the “Science Solves It!” series, and several books based on the Magic School Bus series; I included these mostly because they were well-reviewed, seemed interesting and appealing, and because (just personally) I think reading and science should go together more often. The Hannah West series is set in Seattle, and so provides local interest. And I included many titles just because they seemed like interesting reads—because the whole point of an uncataloged collection is to be easily grabbable and fun to read.

I really enjoyed working on this project. I haven’t read that many children’s chapter books recently, so it was great to get (yet another) review of what’s out there now and what’s considered “notable” by various editorial sources. It also gave me a lot to think about in terms of how to balance the various needs of my collection, my patrons, and my budget.