Midyear - It's Not Too Late to Unshelve Using Reading Challenges

 It's not too late to use Reading Challenges to create opportunities to highlight your collection. Becky Spratford at RA for All talks about the NYT reading challenge which features ten items that are easy to complete. Read her post here. This challenge is a great one to focus on as a book display or online post. As Becky mentions in that post, you should have an adult summer reading program. One way to start is to highlight a variety of reading challenges in your displays and lists. Help your patrons complete or find a challenge. 

One thing to note in your signage is that your staff can help find titles to meet a challenge. Libraries should be the place where people come for reading suggestions. Not everyone in your community realizes that we are able to help patrons find their next great read. We need to shout that loudly and often. We know that AI suggestions are not able to provide the service that we can offer. (I have been suggested self-help after reading horror. Likely, this was an algorithm offering up something really popular.)

You can make an interactive display or post by having your readers make suggestions for a variety of prompts. Let your readers help each other. 

You can take this sort of marketing tool outside of your library and pair up with a local bookseller. They might have a book challenge of their own that you can help promote. Join with local businesses like a brewery, bakery, or coffee shop and create a local summer challenge in which you pair local fare with certain kinds of books. The businesses might be open to hosting/participating in an end of summer event for adults. 

Here are some websites with 2026 reading challenges listed. Pick a few to focus on and add suggestions to the display each month. If you have a website or blog, you can add suggestions there as well. Make sure you link to your catalog and digital collection. Create digital displays, shelves, or lists. 

Resolved to finish more books in 2026? Here’s your guide to the web’s best reading challenges. - Literary Hub

2026 Challenge Link Megathread - Reddit

Shelf Reflection 2026 Reading Challenge - Shelf Reflection 

If you search for 2026 Book Challenges, you can find a wide variety of challenges which should meet just about every readers' need. 

Unshelve your collection with help from RA for All and the New York Times

 Don't be afraid to grab ideas for promoting your collection from anywhere and anyone. Recently, readers advisory expert Becky Spratford featured the New York Times's Summer Reading Bucket List on her blog. She does include a gift link in her post so go there first to read it. Becky explains why this recent shift in the Times's book coverage is so welcome. I recommend that you read her blog every day for news, commentary and great readers advisory ideas. 

This bucket list is a great summer book display or online post for your library. You can do a ten week series and feature one idea a week with recommendations. Another idea would be to feature staff suggestions for the various entries and to mix up the entries since they are not in a particular order. 

Adult summer reading programs are sometimes overshadowed by youth programs and this list from the Times is an easy way to up your collection promotion while giving adults something fun to do!

Unshelving Your Collection Idea - Summer Scares Adult TItles

 Horror, like every genre, is read all year. Summer Scares is a joint reading program between the Horror Writers Association, Booklist, iREAD, NoveList, and Book Riot. It is focused on encouraging people to read more horror. Three titles in three categories (adult, young adult, and middle grade) are selected as well as a spokesperson. For 2025, the spokesperson is Kendare Blake. The selections are always backlist titles and include a diverse selections of authors and levels of scare.

The three adult titles this year are:

• Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes by Eric LaRocca (Titan Books, 2022)
• Reprieve by James Han Mattson (William Morrow, 2021)
• The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling (Harper Voyager, 2019)

The young adult titles this year are: 

• Devils Unto Dust by Emma Berquist (Greenwillow, 2018)
• The Getaway by Lamar Giles (Scholastic Press, 2022)
• Find Him Where You Left Him Dead by Kristen Simmons (Tor Teen, 2023)

The three middle grade titles this year are: 

• Eerie Tales from the School of Screams by Graham Annable (First Second, 2022)
• Ravenous Things by Derrick Chow (Disney Hyperion, 2022)
• Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon (Scholastic Press, 2020)

 It is also a great book display idea to include in your summer book display schedule. Booklist hosted three webinars with the three authors in conversation with a moderator. They are free to view so you can recommend them to your co-workers. You can view the adult author webinar here, on Booklist's YouTube channel.

You can use this year's titles as well as those from previous years on a book display, of course. Add other books by those authors as well. If you have any horror short story anthologies, you add them as well. 

One of my favorite parts of these interviews with the authors selected for any given year is hearing the reading suggestions of the authors. People love reading suggestions from celebrities and authors. If you watch the video, you can hear these suggestions: 

The Dumb House - John Burnside

The End of Alice - A.M. Homes
Horror Movie - Paul Tremblay

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Hotel World - Ali Smith
In My Time of Dying - Sebasitan Junger
Dublin Murder Squad series - Tana French
Crushing Snails - Emma E. Murray

The Bone Mother - David Demchuk
Dead Collections - Isaac Fellman
Tripping Arcadia - Kit Mayquist

Authors: Hailey Piper, Gretchen Felker Martin, Joe Koch, Cina Pelayo, Christopher Buehlman,  Paula D. Ashe

This is a great list of authors and books to use to create a display! 

All the information and links related to Summer Scares is on Becky Spratford's blog, RA for All: Horror. 

The videos with the young adult authors is here and the middle grade video is here. 

Summer Reading

 

Summer reading will be starting soon, and your book displays and lists can become part of the program. There are two themes that most public libraries will be using: Adventure Begins at Your Library from the Collaborative Summer Library Program and Read, Renew, Repeat from iRead.
Either theme can be used to promote your backlist and bring your collection to your patron’s attention. Use them broadly and always include some basic information about your summer reading program on the displays. A QR code to your website will also help patrons find out more.

Don’t forget to take Becky Spratford’s (RA for All) advice and put a cart of adult books in the youth programs. Most young children who attend storytime have a caregiver with them and those adults will appreciate having access to materials without having to bring a potentially tired or hungry child into the adult stacks. The cart can be easily filled with fiction and non-fiction popular titles. It can even be placed near the checkout desk or the picture books if that makes more sense for your space. Walk the programming area as if you were a patron and see where you can place a cart. You may find that two carts would work better. Of course, bring youth materials into your adult programs if you find that adults are bringing children.

Create lists or book displays that tie into your programs for adults or youth. Try to have displays throughout your buildings. They can market your programs and promote your collection at the same time. Some of your social media posts about your programs can include materials from your collection. Include smaller flyers or bookmarks about your programs in the items you place on your displays.

One final note, encourage staff from all over your library to help promote your summer reading. Any interaction with a patron could be a chance to provide information about it or even to let them know it exists. Try to have staff meetings with everyone to provide basic information. Make it something that everyone who works in your library is invested in and excited about.