Huge thanks to my friend from kinderbookswitheverything for this idea of extending the Book Week slogan and using as a way to introduce or discuss the concept of genre with students. Do take a minute to look at our joint Pinterest which expands the slogan and contains some wonderful international picture books especially suitable for K-2.
Here are a few Australian picture book suggestions (there would be hundreds more) for each genre as way to introduce this idea to your students or perhaps these might be useful if you wanted to make a genre display. I'm sure other genres could be linked with each phrase in the slogan. Other Worlds could be Ghost Stories; Old Worlds could include the classics of children's literature and New Worlds could be Magical Realism. In some cases these books are previous CBCA short listed titles or award winners. I used the previous winners page from the CBCA.
Genres and the slogan:
Old Worlds
Historical Fiction
New Worlds
Speculative Fiction and Science Fiction
Dystopian Fiction
Other Worlds
Fantasy
"Other places and other worlds" (not really a genre)
Just to clarify this is not a post about genrifying your library collection. I am not a fan of this but I do see some value for older students when genre stickers are attached to some (not all) books but the fiction collection is still shelved in the usual manner by author surname. I believe in the serendipity of finding books and I think putting all titles together into each genre limits the chance of library users finding 'other' books and perhaps expanding their reading preferences. I also worry about the huge number of books which don't neatly fall into one specific genre but this is a debate for another time.
As I said this post is not intended as a debate about the advantages or disadvantages of genrifying a library but if you do want to read more these three articles might be a good starting point.
Genrefication in NSW public school libraries: A discussion paper June Wall Scan, 2019
8 Do's and Don'ts of Genrefication (US Software company Alexandria)
Why I choose not the genrify the Fiction collection. Sereena Hamm Teen Services Underground
I also found this interesting diagram of genres - might be useful in a High School library:
Image source: Imgur Wikibrains
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