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32 books were the initial building blocks to begin the library project. My family and friends donated a great variety of books, such as “The Lightning Thief: Percy Jackson and the Olympians” by Rick Riordan and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling. I collected other titles, such as Mary Roach’s “Packing for Mars” and Wilson Rawl’s “Where The Red Fern Grows” from the local Little Free Library boxes in my area. These are all titles our middle school students read in the past or wanted to read them again for pleasure. It was small, but it was a start.

I was excited to get these books to school. My co-teacher had a book shelf I could use to hold the books. Using an excel sheet, I started a working catalogue to inventory the books and track them as students checked them out. I was able to lend 32 students these starter books to help them get started on completing their book report project for English class. This was just a drop in the bucket that I needed to fill-up. Even though some students could get a book from a library closer to their home or a bookstore, the overall student population needed access to books. I made it a goal to have one book for all 120 eighth-grade students. That meant I still needed 88 books to ensure each eighth grade student had a book at school for them to read. I also started thinking about the 118 seventh-graders who needed access to books eventually. For now, the remaining 88 eighth-graders needed to be my focus as they were my original target to obtain books for.

The next step was assessing the kind of books I need to get for the remaining 88 eighth-graders. Not all of them liked fantasy or science fiction. I had to find out what genres or titles interested the students as well as ensuring I obtain titles that challenge them both at their current reading level as well as perspectives about the world around them. Many of our students wanted books that reflected their experiences or talked about subjects they were curious about. We Need Diverse Books, First Book Market Place, and Thriftbooks.com became big players in the role to complete my goal for the first year in the Library Project.