Engaging Displays Pull in Unlikely Readers: Tweens

When children hit the magic age of 9, something happens and many lose interest in reading and books. In libraries and in schools, we see this all of the time. It becomes a battle of push and pull to get children into libraries and away from computers. (Roblox and FortNite, I'm looking at you.) Instead, it feels like a daily struggle to get children interested in the next set of age-appropriate stories past picture books.

Children, ages 9-12 are sometimes referred to as Tweens. Tweens are in between childhood and becoming teens Tweendom comes with a whole new set of body changes, social interactions, and feelings. While adults have had years of experience with hormonal shifts, changing bodies, friendship drama, and stress, tweens are often truly experiencing these things for the first time on their own and that is scary! Do you remember what it was like to have your first crush or to share a secret with a friend for the first time and have them break your trust and tell it to someone else? Tweendom is all about impressing your friends and looking calm, cool, and collected while secretly trying to navigate all of the complexities of puberty. So, it's only natural that their interests and goals will change during this age group. The movies "Inside Out" and "Turning Red" provide humorous yet realistic portrayals of what tweendom feels like for so many young people.

So, how do we encourage tweens to want to engage with books?

An explanation that we don't always think about for tweens losing interest in books though is how we present the task of reading to them. In schools, reading is an assignment and in life, more often than not as adults, we associate reading with additional chores that we have to do. It is incredibly difficult to set expectations with children when we don't follow those standards for ourselves. This is where library displays come into play. To encourage tweens to return to reading and books, we must re-associate reading with fun and liesure. When we create displays that represent the interests and needs of tweens, like gaming, holidays, identity, sports, and nostalgia, we are empowering tweens to choose reading rather than instructing them to do so. This does not mean that every display will be a success or that tweens will walk in collectively and check out every single book available to them. It does mean that tweens will see that there is space for them in the library between early childhood picture books and YA fiction though!

Below are a couple of examples of displays that I created last year for my library. The displays are often a mixture of graphic novels, picture books, informational texts, and ocassionally a YA book or 2.