Elkhart Public Library now offers book club kits to keep learning accessible for teachers and homeschoolers.
The kits are available to place a hold on in the library’s online catalog (opens in a new tab) and can be picked up at any library location. Each bag includes 12 copies of the book and may be checked out for 90 days.
“The service is important for the library to provide because when reading is a social experience, kids are more likely to enjoy reading,” says Allison McLean, head of the children’s department. “One of the best ways to do that is for everyone to read the same book. That requires a lot of copies of books.”
Allison says the idea came after a teacher asked to get books for a book club. Instead of making teachers wait for books to come through interlibrary loan, EPL can have a dozen books available at once. The book-only kits give teachers the freedom and flexibility to build their own lesson plans or discussion guides.
Currently, EPL has the below titles across adult, juvenile fiction, and young adult fiction genres available as book club kits.
Juvenile fiction
“Restart” by Gordon Korman (opens in a new tab)
“Long Way Down” by Jason Reynolds (opens in a new tab)
“Darkroom” by K. R. Alexander (opens in a new tab)
“Mosquitoland” by David Arnold (opens in a new tab)
“Wait till Helen Comes” by Mary Downing Hahn (opens in a new tab)
“Ghost” by Jason Reynolds (opens in a new tab)
“Slugfest” by Gordon Korman (opens in a new tab)
“Number the Stars” by Lois Lowry (opens in a new tab)
“Lines of Courage” by Jennifer A. Nielson (opens in a new tab)
“Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen (opens in a new tab)
“The Tale of Despereaux” by Kate DiCamillo (opens in a new tab)
“Restart” by Gordon Korman (opens in a new tab)
“Scythe” by Neal Shusterman (opens in a new tab)
“Small Spaces” by Katherine Arden (opens in a new tab)
“Starfish” by Lisa Fipps (opens in a new tab)
“The Inheritance Games” by Jennifer Barnes (opens in a new tab)
“Holes” by Louis Sachar (opens in a new tab)
“The Wild Robot” by Peter Brown (opens in a new tab)
“Out of My Mind” by Sharon Draper (opens in a new tab)
“City Spies” by James Ponti (opens in a new tab)
Young adult fiction
“Borrow my Heart” by Kasie West (opens in a new tab)
“I’d Tell You I Love you but then I’d Have to Kill” You By Ally Carter (opens in a new tab)
“You Should See Me in a Crown” by Leah Johnson (opens in a new tab)
“The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak (opens in a new tab)
Adult fiction
“Funny Story” by Emily Henry (opens in a new tab)
“Horse” by Geraldine Brooks (opens in a new tab)
“All the Colors of the Dark” by Chris Whitaker (opens in a new tab)
“James” by Percival Everett (opens in a new tab)
“Orbital” by Samantha Harvey (opens in a new tab)
“Tell Me Everything” by Elizabeth Strout (opens in a new tab)
“The First Ladies” by Marie Benedict (opens in a new tab)
“The Frozen River” by Ariel Lawhon (opens in a new tab)
“The Fraud” by Zadie Smith (opens in a new tab)
“Good Night, Irene” by Luis Alberto Urrea (opens in a new tab)
“The House of Eve” by Sadeqa Johnson (opens in a new tab)
“The Five Wishes of Mr. Murray McBride” by Joe Siple (opens in a new tab)
“Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver (opens in a new tab)
“The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell” by Robert Dugoni (opens in a new tab)
“The Briar Club” by Kate Quinn (opens in a new tab)
“Happiness Falls” by Angie Kim (opens in a new tab)
“The God of the Woods” by Liz Moore (opens in a new tab)
“The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman (opens in a new tab)
“The Clinic” by Cate Quinn (opens in a new tab)
“How to Solve Your Own Murder” by Kristen Perrin (opens in a new tab)
“Klara and the Sun” by Kazuo Ishiguro (opens in a new tab)
Adult non-fiction
“Disarmed: the Radical Life and Legacy of Michael MJ Sharp” by Marshall V. King (opens in a new tab)
(opens in a new tab)“A Fever in the Heartland: the Ku Klux Klan’s plot to take over America and the woman who stopped them” by Timothy Egan (opens in a new tab)
Plans to add more titles, including adult book club kits, are being explored.