‘Ugly’ Books Get A Makeover—

Judging A Book By Its Cover

By Laurie Borst

Richard Scarry books and The Call of the Wild were gathering dust on the library shelves. So were the Little House on the Prairie books. And, Good Night, Moon, the children’s classic by Margaret Wise Brown, languished on the shelf. How could this be?

That was the question that crossed Bev Bjorklund’s mind. Ms Bjorklund is the librarian at Sandy Hook School. She and her staff had begun to notice there were some books on the shelves that did not get checked out very often. New computer programs generated reports on books activity.

With these reports, it was easy to see which books were popular and which were not. It was troubling to the staff to find titles of classics and award-winners among the nonmovers. Investigating further, the staff found the ignored books had become “ugly books.” These books had lost their colorful, eye-catching jackets. Some had been recovered, but with dark paper.

Ms Bjorklund and her staff, Yvonne Cech and Mary Ann Jacob, brainstormed and decided to “dress up” these books.

“I couldn’t do any of this without lots of help from Mrs Cech and Ms Jacob,” Ms Bjorklund explained. “They worked very hard finding the books, getting the covers ready, and checking the books out to our students. While it may sound easy, they put a lot of effort into making this work.”

Once the books had been identified, the library staff got white paper for the covers. Interested fourth graders volunteered to make the new covers. Ms Bjorklund felt it would be a way for these students who would be leaving Sandy Hook School for the Reed School to leave a legacy at SHS.

Students created colorful covers, including the back “hook” statement that describes the book, and the inside flaps with a summary of the book and author information. The students also included a little bit about themselves on the back flap.

The students received their books shortly after the February break and worked on them into the spring. Beginning in May, the books started coming back. About 120 books had been identified among the more than 17,000 books in the library, with 100 being recovered. The remainder will be given the same treatment by fourth graders next fall.

With the new covers on the books, the staff now has the task of putting on new barcodes, spine labels, and plastic covers.

One student asked the question abhorrent to any librarian, “Why not just throw them out?”

“We have so many great books, I just can’t bear to toss them out,” Ms Bjorklund lamented. “I do believe that with new covers many of these unloved books will gain new respect as great books and perhaps become someone’s favorite!

“While we all know you can’t judge a book by its cover, we also recognize that a book that looks tattered and unattractive will not be chosen,” she continued. “Who wants to read an ugly book? By putting on kid-friendly covers, we’re hoping that it will be OK to judge the book by its cover!”