A Summer Reading Theory: A Cockeyed Query for the Edu-ma-cation Types

Yesterday I spent the bulk of my working day engaged in an activity that I suspect many of my fellow librarians deal with each and every summer.  As the summer reading lists start walking into my branches I’ve been encouraging my librarians and information specialists to copy these little beauties and send me copies of what they list.  And I am happy to report that my librarians have been particularly good at forwarding on the requests this year.  Many is the librarian who will understand why this can be essential.  Schools vary widely in New York City, and whether you’re a charter school, a private school, or a public school, you’re going to have books that need to be read over the summer months so as to avoid the dreaded summer slide.

Now some teachers do a stand up and cheer job selecting just the right books for their students to read.  They’ll comb through the reviews and awards and produce a mix of titles both old and new for the kids to pick and choose.  Other teachers strictly adhere to the same old classics, and that’s okay too.  Then there are the teachers that get excited about a few titles but fail to check and see whether or not the public library system owns any copies of those books at all.

Hence my job.  I seek.  I find.  I add.

I also stumble across a lot of out-of-print titles that seem very odd.  These are good books and the demand for them is high.  Why are they out-of-print?  Here are two recent and particularly baffling titles that would fall into this category:

• I Hate English by Ellen Levine, illustrated by Steve Björkman – Great book.  I believe it was PW that said of it, “Differentiating carefully between the Asian and Caucasian characters, the breezy humor of the pictures alleviates what otherwise would have been a burdensome bibliotherapeutic message.”

• Bears on Wheels by Stan & Jan Berenstain – Yeah, an easy Berenstain Bears book is out of print.  Say what now?

But the phenomena that I would like to address is something I’ve recently deemed The Five Year Rule.  This rule only applies to certain reading lists.  Whether or not it is found in other parts of the country I cannot say.  All that I know is that I came across this occurrence last year and 2013 has confirmed my suspicions.

Last year I was collecting my summer reading lists as per usual when I came across something strange.  The books appearing on a lot of lists had something in common.  They were good books but often titles that had been weeded from my system for lack of use.  Now suddenly they were all the rage, five years after publication.  Thus the Five Year Rule.  In New York City, it often takes five years for a book to start consistently showing up on summer reading lists.  This year my theory was backed up by the appearance of books like Brooklyn Bridge by Karen Hesse on the lists.  Originally published in 2008, some folks can’t get enough of it right now.

So my question to you today, folks, is whether or not this is a pure NYC phenomenon or if summer reading lists nationwide do something similar.

What say you?

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