I love first lines of books. When I was a freshman in college, looking forward to my first semester as an undergraduate at the great University of Illinois, one of my friends came over and looked at all of the literature I had to read for that semester. I was taking a British Literature class, so there was lots of Austens, Brontes, and Kiplings in the mix. She said she always loved to read the first paragraphs of books to imagine and predict what might happen. This has stuck with me for almost two decades (!), and I employed this strategy for my newest board/display combo.
I combed through books in our fiction collection and pulled titles at random. I read the FIRST LINE only. Was it interesting, intriguing, gross, outlandish??? Would it get the attention of students? Most importantly...would it fit on a single piece of paper for the bulletin board? ;) I found many titles, but I knew the board wouldn't be able to hold very many, so I narrowed my selection down to a dozen. As always, I tried to get different genres, time periods, and authors represented. Then came the fun part.
I recently created an account at Canva. This is an amazing place to create posters, signage, and any other type of advertisement you could want. And, it's free. (I mentioned Canva a few weeks ago in a post. For more info, see that post.) I found a simple, yet bold, option to put the first line of the book, along with the author, title, and publication year. I printed these and put them on the bulletin board.
The small "bubble burst" sign at top center directs the students to come inside and find the book that matches their
favorite First Line.
Next, I displayed all of the books on one of our display areas inside the library. If a line on the bulletin board outside catches a student's attention, they can come inside, find the book on the display, and check it out.
So far I've seen several students looking at the bulletin board and reading the lines aloud, but so far none of checked out any books. This is an extremely busy time of the year for these Uni students, so I'm not offended. This was a great board/display combo to put together, and one I will try to replicate in my future place of employment.
This is a great idea Amanda! I was just talking about first lines of books to Kayla yesterday. She is currently reading a book called "Chomp " by Carl Hiassen. The first line is "Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head." She laughed because that was a funny first line. I said "Good writers will give you a good first line. It keeps you reading. You want to know the story behind the dead iguana now, don't you?" Frankly- so do I!
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