Making a Library Display

I have always wanted to try a "If you liked that, try this" library display, and last month I got my chance! I wanted to promote some titles by African-American authors in honor of Black History month, and I thought the best way to do that was through music.

I am definitely not a music aficionado--in fact, I've been thinking about how I need to listen to more new music--but I didn't want to pair them up without a reason. So I spent some time listening to excerpts of each album to get a feel for their themes and moods.

Some of the pairings were a bit of a stretch, but most were very intentional. For example, I paired The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas with Tupac Shakur's Thug Life because the title of the novel is actually inspired by a song from that album, and the narrator talks about Tupac throughout the book.

I also paired The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson with Beyonce's Lemonade; the former because Beyonce has said it is one of her favorite books, and the latter because the mood of the poetry in Lemonade reminded me of some of Woodson's poems.




The logistics of the display were a little tricky because our library has very little wall space, but lots of low shelves for displays, so I had to get creative with the way I displayed the images and text. I think it worked out pretty well, and a few of the books were checked out, so I hope that students noticed it!