Rethinking my Classroom Library

9. I have a classroom library. It consists of a bookshelf full of young adult novels that I've read. And it is packed. My students are usually impressed at the beginning of the school year when I show them the library and tell them that I can recommend any of my books to them based on their interests because I've read them all. I hope that this shows them that I really do love reading. Every year, I lend out my books, I get most of them back. I do have a check-out system, but I'm not good at enforcing it. I have also gotten suggestions from my students, read the books and added them to the library. Typically students who are already avid readers are most interested in my library, but every once in a while I'm able to get a reluctant reader to read a book or two. And I hope the books I keep in my classroom encourage all of my students to develop (or begin) a love (ok a like?) of reading. One problem that I've recently encountered is that I've switched to a Kindle. Now I can't add to my library because I don't own physical copies of them. But I can continue to buy hard copies of the ones I really like (or think students should read.) This class made me realize that while I do have diversity in my classroom library: multiple races, sexual orientations, different genres (fiction, fantasy, science fiction) I need to work on diversity because I don't have an adequate representation of multi-cultural books, I have no graphic novels, and I have no books on poetry. So, as I work to build my library, I will try to incorporate more diverse books (genre, format, and content) so that my library will interest more students.