As an exercise in building our confidence around recommendations and inspiring conversations amongst readers, we have been hosting a series of weekly recommendation exercise at Bookworm.
Team members recommend books to each other and we listen to a bunch of book talks every Monday on these recommendations. It is interesting to see what we are all learning on this journey.
As I think about the process I realise that readers recommendation can take two distinct paths.
The most likely is “ MY PREFERENCE”. So a number of books get passed around on the fact that they are liked by one of the team and therefore shared. This is not a bad approach but it can be a problematic one if there is not sufficient confidence amongst the team to reject a preference and question it’s inclusion. And truly we should not all like and be excited by the very same book. Each of us are different !
Thus far only one team member questioned a book that was recommended to her and that team member was ME !
The other path should be “ CONNECTING WITH ” the recommendee. This requires us to know the other , to think of a book choice from the other’s point of view whilst keeping our own assessment of a text alive. I had the joy of four precious recommendations in the past week under this kind of activity.
Pranita shared My Day With Clouds by Hoda Hodadi, an Iranian writer- illustrator published by Eklavya. The text is quirky and abstract enough to warrant my undivided interest and intrigue. Pranita used a simple understanding of the fact that a complex human being will like a complex book and she matched us up well. I enjoyed the dream like sequence and the jumps from reality to fantasy that is the stuff of many books.
Geeta who was afraid of this exercise, and had to read a vast number of books to find me a match scored a winning goal in selecting Shadow by Marcia Brown. I was drawn to everything in the text. Geeta was at an advantage in selecting a Caldecott winner because the illustrations are powerful but I was also drawn to the fact that this is Brown’s translation of the poem La Féticheuse by French writer Blaise Cendrars. Mostly I was fascinated by the dark energy and the potential of the shadow that she plays with in this retelling. 
Amruta recommended One World, by Michael Foreman. She shared that she loved how the young boy captures the world in a bucket. She did not explain why I might like it, so I assume it is because she recognises that I am drawn to worrying about the world and yet able to enjoy the innocence and simplicity in the way young children examine the world. This is one of my beloved books in the collection , so enjoying it again as a recommended text was pure joy. 
Terence showed me that when he knows a person he can make a fine recommendation. He boldly was giving me a choice between two texts and I told him I felt he needed to select for me – that was the exercise and he chose Aunt Harriet’s Underground Railroad in the Sky by Faith Ringgold. He had me on ‘underground’ and then the telling and the dream sequence and the presence of quilts and creepy ‘white’ men peering at runaway slaves on every page had me spell bound. A very fine choice with a great bio note at the end , based on Harriet Tubman. My fiction and non – fiction pursuits were so well met in one book!
I am not sure how we will pursue this further as a team or what we may learn from these internal exercises that can strengthen our work outside, but I do think, knowing your reader is something that stands true and strong. Getting to know your reader by iterative choices may be one way but sometimes in library work the reader does not stay long enough to be part of our trial and error, so observing the reader, asking some questions about interests, genre, reading styles, time available etc may all add to the fruition of the task of making a good recommendation. Once you establish that relationship, it is simple to find an email or a voice saying, “ Can you please recommend a book for me ?”. That is the stuff library educators should dream of !
