Top Ten: Graphics

Graphic Books are wildly popular with our students, and for good reason. They engage visual learners and encourage slow reading since much of the story must be gleaned through "reading" the illustrations. 

We choose high quality stories with expressive and engaging artwork, and comics meant to entertain. 

Garfield is a top choice for many children. From Garfield, many of our students learn idioms and comic expressions; the text is accessible and fun; and the static characters of Jon and his fat cat become dependable companions for young readers.

But it's not all fun and games in the graphic section. We also have "serious" graphic novels like Around the World: three tales about early aviators; The Olympians series featuring Zeus, Hades, and Athena, and the graphic version of Lightning Thief, to name just a few. 

Top Ten Graphic Books

#10 - Lunch Lady and the Summer Camp Shakedown

#9 - Missile Mouse: Star Crusher

#8 - Garfield Eats Crow

#7 - Garfield Dishes it Out

#6 - The Avengers: The Ultimate Character Guide

#5 - Missile Mouse: Rescue on Tankium 3

#4 - Ghostopolis

#3 - Garfield Chews the Fat

#2 - Smile

and our top graphic book this year was...

#1 - Lunch Lady and the Cyborg Substitute

That's it folks...another great year of reading at AIS-Budapest!

Top Ten: Chapter Books

Our chapter book section is alive and well, with students checking out for classroom and home reading regularly. We buy new fiction three or four times during the school year, and our voracious readers are constantly asking when the next shipment will come! 


Students request titles they'd like me to buy on a google form, and usually they're asking for the next book in their favorite series. 


Diary of a Wimpy kid is the most popular series, 
but these are also hot:

Warriors

Mercy Watson

NERDS

Candy Apple

Dear Dumb Diary

The Popularity Papers

The Buddy Files

Big Nate

All of the titles below that are NOT Diary of a Wimpy Kid books were on our Golden Dragon or Silver Knight lists this year. This program encourages students to try a wider variety of genres to broaden their reading experience. I was thrilled to see one of my favorite books* of the year on the list.

Top Ten Chapter Books

#10 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw

#9 - Bad Kitty vs. Uncle Murray: The Uproar at the Front  Door

#8 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever

#7 - Frankie Pickle and the Pine Run 3000

#6 - Inside Out & Back Again*

#5 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffley's Journal

#4 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days

#3 - The Strange Case of Origami Yoda

#2 - Big Nate: In a Class By Himself

and our most popular chapter book this year was....

#1 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth

Stay tuned for our top ten graphics!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Top Ten: Books in the Dewey section

I know lots of librarians are re-thinking their use of Dewey to organize books. For us, Dewey still works well, maybe because we use visual signs to help students find the areas they are interested in. We're also starting to use shorter Dewey numbers to make it easier for youngsters to "read" the shelves. 


Sections that see heavy use are machines, dinosaurs, the Titanic, and Crafts. And when a class is studying a particular topic, that section sees lots of action: Solar System? Insects? Rocks and Fossils? 


Still, our top ten titles don't reflect this. It makes it look like our students only take Guinness Book of World Records books! Not so! Our students DO read lots of "quality" nonfiction and fairy tales. But nothing beats Guinness for creating a stir and a buzz and turning lots of students on to the idea of reading and sharing information with friends.


So, love 'em or hate 'em...Guinness is here to stay.

Top Ten Dewey Books

#10 is a three-way tie:
Guinness Book of World Records, 2004
Lost Boy: The Story of the Man Who Created Peter Pan
Dactyls: Dragons of the Air

#9 - The LEGO Book

#8 - Guinness Book of World Records, 2007

#7 - A Dazzling Display of Dogs: Concrete Poems

#6 - Guinness Book of World Records, 2002

#5 - Star Wars, The Clone Wars: Jedi Heroes

#4 - Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum

#3 - Guinness Book of World Records, 2008

#2 - Guinness Book of World Records, 2009

and, the most popular book in the Dewey section was...

#1 - Tentacles: Tales of the Giant Squid
(illustrator Bryn Barnard visited us in the fall)

Stay tuned for our top ten Chapter Books!

Top Ten: Picture Books

Our picture book collection is so large that we have a separate section for the duplicates. Many of these titles are popular with teachers as mentor texts, so we label them "PROF" for "professional" and include them in another area along with other professional titles about teaching pedagogy.


Buying picture books is one of my favorite parts of my job. I love reading various journals with reviews of the latest books, and when the new books finally arrive at school and I open those boxes, it feels like Christmas morning.

One emphasis this year was the idea that picture books are for EVERYONE. (That's why we label them "E"!) We celebrated Picture Book Month in November by encouraging students and teachers to read at least one picture book every day and then enjoying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch on the last day.


As I look at our most popular titles, I notice four of them are titles on our Golden Dragon/Silver Knight reading challenge list, and many of them encourage interaction from the reader (Waldo and Mirror). Finally, six of the titles are quite new. We have multiple copies of all of these titles. Duplicates = high circulation!

Top Ten Picture Books

#10 - Here Comes the Garbage Barge

#9 - The Princess Encyclopedia

#8 - Mirror

#7 - Little Pink Pup

#6 - Where's Waldo?

#5 - Purplicious

#4 - Goldilicious

#3 - Shark vs. Train

#2 - Where's Waldo Now?

and our most popular picture book this year was....

#1 - The Book That Eats People

Stay tuned...tomorrow we'll run down our top ten books from the Dewey section!