Recently a subscriber, Kathie, reached out with the following question;
“I have a 5 year old granddaughter and a 3 year old grandson. There are lots of heroines in literature for her, but am looking for books with boy heroes (however not superheroes) for him.”
This is a lovely request, however book recommendations to send along to Kathie did not pop to mind. How do you find books when you know what you want to read, but don’t have any titles in mind? Book discovery is a very difficult part of reading with young ones, so here’s a wonderful service offered by the Brooklyn Public Library to help you find new books with subjects your child will love:
It’s called Book Match, and it’s an online form you and your child can fill out that includes questions about interests, books you like, books you don’t like, and other media such as games and movies that would help narrow down the kind of content you and your young one would like to engage with. This information gets sent to a real librarian at the BPL who will respond with a list of five suggestions pulled from their wealth of knowledge and resources.
The form does ask if you have a BPL Card, but it’s not required. Try it and see. But if you don’t have a card to your local library, go fix that immediately! How can one live a full life without a library card?!
Thank you to Rachel Payne, coordinator of Childhood Services at the BPL, for referring me to this service.
