The tables were set, the lights dim, the candles lit and soft piano music drifted in the background of the House of Smalley at Heritage Middle School.
Each of the selections for today’s book tasting was neatly displayed on book carts, ready to be consumed by hungry sixth-graders.
Adorned in aprons and hats, the chefs — Heather Smalley, a sixth-grade language arts teacher and Kris Konik, the school’s media specialist — greeted students as they filed in Smalley’s transformed room. Once they settled into their tables, Smalley addressed her patrons:
“Welcome to the House of Smalley. We’re so excited that you’re here to join us for our book tasting today. Remember we are focusing on identifying different forms of genres in sixth-grade texts.”
In previous years, Smalley and her students visited Konik in the library to browse books to check out. But in the era of COVID, any books students grab and flip through must be quarantined for up to a week before returning to the shelves, Konik said.
The book tasting offers students an interactive and safe way to explore books without having to quarantine them afterward.
“With COVID, we’ve had to come up with different ways for students to browse because we can’t have them browsing like they normally would,” Konik said.
Smalley proposed the idea after seeing something similar on Pinterest and wanted the book tasting to focus on genres. Konik selected a variety of titles from genres such as fantasy, mystery, graphic novels, biographies and non-fiction.
During the tasting, Konik described the appetizer and lunch options to students, showcasing each book with a description of the genre, story and topic it covered.
“One of our last options, Bone,” she said of the comic book series written and illustrated by Jeff Smith. “Although it doesn’t sound like much, it is quite interesting and fun and will capture your palate. Yum!”
Once students made their selections, they “sampled” the books with gloved hands, examining the cover and reading any descriptions on the back or inside the flap. They also flipped through the pages, looking for pictures, text features before reading the first three pages. Students then filled out tasting “brochures,” writing about what they sampled, the book’s genre and whether they liked it.
“Your goal today when you taste your books is you are going to identify what genre they will fit into and then we will compare and contrast the different genres,” Smalley told students.
Kendall McClure enjoyed browsing through books she hadn’t read before. But when it came time to check out a book, she opted for one she hadn’t sampled but had read before: Ellen Raskin’s The Westing Game.
“I just really liked it,” she said.
Jahzara Purvis enjoyed the book tasting and ended up settling on a Twilight Zone graphic novel.
“I like that we got to learn about different books and genres and to see how we can use our skills in reading books with writing,” she said.