Cover to Cover 2024 reading challenge books on display at the library. Courtesy/LAC
Cover to Cover 2024 reading challenge prizes. Courtesy/LAC
COUNTY News:
Los Alamos County library youth services staff shares details of the 2024 Cover to Cover reading challenge. Created for readers in grades 3-6, Cover to Cover is an annual challenge promoting great books offering fun prizes. This year’s challenge began Oct. 23, 2023 and readers may track their books using Beanstack through April 18, 2024.
Library youth services staff curate excellent fiction and non-fiction books in multiple genres by newer authors and spanning a variety of authorial voices. The annual list is usually released in September or October with books and audiobooks available to check out. Books are available at the Los Alamos and White Rock libraries and on the Libby, Hoopla and Sora apps. The Sora app can be found on public school Chrome books in Clever.
Cover to Cover books are available to check out year around, including previous titles all the way back to 2018. In the seventh year of this reading challenge, youth services staff have again chosen a diversified cross-section of books for older elementary readers to challenge themselves with.
To sign up for the Cover to Cover challenge, log into an existing Beanstack account or create a Beanstack account. The challenge will only be visible if a reader identifies themselves in their profile as being in grades 3-6. In Beanstack, parents are often the account creator with multiple reader profiles under the account creator.
Teachers have the option of creating a group for their class and logging for their readers. The parent and teacher logs are not connected, so a reader who is logging with their parent should not be part of a classroom group and vice versa.
Youth services library staff will visit classrooms at the elementary schools to do book talks and generate reader interest in the books while also demonstrating how to use Beanstack to track reading and win small prizes and enter drawings to win bigger prizes. In April, the public library will host a celebration of readers and books with activities and food themed around the titles.
Activities will include the announcement of the drawing winners and giving out of the big prizes if the winners are there to claim them. That celebration also is a chance for readers to give library staff book recommendations for the next Cover to Cover list.
Direct questions about Beanstack for this or any other library reading challenge running through Beanstack to staff at the library, call Melissa Mackey at 505.662.8276 or email mj.mackey@lacnm.us.
Library reading challenges for all ages use the Beanstack software, so watch for the Native American Heritage Month challenge in early November to run through the end of December.
The Books:
- Out to Get You: 13 Tales of Weirdness and Woe by Josh Allen and Sarah J. Coleman (horror)
- Speak Up! By Rebecca Burgess (graphic novel)
- Holler of the Fireflies by David Barclay Moore (realistic fiction)
- A Different Kind of Normal: My Real-Life COMPLETELY True Story About Being Unique by Abigail Balfe (non-fiction)
- Where the Lost Ones Go by Akemi Dawn Bowman (fantasy with ghosts)
- Futureland: Battle for the Park by H. D. Hunter (science fiction
- Alone by Megan E. Freeman (dystopian fiction)
- Tumble by Celia C Pérez (Realistic Fic/mystery set in NM)
- Shinji Takahashi and the Mark of the Coatl by Julie Kagawa (Action/adventure)
- Lucky Ones by Linda Williams Jackson (historical fiction)
- Shad Hadid and the Alchemists of Alexandria by George Jreije (fantasy)
