School Improvement Episode 64: Managing, restocking and refreshing library spaces

Hello, Teacher Editor Jo Earp here and I'll be your host. But before we get into this episode, a reminder to take a quick moment to hit the follow button on your podcast app and make sure you stay up to date with the latest content. And please leave a review – it helps people like you to find the podcast and it's a big support for the Teacher team.

Hello and thanks for listening. It's Episode 64 of our series on School Improvement and the topic is something that we're really passionate about at Teacher – school libraries and encouraging students to read for pleasure. So, it could be the main library, classroom book collections and displays. It could be something like small reading corners and nooks around the school. How do you go about creating a fresh and welcoming space for all students? What kind of things inform your decision when it comes to new stock or just re-promoting existing titles that you’ve got? I've got 3 great guests for you – Mali Jorm, Madison Dearnaley and Tracy Kelly, who will be sharing their tips. We'll be chatting about what the latest research says about strategies to encourage reading for pleasure and of course the importance of student voice. And we'll be sharing personal and student book recommendations. Let's get started.

Jo Earp: Mali Jorm, thanks for joining me today. I am very keen to dive straight in, but actually before we do that, tell me a bit about your role here in Victoria.

Mali Jorm: So, my current role, I'm Head of Library and Information Services at Bacchus Marsh Grammar, which is the largest independent school in Western Melbourne. We have 2 campuses and 2 brand new libraries, one at each campus. So, this is a really exciting role because the library services in this current form are very new. So, we have a lot of new staff, new furniture, new spaces, new things happening, new connections with staff, which it's very, very exciting. It's really great to be on the ground with something that's going to get built up and be amazing.

JE: And if Mali’s name seems familiar to you, you might have already seen some content that we've done – that you've done actually – there are some videos there that I'll put a link to in the transcript of this as well, with loads of other tips and tricks as well. But it's great to have you for the episode today. I was thinking, with Term 4 well underway then, lots of educators then are maybe already starting to think about the preparation and maybe the purchasing decisions for next school year. In this episode then, we'll focus on stocking a classroom or a school library. We're going to have a chat to yourself, but also a couple of other experts as well. And we're going to be talking about not just those whole-school collections, but also those little nooks and spaces around the school and in the classroom, because they're important too, aren't they?

MJ: Absolutely, they are. I had a really fantastic former colleague, Lisette Robey, and she undertook a really great project. We had a really vibrant library, which was fantastic, but of course, people have to come into the space to use it. And this was in a high school, and she developed some classroom libraries that were happening in all of the spaces, and she spent a lot of effort really carefully curating them. It wasn't just, you know, some leftover books in the corner, that she bought special bookshelves for the space and, you know, little fake plants and stuff to make them really inviting. Lots of front-facing books.

And what she really tried to do was get particularly Book 1 of series that we knew were hot and we're going to really draw the children in. So, the idea was, in the classroom library, when they had some reading time, they might start reading some of these books and go, ‘oh, actually, these are amazing. I'll come to the library and get the rest of them’. So, we had no full series there, it was only the little tasters to come and get you in. But we also had those set up so those could be borrowable as well, so they were part of the library collection, and we could still use those. But, yeah, that worked really well to draw the students in, in their classroom space.

JE: That's a great tip to start with! I wanted to start off by talking about the importance of library spaces then. There was a recent article that we did, on a census in South Australia actually, that highlighted how it's not just about that reading, about the books, but about the wellbeing aspect too. Some common themes that I pulled from that were, the library being – this was sort of what people were saying about what was great about libraries – the library being a calm and inclusive space, having a diverse and accessible collection (Russell, 2025a).

MJ: I love that. That's very important. I think your space really, when you come in, it's your brand, it's your library brand. When people come in and they see, it sets the tone for how you're going to act in the space and how you're going to interact with the collection. So, if the first thing that you see is like, you know, really nice comfortable seating, it's really inviting, you feel welcome to come into the space, that there's beautiful new books, front-facing, to invite you in. You know, this is a reading-forward space, but it's also a student-focused space that does actually belong to the students and that they are invited to come and use and engage with and that it does actually belong to them.

And I think that wellbeing aspect leads into, I think library staff often being support people for students, that they are safe and trusted people. That not only do they have this lovely physical space they can come in, but they're also really caring people who are looking after students from their personal needs to their academic needs. And I think it's that whole brand of the library being a really welcoming space.

JE: I'm just thinking there, you'd mentioned earlier about those little nooks and crannies and classroom spaces and perhaps the odd sort of seating area here and there. Does that help with that inclusivity aspect of, I'm thinking maybe those people who might not want to be in a really big library where it's actually, it might be quiet, but it might be quite busy and there might be quite a lot going on. Is that one of the things that you always bear in mind?

MJ: Absolutely, yeah. It's so important to have, like you said, those nooks and crannies, those different kinds of seating and different kinds of spaces. Think about, you know, the old fashion carrels – the little walled desks with the little walls around them. There are students who absolutely love those because it's just their little like space away from all the distractions. They can just put their head down or read their book or do their work, whatever it is that it is; and they're still really popular. And a lot of people think, oh no, it's got to be all kind of flexible couch seating. And different students use the libraries for so many different purposes that some of them are social and do want those spaces, but some actually do want a little quiet space. And if we can try to build all of those in, it really helps for the student population.

JE: So, as I mentioned in the intro, in addition to having Mali in the studio, we're very fortunate to have 2 more expert guests on this podcast. Tracy Kelly is a Teacher Librarian from Canberra. Tracy, you've had a really interesting career. I think you're in your 15th librarian role, you've been a specialist librarian in law firms and government departments, a web manager, and then qualified as a Teacher Librarian and went into those education, school-focused roles. You're currently at a co-ed K-12 school, primarily working in the secondary library, and there are about 2,000 students spread over the 2 campuses. So, I'm interested in your reflections, I guess, on that topic of creating different spaces. So, using them, for example, to promote something and making sure they're inviting – that might be through the layout or furniture choices and so on.

Tracy Kelly: Over the years, using the furniture to create rooms and spaces and teaching environments and calm, quiet reading environments is something that is constantly changing. And having a flexible space is really important, so that you can change it with the times and with the cohorts as the students change as well.

We have tried many, many things over the years. My biggest tip really is having your shelves on wheels. You can move the collection around. You can showcase different genres, for example, and you can also wheel them around to test and try different sorts of nooks and reading areas. Then you get an idea of how the students use them, the traffic through the library, if that's flowing well or not. Sometimes it's a hit and a miss and you can move the shelves around and it doesn't quite work, and you try a different structure in the library. But we have found that by having them on wheels, we can move all the shelves out of the way. When we can invite authors to come and speak to our students, the shelves wheel and move really easily so that we can use the space for all different sorts of things in the library and then wheel them back again. And as I said, also trying those different spaces.

Some of the furniture that we've tried over the years: beanbags have come and gone, they were messy, the behaviour was a bit difficult to manage, we spent all day as staff picking them up and moving them, so they weren't a trip hazard. Soft chairs for group seating, individual tub chairs, which also were always being dragged around the library and then we would be moving them back. We very briefly had some chairs that we called the ‘Daleks’, like from Doctor Who, as they were oversized, they were on wheels, they had this small table that flipped around; and, to be honest, the students used them as transport more than they really used them for sitting and reading for pleasure or using in class. We had to move the students off them because they were just too hard to manage.

The most successful has been a mix of collaborative table spaces – so, round with about 6 chairs – if the chairs are on wheels, it's a really quick, speedy tidy up after a class has left. And then having a mix of just soft furnishing group chairs that might sit 3 students either side of a table for collaboration. And also having some cafe style chairs, which are very popular. So taller, just narrow tables with 3 chairs on either side that are the cafe seating with the footrests at the bottom – they've been really successful as well.

JE: Thanks, Tracy. I'm going to come back to you later, including for personal book recommendations. But, Mali, I want to talk a little bit more about the idea of a diverse and accessible collection. What do we mean by that?

MJ: Yeah, Jo, great question. When we talk about having a diverse collection, obviously we've got lots of like different kinds of genres and styles. We've got serious books, we've got frivolous books, we've got academic books, we've got instructional books. It's all of those different kinds of things when we're promoting that, you know, reading for pleasure, whatever those purposes may be, we do need to have a really, really rich collection with those different kinds of styles.

We also need to cater to different reading ability, of course, and particularly these days I find different attention spans. There are some children who will not sit down and read War and Peace – understandable, that's too much – but they want something that they can jump in and out of a bit more quickly and catering to that kind of reading as well.

And, of course, we know the wonderful work of Rudine Sims Bishop and the famous windows and mirrors, and students being able to see themselves reflected in a mirror, that they're reflected in the collection. So, being really aware of your school population and all the kind of diverse students that you have there; and that they're also windows to another world that students can see something else outside of their own experience and that that's reflected in the collection as well.

JE: What about different formats? Because I tend to think print just because, in my mind’s eye I am still very much a print kind of person in terms of when I do go to the library, I pick up a physical book rather than download a book. But there's so many different types now – there's eBooks, audiobooks. I guess you're trying to get all that as well, aren't you, in there?

MJ: Absolutely. And it's just that – you never know which particular one will cater to a particular student. We know that the research shows that young people, like you’re saying, they do actually enjoy the physical books. They really do actually want them. All those people are like, ‘no, no, no it's all going to be all eBooks and online’ – it's just not true. Students do want to read them in physical copy. And we also know that the students who are more likely to read eBooks and audiobooks and engage with those are students who are also reading physical books. So, we don't actually have many students who are like, ‘no, no, no, just audio books for me’. They're the kind of students who are really, really engaged with recreational literacy and actually just like to read in multimodal ways, depending on their mood and what the book is. 

So, we do obviously want to have all of those, but we find particularly with digital resources, we have to market those really heavily. Because books, of course, you know, they're in your face, you come to the library and the first thing you see is a beautiful front cover. It's much harder to engage a student with going, ‘okay, you can have an audiobook, but you have to come to a computer, and you have to click this, and you have to log on to this, and you have to...’ So, finding ways to make it as easy and accessible as possible to have all these different ways where we've put those links in so students can get to that digital content is really important.

JE: I mean I guess one of the massive advantages with audiobooks is it really opens up a whole new world because you don't have to be at that reading ability. You're having a book read to you. I've written about this before for Teacher, you know, I love listening to an audiobook or having a book read to me out loud. It's not that I can't read, but I just love that feeling of it being read to me. So, apart from that aspect of the reading levels, it's just a nice thing to do, isn't it?

MJ: And it's lovely to hear someone who's a really skilled oral reader and they're modelling that as well and hearing what that sounds like – when somebody's really, really good at storytelling, it's just so delightful.

JE: The other things is, when selecting books, then, you might also – if you're in charge of your library or you've got input into that – you might also be thinking about researching what are the popular or award-winning books, for example. There are lots of things aren’t there? There are most borrowed book lists out there. Of course, you've got your own data within the school. They're all a good source of inspiration, aren't they?

MJ: Absolutely, yeah. Look, there's so many sources these days. And I know there's some wonderful people – Madison has a fantastic blog where she talks about books, she's very well read. Look, I personally really lean into the student-led collection development model, where students are the ones who are actually proposing the books that they want to choose for the collection themselves. So, it's less about library staff researching the books that we think students should be or might like to read and actually researching how we can show young people how they can find books that they might like to read.

And I must say, they often don't need a lot of help with this. Once you say, ‘look, we want you to devise the collection and we will buy what you want to read’, they will turn up with lists. They will literally, they're all on TikTok, they're on social media, wherever they're getting it from, talking to their friends. We do find it's actually quite easy to get them engaged with that, that they are actually the ones driving the collection. And what I find then is once we have the students who are driving the collection and telling us what they like and what they actually want to read, our collection development then becomes much more we're supporting those students. So, we can say, ‘okay, right now they're absolutely nuts for romance, it's huge, huge, huge – are there some particular new authors or some particular styles that maybe they're not aware of that we can showcase to them given that we already have an in on this?’

A number of years ago now, back when YouTube was, you know, the big hot thing, I had a lot of conversation with students about, ‘hey, what did you do on the weekend? What are you interested in?’ And they were very, very into famous YouTube stars. So, I was like, ‘oh, okay, well, I bought some biographies of some famous YouTube stars’. And I had a student say to me, ‘oh, I didn't know we could get books like that in the library’ because they weren't aware that that was something that existed and that we would be willing to buy. And it's like, ‘yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you're interested in this, we want to buy to support that’. 

So, we do a lot of research around what our students are already interested in and what lists are out there to support those particular interests.

JE: You mentioned Madison there – I’m delighted to say Madison Dearnaley is also joining us for this podcast. Madison, you're Head of Library at St Paul's School, Queensland. There are 1,400 students and your role oversees the junior school and the secondary school libraries and also the Innovation Precinct there, which has some study areas and a very large makerspace. And I know you're part of a great team there to make all of that happen. You also run your own website, Madison's Library (that’s madisonslibrary.com and that's Madison with one ‘d’), so I'd recommend listeners have a look at that – there’s loads on there – there's a blog, there’s book reviews, professional learning materials. As I say, you're at St Paul's up there in Brisbane. Tell me a bit about the role of students, then, in building the library collection at your school.

Madison Dearnaley: I think student voice really drives ownership and when we're talking about reading, we know that choice really supports motivation. So having that student voice in our collection, we run a student-driven collection policy and approach. And that means that the students know that, and we tell them, I tell them all the time, ‘we’ll buy the books that you want’. And it's all about building their autonomy into what we have on the shelves and their ownership into that.

It's through having a really easily clickable link on our library homepage about requesting a book, but mostly it's about conversation. It's about telling them, ‘this is your space, this is a place for you and what we have on the shelves should reflect your interests and if we don't have it, we'll get it’. And obviously that's within reason – there's still, as school library staff, we're still in charge of making those decisions and checking that they are the right decisions against our policy. But it builds such interest and care about the collection because they're their books. They are what's on the shelves.

We also have a Library Committee. So, they help make decisions about events and help run events. They help make decisions about what's on the shelves and give us that live feedback. It's about asking students for feedback around the library. What are they liking? What would they like changed? We have Library Captains – so, they stand up at assembly. They're the ones that tell the school about what's happening in the library and then feed that information back to us. So that student voice is central to helping support our students and for them to have a place in the library here.

JE: Just on the Library Committee, is that made up of students and yourself?

MD: Yeah, myself and then students. So, any student in secondary school, so that's a secondary school sort of initiative (they have something similar in junior school), but they, anyone who's interested can sign up and we meet twice a term and then there's an online forum where they can chat as well. And it's coming in – and the Library Captain usually runs those sort of meetings with my assistants – and it's about asking them for their input, asking them to make purchasing decisions, asking them to come and assist with library events. We have lots of, we have a Launch Day, it's called, for extracurricular clubs, and we have a lot of extracurricular clubs in the library. I don't have to go and do that. I get all the posters ready, I get everything packed up in a box, and then the Library Committee come and grab it, and they head down there, and they run that for me. And it's all about them telling other students, ‘this is what you can do in the library, this is how you can get involved’. Which is awesome for time management for myself as well.

JE: Mali, how do you ensure that you reach all students? So, there'll be some who may be quite shy or who would prefer to give their input in a slightly different way.

MJ: Look, we offer multimodal ways. You can email us. We have it very, very clear how you can contact library staff. So, if you don't want to talk to us in person, how you can send one through our electronic school system and email library staff for requests, and we're very responsive to those emails. We have a physical list. We have an iPad with the library catalogue next to that list. So, students will look up books that, you know, ‘oh, do you have this?’ and it sparks those conversations with them. And we're like, ‘hey, we don't actually have that. Write it on the list, on the ordering list, and we can add that in’.

We do a lot of outreach with our students to have classes in for book talks and to build those personal relationships, because we know students are much more likely to engage in that conversation, actually, with library staff if they already see them as a trusted adult.

JE: So, we – I found this fascinating – we published an infographic recently (Russell, 2025b). It was a massive UK study, I think it was National Literacy Trust, it was over 100,000 students, I think. And it was about strategies to encourage students to read. So, it was those readers that were maybe a bit reluctant in reading for pleasure and they were asked, you know, what would maybe change their mind. Three I thought that really stood out to me: one was ‘reading the book of the film or TV series I watched’; one was ‘books that match my hobbies and interests’; the other one was ‘seeing an interesting book cover or title’.

MJ: I love that – it was a great infographic, very, very informative. And I felt it really rang true to what does work to engage the students. And I think it leans into that the best connections we have is when there's already some kind of positive pathway in a student's brain about something, that they already love that sport, or they already love that TV show, and that they're not coming in cold. And I actually think the book covers – which do a lot of heavy lifting these days, the graphic design in book covers has had a lot of improvement over the last decade – that they are working very, very hard to look engaging to bring the students in.

But I do find it is those personal connections for things that they're already engaged with. And I think actually one of the reasons why manga is just still so eternally hot is that the students are all watching the anime at home. And it's one of my absolute favourite things when a student gets excited about something and they come to the library and the first thing they say is, ‘do you have a book on this?’ They're very, very excited about, you know, cricket. And ‘oh my goodness, do you have a book on … my favourite cricketer?’ ‘Do you have a book on … this TV show?’ KPop Demon Hunters – oh my goodness, Netflix and Sony why is there not a graphic novel series out already? Because the number of requests I've had of students who are so excited, their brains have been inspired by this and they want to come to the library and read more, and we don't have any books on it for them yet. So, I think it is really fantastic to have those pre-existing connections and to be understanding of what student interests are.

JE: Madison, I know you're finding the same with movies sparking interest. And you actually did a display coming out of that KPop Demon Hunters popularity. That research, as I say, was with UK students, but there's certainly food for thought, isn't there?

MD: It's really interesting. It's made me really reflect on how we recommend books to students. And when we think about content and how they are delivered content these days, if you think about social media, algorithms feed back more and more of what they like. And it's the same with picking a movie. And I feel like we're really behind, in a lot of ways, in libraries and the publishing world. So, using these sort of strategies can help use those ways of personalising recommendations. I think that film or that TV series is really key for making that connection between the content that they might already be engaging with and then finding a book that they might want to read. 

I think that we're finding more and more that it's choosing that book that is one of the biggest barriers to them actually reading. So, if we can start to break down those barriers and make making a decision about what to read a lot easier, then that's going to be helpful. One of the popular sort of displays I've put up recently was just, ‘if you liked KPop Demon Hunters this is what you could read’. And we don't have KPop Demon Hunter books, I don't think they're a thing just yet, but that grabbed a lot of interest because that's what people were talking about or students were talking about at that time and I was able to curate a whole range of different books that sort of fit that feel or that genre. 

And that was just an idea that I saw online. So, sharing and people share resources. And really connecting with what students are into. So, books about their hobbies and their interests. And I think that's where that student-driven collection really helps because if they're into, you know, swimming or if they're into tennis or if they're into horse riding or whatever it is that they're into, and you get some really amazing requests. Poetry is massive at the moment, so we're really building our poetry collection because that's what students are reading online and engaging with online. There's a lot of creators, poetry creators out there that are sharing their stuff online. And so, the students are seeing that and then able to say, ‘that's what I'm into. Can we have more of that?’ So being able to support that really helps.

Book covers – I mean, that's our biggest thing in marketing. If I can have as many books forward facing as possible. The amazing publishing teams have already done so much work to make those covers appealing and try and sell those books, so if I can just at least have them forward facing, that's a great way to help students find and select a book.

JE: Yeah, you're right, those book covers are one of your best marketing tools, aren't they? Tracy, students coming to find the book of a movie – and of course that could be for curriculum-linked things as well, so it could be a film they're studying – and making sure you show off those book covers; thoughts on that?

TK: So those are 2 really interesting things and something that we have addressed in our library. So, on the bottom left corner of the front cover of a book, we have actually put a little sticker, and the sticker is a yellow background with a black clapperboard, so you can see clearly, and that is our ‘book to screen’ sticker. We didn't put it on the spine because we didn't want the spine to be cluttered with too many stickers that are just overwhelming for younger students.

So of course we have the call number on the bottom, then we have the genre above that, but students can pull the books out that they're interested in, in the genre, and look at them and they'll quickly see that yellow and black ‘book to screen’ sticker. And that's really useful for us as teacher librarians because our English department do a unit of work that is a book to screen study. And then of course we have our seniors that do comparative text analysis. And often what they might like to do is have a look at a book that has also been a movie and then compare and contrast that, or do an analysis of some contemporary writing, newspaper articles, poetry, or some other sort of short story. So having those sorts of little icons on the book that, as I said, don't clutter up the spine, but are easily accessible and quite easy to see, helps our students quickly identify those books. 

And we certainly know, and have a lot of experience with, when movies come out and we get that run of students interested in reading the book. Just for example, one that comes to mind is The Fault in Our Stars. We had to buy more copies, we had to get some eBooks, there were so many students interested in reading the story, as students are very savvy and aware that what they see in the movie isn't always the depth of the entire story that you might get in a book. So, they'll come and see us and often borrow the book, or vice-versa they want to read the book and then go and see the movie.

And the other point about seeing an interesting book cover or title. So, that is actually something that we've addressed and you can do this really easily and very cheaply in that you have your bookends at the end of your shelf, of your run of books, and you just slip the bookend in the middle of the last book. So, you basically, you can just put the cover in front, or you could put the middle of the book over the end of that metal bookend. And that means along all of the shelves, you see that cover art. Because, when you think about it, the publishing companies, they do so much research and spend so much money on the design of that cover because the cover is really important in bookstores to sell the books, and to have that image support the title of the book, and to give people an idea of what the book might be about. And if you can put the book end in the middle of the book, or just inside that front cover, you will really easily see all those wonderful book arts on every shelf at the end.

And the other thing that we did, which even had more success for us than we were anticipating, was we got some clear, just containers, very, very cheaply – you could get them anywhere, Kmart, Big W, any of those places – and we started to put our series, stacking them in front facing, because a lot of the series have amazing cover art. And even though the students kind of pull them out and mix them around, so you try and start with your run of 1 to 10 and have that first book at the front, but often that gets mixed up. But what we actually found was when the students could see the cover art of the series of books, they started flying off the shelves and it was really successful to improve and increase the borrowing of series.

JE: Oh, more great tips, Tracy – making sure you use the ends of those shelves, and I like the idea of the boxes for series to flick through. I'm learning so much today! You mentioned earlier about the furniture choices and shelves on wheels too. Mali, on that question of changing up displays and stock (and I guess the book covers on show comes into this too) how often would you be doing that refresh?

MJ: Yeah, look, such a great question. And I think it depends very much on your library space and what you can move around. We always have a themed display table. There's always something, we always make sure there's something happening in the library. There's something that has some kind of cohesive thing to drive interest, whether it’s something happening to students or a particular interest. So, for example, one of our libraries at the moment, we've just got a Halloween display – super simple, you know, lots of, you know, fun kind of spooky horror books and, you know, Bluey does Halloween… So, we do try to keep that so there's enough space for the display to breathe that the students can see it and engage with it and borrow it, but they don't get sick of it. So, a couple a term is usually about the way to go.

JE: Yeah, I should point out we are recording this in the run-up to Halloween, so that's obviously a nice one to do. Lends itself to catching the eye! Madison, I often wonder with libraries if it's a bit like being kind of a gallery owner, where you've got some things on show and then some things out back maybe and then they rotate with something else, and changing it up can be a good thing.

MD: Absolutely. You have to keep it fresh and there's a balance between familiarity for students and keeping it fresh. My team and I are very much into change. And so, we are often changing things around anyway, so that keeps it fresh for students. And I've seen even just moving collections – we might have had the ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ section and the ‘Science’ section; we flipped them just because of different reasons of size of collection, and suddenly all the Science books were being borrowed because they were able to see them more clearly.

It's using some of those techniques, like I know that they're going to find my manga collection no matter where I hide it. That is the most popular collection, so that's down the back and it doesn't need the really valuable forward facing, in your face as you walk through the door, space. And I put other collections there. Often with the just refreshing what's on display, that's through what's being taken – so, refilling, and having students do that. I have a few student helpers that come in and re-shelve. So, they'll fill those spots for us. That helps manage the workload of moving things around. And if it's been sitting there for a while, obviously that's not appealing, it's time to put that away and find another title that might disappear a little bit more quickly.

JE: Yeah, getting the students involved in that refreshing too, that's another great way to build that involvement and ownership. Mali that teacher and staff modelling of enjoyment of reading, then? That could be something like, you know, having a book with you at work, showing that you're reading for pleasure, talking about books that you're interested in. We know that that has an impact, too, on encouraging others. Do you have any examples of that you want to share?

MJ: Oh, I do, absolutely. Look, and it is, it's just what you said – it's so important for students to know that they're part of a community of readers because we know that reading, it's a hidden activity, right? We assume other people are reading, but we know that students underestimate how much their peers are reading because they don't see it. It's secret, it's at home, it's in a corner, it's, you know, up a tree, it's all of those things.

I was recently with a wonderful colleague of mine, the Head of English at [Maddingley Campus, Bacchus Marsh Grammar], Karin Kos, and we were doing some student leadership interviews, which are really very, very formal. They're like a job interview. The students have to come and apply for these student leadership roles. And the students are quite nervous in these very, very formal interviews. And at the end of the interview, she did the most wonderful thing that I absolutely love – she said to every student, ‘what are you reading at the moment?’ And it absolutely just bookended the whole thing on such a beautiful, positive note. 

We ended up having lovely discussions about what they were reading and we were reading. And it was just those little conversations like, of course we're all reading, of course we're reading something, hey, let's chat about that. And it just totally defused this, you know, very, very serious moment. And it was just such a nice in with all of those students. And I just want to use that more. Just, ‘hey, what are you reading at the moment?’ And just have all of those conversations with students all the time.

JE: With that in mind then, that it's important to share what you're reading, to talk about reading and that simple question, as you say of, ‘hey, what are you reading at the moment?’ I'm going to come to each one of you for recommendations. Tracy, let's start with you. What are you reading at the moment?

TK: I actually had a student ask me this today. He said, ‘what is your favourite book?’ And I was a little bit stumped. And in the end, I said, ‘I have to be honest, over the years, it's changed’. I've loved reading crime for a while. There's many fantasy stories that I enjoy reading and also adventure stories. I really love the magical realism stories – my favourite authors being Isabel Allende and Gabriel García Márquez. I have more recently enjoyed reading Jane Harper's Aaron Falk series. And that was because I watched the movie The Dry starring Eric Bana. That was a great movie and so I went and found the book and ended up reading all the series.

I do recommend though reading the non-fiction book Phosphorescence by Julia Baird. The cover art of this book is just amazing, it's really gorgeous, and the book is really inspiring. It is just so amazing to read. I couldn't put it down. And even though she hasn't really convinced me to swim in the ocean in the middle of winter, but she has really inspired me to always look for the wonder in the everyday and taking those moments to enjoy life and encourage my children to find, seek out and enjoy wonder and enjoy being in the moment.

JE: And students?

TK: Look, the Percy Jackson Greek mythology series, they're always really, really popular. Students really enjoy reading those Greek mythology tales.

JE: Madison, what book are you reading and what's popular with students?

MD: So, the book that I am reading and loving at the moment is Drift by Pip Harry and it's a beautiful verse novel that is about family and friendship and mental health and finding a place in this world. And I'm really loving that, and it reflects that verse novel is really very popular at the moment. Students are loving poetry. The other thing that students are really loving at the moment is, well, always, are graphic novels. And when I went to look up, you know, what's something that they're really loving at the moment, every top borrowed book is a graphic novel at the moment. We've got a couple of year groups who are actually studying graphic novels. I particularly love the Lightfall series – it is a divine series, and I am desperate for the 4th book.

But I think it also comes back to recognising and supporting whatever the students want to read and valuing that as a format, whether it's eBooks or audiobooks or poetry or graphic novels or verse novels – whatever it is, and that they're loving and have an interest in and really supporting that.

JE: Thanks Madison, more great recommendations. And Tracy, yeah, I've read Phosphorescence and I totally agree. I absolutely loved it. I had to keep stopping to share bits with other people and it's a great one for dipping in and out of and going back to it. And yes, the cover is so beautiful. Finally, then, Mali your personal recommendations.

MJ: Personal recommendations. So, I always find I'm reading something just a bit off centre because I don't spend any of my time anymore reading like the big hot hits because they just go, right? I don't need to market those in any way. So, I'm always trying to find something that's a little bit, you know, there's a gap in the market, some student I can cater to. Can I find out about this niche? Can I get a bit of an in on it to, you know, find some other way to, you know, just meet all those student interests? 

So, what I've been reading a lot of at the moment is recreational non-fiction – so, non-fiction books that are reading for pleasure. So, not something that students would do for study purposes, but not something that's like a traditional narrative. And so, the one that I'm reading at the moment is called Humble Pi. It's a comedy of maths errors by Matt Parker, who is a former high school maths teacher, and it's very, very fun and engaging. And it's just a whole lot of like true stories that he's researched very well, about problems where humans have done some bad maths and the errors that this has resulted in – very entertaining.

And I really like these recreational non-fiction books, particularly for our senior secondary students. We know that the senior secondary students read and borrow a lot less because they're just so busy with their study. We absolutely understand, and it can be really hard for them to kind of get invested in a great big, long fantasy series. And I actually think they feel a bit guilty too because they're like, ‘oh, I should be studying’. So, the recreational non-fiction is actually really, really powerful for them because I don't think they feel as guilty borrowing it because they're like, ‘well, it's educational. I'm learning about maths’.

But they're also designed that you can dip in and out of them really, really easily. So, I find that the students who borrow these keep them for much longer than they would for a fiction book because I think they're reading it when they have a chance. And it's okay because you've read that chapter that was about how the calendar developed, and then the next chapter is about the Challenger disaster. And it doesn't matter – you don't have to really remember what the one was before. So, they're really good for those students to dip in and out of. So, I'm really interested in building that collection, so I've been doing a lot of reading in that space at the moment.

JE: And what about the students? What's flying off the shelves in your libraries?

MJ: At the moment, the middle school graphic novel genre has just exploded in the last few years and so many titles are being brought out, and we just cannot keep those on the shelves. It is the largest and most popular part of our collection. So that's really fantastic, the students are very, very engaged with that. Romance is big again. Romance is back. Romance is cool again. Was not for a very, very long time, but it's having a moment in the sun. Percy Jackson's still very, very, very hot with, you know, a very, wide age range as well. And look, they are really good books, I absolutely understand that. Manga, still very, very, very huge. And again, across, that speaks to a lot of different age levels as well.

And again, like I said, we really do need to have some really new releases coming out for things, very quickly, that the kids are excited about. I know Stranger Things did that very well a couple of years ago. As soon as it came out, they had novels, they had graphic novels, it was all out there. And so, while that was really, really big, it was fantastic. We could build that collection. We have quite a big collection on that at the moment.

So, if the makers of those big hits are listening, there is an appetite for books too to go with the TV series and the films! Okay, well, that's been a brilliant chat. Lots of inspiration and tips. A massive thanks to Mali, to Madison and to Tracy. Thanks to you for listening. There are hundreds of teacher podcasts to binge on in the archive if you want to keep listening now. Before you do that though, please hit the follow on your podcast app (if you haven't done that already) and if you just take a small amount of time to leave us a review – both of those things help more people like you to find our podcast and they are a really big support to the Teacher team, so thanks very much for doing that. We'll be back with a new episode very soon.

References

Russell, D. (2025a, August 20). Research news: The changing landscape of school libraries. Teacher magazine. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/research-news-the-changing-landscape-of-school-libraries 

Russell, D. (2025b, October 3). Infographic: Pathways to reading for pleasure. Teacher magazine. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/infographic-pathways-to-reading-for-pleasure