St Martin’s Top Ten Fiction Titles

Finding ways to discover which books young readers really enjoy can be both revealing about trends and fun. School librarian, Jan Butler, describes the survey she carried out in her school and how she involved the pupils.

I felt that it would be a useful exercise to carry out a survey to establish reading trends amongst the boys from Years 5-8 (9-13 year-olds) within my school, St Martin’s, and at the same time, compile a list featuring their top 10 favourite and most consistently read books, as stocked by the senior library. I could easily have spent an afternoon or more, sitting at the computer sifting through endless pages of data, but I wanted to involve the people who mattered – the boys.

Firstly, I organized a questionnaire. This asked the boy’s year group, age and his favourite 10 books listed in order of merit. The boys were very enthusiastic about participating in the survey, as one had never been carried out before, and they were naturally impatient for the results. It took a few weeks to recover all the completed forms, then, I set to work analyzing the data. The results were firstly placed into year groups, then, collated as a whole to find the top 10 books overall. Finally all results were turned into pie and bar charts in addition to standard 1-10 lists. These long awaited results were pinned to the library notice board for all the boys and staff to see.

The results of the survey were welcomed by the English department, as they gave an insight into which type of books the boys were, or were not, reading, and would prove useful when choosing books for class readers. As I have said before, I could easily have taken the information I needed from the computer, which stores the reading history of each boy, to compile a popular book list. However, the computer could not have given me a comprehensive list of their favourite books, and in the order I sought.

I have used the results to assist in not only the purchase of new books, but also the restocking of the audio book section of my library. I personally feel that audio books are a great way in for reluctant readers. I have found many times over the years, that boys who have enjoyed listening to a good story, will later, with the correct degree of encouragement, take out the book and read it. This then, leads one on to the recommendation of similar reading material to stimulate further interest.

I am of the firm opinion that anything that can be done to introduce a child to the joy of reading, and keep them reading, should be investigated thoroughly. There is a vast array of wonderful literature on the market at the moment, and therefore there is a book somewhere to enthral every child. That particular book just has to be located and suggested. This is my job, and I enjoy the challenge very much indeed. To see the alert, twinkling eyes of a child describing the book they have just read, or jostling queues waiting at the computer to reserve the latest copy of a Darren Shan, Lemony Snicket or J K Rowling is reward enough for all the hard work.

I intend to repeat this survey again in a year or so to update!

Jan Butler is Librarian at St Martin’s School, Northwood, Middlesex.

Results of the Top 10 Fiction Book Survey

1 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J K Rowling, Bloomsbury, 0 7475 5099 9, £6.99 pbk

2 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J K Rowling, Bloomsbury, 0 7475 3274 5, £5.99 pbk

3 Lord of the Rings, J R R Tolkien, HarperCollins, various editions

4 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J K Rowling, Bloomsbury, 0 7475 4629 0, £5.99 pbk

5 Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J K Rowling, Bloomsbury, 0 7475 3848 4, £5.99 pbk

6 Cirque du Freak, Darren Shan, Collins, 0 00 675416 3, £3.99 pbk

7 The Hobbit, J R R Tolkien, HarperCollins, various editions

8 Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz, Walker, 0 7445 5943 X, £4.99 pbk

9 Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer, Puffin, 0 14 131212 2, £4.99 pbk

10 Northern Lights, Philip Pullman, Scholastic, 0 590 66054 3, £5.99 pbk