Young Hoosier Book Club At Green

The Young Hoosier Book Award books provide great motivation for starting a book club at your school. For those of you unfamiliar with the program, the YHBA has three categories – primary, intermediate, and middle. There is a committee for each category, made up of library media specialists from all over Indiana. They read from 60 to 10lu0 books over the summer and gather in September to select the final list. The books they read are ones recommended by other media specialists, teachers, and students over the previous year.

The YHBA book club at Greenwood Middle School began over 10 years ago and was the brainchild of Cindy Roberts, media aide, and Karen Hill, sixth grade Language Arts teacher. The first year the club was open to sixth graders only. The initial goal was to get at least 10 students to join. Imagine everyone’s surprise when 24 students showed up at the first meeting! Since then, the club has expanded to include sixth, seventh and eighth graders and has grown to 56, although there have been some years when more than 100 students signed up.

The club meets once at month in the GMS IMC before school from 7:15 to 7:45. Donuts, juice, and milk are provided. Sometimes a homemade treat is thrown in for good measure. The YHBA books are kept out of circulation until the first YHBA meeting. This gives the club members first dibs on the books. It’s amazing how much excitement this generates. One year, Cindy asked a student if she would like a donut, and the student replied, “Oh, no. I want to get my book first!”!”!”

At the last meeting of the school year in April, the students vote for their favorite book. The votes are tallied and sent to the ILF to be included in the statewide vote. The students are always eager to find out which book won. The winning author is then invited to attend the AIME banquet the following year.

There are two additional activities connected to YHBA. First, there’s a Book Beat competition sponsored by the White River Public Library with the two Center Grove middle schools. The students form teams and answer questions about the books to score points. For the first time, this year we will also be competing with Clark Pleasant Middle School and Clark Pleasant Intermediate School. We’re hoping that this can eventually become a countywide contest.

Finally, we have a pizza party at the end of May for any student who read all 20 YHBA books. We usually have from 10 to 20 students who fall into this category. It’s always fun to hear the discussions among these students and find out which books they liked or didn’t like. If you are considering starting a book club in your school, the YHBA books are a great way to start.