Students create their own summer reading lists at The Book Seer
June 26, 2009
BY BILL FERRIS
Keep your lit students reading this summer with The Book Seer, a handy online book-recommendation tool. The interface is simplicity itself — students enter the title and author of the last book they’ve read (or for better results, the last book they liked), and the heavily bearded, titular Book Seer suggests books by similar writers or pertaining to similar subjects. The recommendations come via Amazon and LibraryThing. Not that it matters, but as a fun bonus, the site’s favicon is a stylish handlebar mustache.
“But wait!” you exclaim. “Not all of the books The Book Seer recommends are classics! Where’s the educational value? What curriculum objectives does this meet?”
To that I’d say your students are on summer vacation. If you really want to assign them a list of literary classics that they won’t read, be my guest. Personally, I think they’ll be more likely to read books written by their favorite authors or dealing with topics they’re curious about, and tools like The Book Seer can help kids find those books.
A lot of students grow up equating books with homework rather than the entertaining and enlightening media we know they can be. In summertime, books have to compete against TV, movies, and the web. If The Book Seer can get students to spend even a few of those hours reading books, it’s done its job.
Related stuff:
Beyond the Dewey Decimal System: LibraryThing
Put a whole book on your web page with Google Book Search previews
