Reading maps

What’s a reading map? you may ask. Well, it’s library speak for a list of books that follow a reader’s interest. Say you just read The Kite Runner and would like more books like it. A reading map would map out a list of titles that take different aspects (or paths) from the original title that lead to other titles. One path from the Kite Runner could be books on Afghanistan, so The Bookseller of Kabul would be suggested. Another path might be coming-of-age stories, so a reader might want to try The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. Leonora and I attended a session at the PLA conference last month that showed a huge room full of librarians how to construct a reading map. Our first reading map is up on the library’s website. It’s for people who’ve read memoirs like A Child Called It (or maybe even A Million Little Pieces) and would like more stories of people overcoming the odds.