How do you get your kids to read junior fiction that is NOT graphic novels? Some of our series get read, specifically the Creepover books and Losa Greenwald, but the one-off novels are rarely touched. Half haven't been borrowed more than once in the past five years. Our collection is largely new books (last 15 years, if not last 5!) and all popular and award-winning titles recommended by the major publishers.
We're about to undertake some major weeding to allow for new items purchased with grant. I can come to grips with weeding a lot of these great books, but I don't want to waste money on new books that also won't leave the shelves.
I'm new to this - finished my MLIS in April - so I don't know what I don't know. Is this a promotion issue where I need to market the books more? Is this an issue that is so common it is almost inevitable?
And a further question - our graphic novel baskets are arranged alphabetically, but some of the baskets are labelled by series name and others by author name - e.x. "Rick Riordan" is beside "Sweet Valley High". I get wanting to label things the same way kids will intuitively look for them but it makes me a teensy bit insane to have the mishmash. Would you re-label and re-alphabetize if you were me?
Thanks in advance!