Ideas Wanted: BookCrossing.com

This article is really a solicitation for ideas on ways the BookCrossing.com concept can be adapted for the classroom. Ideas are welcome, so read on for the details!

To begin, BookCrossing is a wonderful idea that first came to my attention through an article by our Great Books CE, Kathleen Anderson. Her article Have Book, Will Travel! introduces many great book ideas, including a review of the Book Crossing concept.

Book Crossing works this way. A reader registers at the web site and prints out a book plate that identifies the book as registered with Book Crossing. The reader attaches the book plate and then "sets the book free" by leaving it in a conspicuous place - a coffeehouse, a mall, a library, a park.... Then anyone finding that book can go to the website and enter information about where the book was found and when. That person is then encouraged to "free" the book after he or she has read it. It sounds like a really neat idea, and you can even search the database for books that were released in your area. I even found several right here in our local vicinity.

So, after checking the website out and getting quite interested in the concept, I began to think that this idea might translate into a school project. Back when I taught fourth grade, we did a somewhat similar project with a small stuffed frog that was sent on travels with various classmates and their families. That idea is described in my article Postcards from a Frog. It was brought to mind again when my sister was visiting in November and had to take "Flat Hal" up to Lake George to take his picture and verify his visit. One of her co-worker's grandchildren was doing a similar traveler project. So when the BookCrossing idea was presented, I began to think of ways that a class could sent their books traveling instead of a toy or a stuffed animal.

Here is my idea for how the project might be done. I'd first have each child get a grade-level appropriate book to "release." Perhaps points earned from book clubs such as Scholastic could be used to supplement the purchase of new books, or perhaps students would like to "donate" a favorite book from their own collections. Or maybe you have some books on your classroom bookshelf that you might want to use. You might also just want to release several books at first, rather than having each child release his or her own, or you might want to have a "rolling release" with books being released in an ongoing manner.

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