This is an excerpt from Chapter Seven of The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease (Penguin, 2006, 6th edition). For a list of all topics covered here and in the print edition see Chapter Seven list.

Chapter 7: The Print Climate in the Home,
   School, and Library—continued

How do I make my school library more successful on a limited budget?

You can start by taking a hard look at your local grocery store. In 1996, The New York Times ran an article on supermarkets and the keys to their success.¹⁷ The author noted there originally was only one rule for supermarkets: Put the milk at one end of the store and bread at the other—to get people to walk through the entire store. That rule still applies: The more they see, the more they buy. But the Universal Price Code scanner at the checkout offers other observations, including some we might apply to libraries:

• Only 31 percent of grocery patrons bring a shopping list (more than half of adult library patrons arrive without a book in mind; even more so for children).
• Two-thirds of purchases are unplanned (very similar to book choices).
• Products placed at the optimum level (15 degrees below eye level) sell 8 percent better (clear or weed spaces at eye level for displaying books).

Few grocery customers know that food companies pay nine billion dollars for shelf space (“slotting fees”), accounting for one-half of stores’ annual profits. In simple terms, they’re renting shelf space. Paying that kind of money, the manufacturer makes sure its product is displayed on the shelf to its best advantage—that is, face-out. This visibility is so connected to sales, the low-paying companies receive the worst seats in the house—the top and bottom shelves.¹⁸

he reason companies want each product face-out is simple: It’s the cover that most often influences our choices—the picture of the cookie, cereal, cake mix, or magazine. Any magazine editor can tell you immediately the names of the persons whose images will immediately boost newsstand sales (once it was Diana, then it was Oprah, now it's Brad or Brittany).

Compare that successful marketing approach with what we do with books and children. I often get the feeling that if most children's librarians were brought in as consultants for the grocery industry, the first thing they’d suggest would be to turn all the boxes and bags sideways to squeeze more of them onto the shelf.

Unlike grocery stores, some libraries haven't discovered that face-out marketing enhances circulation.

What does the spine of the book tell you? The title, author, publisher, and Dewey decimal number. Since 60 percent of the people going into a bookstore or library don’t have a particular book (or author or publisher) in mind, it’s the cover that will move the book, not the spine. The majority of public and school libraries I see in my travels are clueless when it comes to these principles. Some don’t have a single book shelved cover-out. An amazing number have them face-out but beyond the reach of children who could read them. The power of face-out works even at the lowest levels of literacy. When researchers observed a kindergarten classroom library for one week, 90 percent of the books that children chose had been shelved with the covers facing out.¹⁹ The photograph here (above right) of the children’s room of a public library is typical of what I find in 90 percent of libraries (school and public) around the U.S. (Yes, I know there are exceptions to this rule, and the reason they stand out is because—they’re exceptions.)

Where do I get the shelf space for face-out books?

I’m not talking about positioning every book face-out. Bookstores don’t place every book face-out, but the ones they really want to move—the new arrivals, the bestsellers—always go face-out. Unlike most educators and librarians, publishers know the cover sells the book, so not only do they work extra-hard designing the right cover, many pay the book chains as much as $750 a month per book to have the cover showing.²⁰ That’s how important the cover is.

Nonetheless, classroom teachers have even less room than libraries for this approach. In response to the space challenge, a few years ago a teacher (whose name I wish I had jotted down) told me how she’d solved the problem by installing rain gutters in the dead spaces throughout her classroom: the space between the chalk ledge and the floor, the two-foot space between the closet and the chalkboard. Then another teacher sent me photographs of the rain gutters she’d installed.

The rain gutters they were talking about were purchased at the local hardware store for about three dollars per ten-foot strip, and were made of enameled, reinforced plastic. As plastic, they were easily cut to any size, and were supported by plastic brackets that could be screwed into almost any wall, including concrete blocks (see below). And they hold a lot of books—face-out.

Rain gutter shelving at Barbara Bush Elementary in Mesa, AZ, when Mike Oliver was principal.

After I mentioned the concept at an all-day teacher workshop, Mike Oliver, then the principal of Alma Elementary in Mesa, Arizona,²¹ approached me at the break. “We could do this at my school!” he exclaimed with great enthusiasm. “We could do it in every classroom. I know we could.” I could see the images dancing in his head as he spoke to me. I could also see an inner-city principal who understood that reading is more than just teaching the basics, more than drill and skill.

That summer, Oliver spent nearly $3,000 on rain gutters (I call him the “Martha Stewart” of rain gutters!). Recruiting volunteers from parents and faculty, he installed the shelving throughout the school, including his own office. Since then, Mesa has asked him to open two new schools (Barbara Bush Elementary and then James Zaharis Elementary) with each bearing his unique imprint for literacy: Children will come to love books if surrounded by quality instruction, a rich print environment, and a caring, reading faculty, and rain gutters. For more on rain gutter shelving, see Rain Gutters.

At a cost of just $3 for ten feet, plastic rain gutter turns dead wall space into an attractive opportunity for face-out book marketing. Rain gutters alone aren’t going to solve a school or community's reading problems. They’re merely a piece of a marketing strategy. But without marketing, few products get off the ground, no matter how good their design.

Four people changed the print climate in their communities in a big, big way. Why can't that be commonplace?