The Library Speakers Consortium (LSC) is launching BookBreak in September 2023 with the goal of significantly increasing access to children’s book authors for all school communities.
Author talks have been shown to increase enthusiasm for reading, inspire a passion for writing and move reluctant readers to take on more challenging titles. Unfortunately, only the best funded schools can regularly afford the $5,000+ speaking fees from bestselling children’s book authors which means that most kids will never have these impactful learning opportunities.
Our vision is to make hearing from inspiring authors a regular part of the student experience and dramatically expand access to these programs by pooling the resources of thousands of schools into a single author talk program.
The program will bring 2-3 online bestselling children’s author talk events to schools each month that will be streamed live including Q&A from the kids. BookBreak talks will be geared to specific grade cohorts (e.g., K-1st, 2nd-3rd or 4th-5th) so each grade will have the opportunity to hear from an age-appropriate author about once per month. Recordings of the talks will be available for future instruction and for school librarians/media specialists.
Each live talk will be 10-15 minutes in length and designed as a short “brain break” for teachers to share in their classrooms. This length is ideal to offer value without cutting into instruction time. Most authors will present two talks during the school day (e.g., 12 and 1:30 PM) to allow classes with different lunch times to be able to attend a talk.
We are highly committed to offering a diverse mix of perspectives and will ensure that half or more of speakers will be women and/or people of color.
Our team has many years of experience working with authors and publishers to create amazing online programs. Below are examples of popular books by several authors who are confirmed to participate in the program for its initial launch during the 2023-2024 school year. Exact dates of talks will be shared in late Spring 2023 and talks may feature multiple books by the same author.
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As part of our vision to give access to the program to as many school communities as possible, every elementary school that joins the BookBreak program will allow us to give a high-poverty school free access to the program. High-poverty elementary schools are those where 80% or more of students qualify for free or reduced meals.
The signup form to join the program for high-poverty elementary schools will be available in Spring 2023.
Request a demo and explore how joining the BookBreak program can increase access to amazing authors for your school community.
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