Introducing: Reading Outside The Box Challenge

I’ve been working on an event for the Tweens at the library for a while. The idea is pretty simple. I know kids kind of get ‘stuck’ with they’re reading. They have an idea of what they like to read and they just stick to that. There isn’t a huge problem with that other than they might be missing out on many books that they just don’t know exist. For the event, I’m getting a bunch of different books from many different genres. Everyone is going to get ~5 minutes with each book to read and look over it. Hopefully they find a new type of book to try for a while!

I then realized that I have that problem as well. I decided for the new year to branch out with my reading a bit.  That’s how the Reading Outside The Box Challenge was born. I’ve made a little chart with a bunch of different types of books to ‘sample’ on it. The challenge is open to any and everyone who would like to spice up their reading life.

Please feel free to use the chart on your posts. Just link back here!

Participating is pretty easy.

1. You have all of 2014 to read a book for each square.
2. A book can only count for 1 square. There will be 25 books for this challenge.
3. The books read for this project can come from other projects you’re participating in: school, review books, other challenge or events, books for fun.
4. If you blog, keep a post/page for the challenge. Update the post/page when you read a book for the challenge with a link to your thoughts/review of the book. Make sure to state which square the book counts for!
5. If you feel like it, write check in posts every few months. Update us on how you feel about the ‘new’ books you’re reading.
6. I’ll keep a page here for people to add review links to. It would be nice to see how others are feeling about the challenge. Add links to your reviews here.

That’s it! Hopefully by the end of the year we will be more adventurous in our reading.

Sign up here:

*Most of the categories are pretty self explanatory. Here are the details for the ‘questionable’ ones:

• Read a Chunkster: Read a book with 600+ pages.
• Reading by Ear: Listen to an audiobook
• Accidentally Watched the Movie First: You didn’t realize the movie was based on a book until after you watched it. Ideally you haven’t read the book yet.
• Relive the Magic: Reread a book you really enjoyed as a kid but haven’t touched it since then.
• Gathering Dust: You’ve had this book for years and you still haven’t read it.
• Loved By Others: Other people really love this book but for whatever reason you haven’t read it yet.
• Lost in Translation: This book was originally written in another language.
• Second Chance: You read this book a while back and didn’t enjoy it, didn’t finish it, or were on the fence about it. Time to give it another try!