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Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Keep Calm and Read On (and other phrases...)


By Martha Hickson

Don't be fooled into thinking this is just another use of the rather over-worked 'Keep Calm' meme, this display from Martha is fabulous, she has developed the 'Keep Calm' meme to include other common phrases and cleverly linked books to them. Thanks for sharing Martha. 

Here are her comments:
'Many of the students at our high school have embraced the “Keep calm and …” meme, wearing T-shirts promoting everything from Batman to yoga. So when I picked up ABDO’s “Keep calm and read on” poster at the American Association of School Librarian’s conference, I knew that it could make the centerpiece for a fun, teen-friendly display.

I brainstormed a list of common “on” phrases, such as “On a whim,” “On the top,” and “On the fly,” and created a sign for each phrase, replicating the poster’s typography, red-and-white color scheme, and crown logo. For each phrase, I identified a book cover that illustrated it. Sometimes the book covers repeated a word from the phrase; for example, “On the fly” is represented by Don Calame’s Swim the Fly. In other cases, the connection is more subtle, such as the link between “On the top” and Andrew Revkin’s The North Pole Was Here.

I posted the signs and covers on a black background, creating a “black and white and red/read all over” display in the showcase just outside the library doors. Inside the library, I created a physical display of the featured books, each displaying a red and white bookmark with the corresponding “on” phrase. Because I came up with so many “on” phrase and book connections, I can easily refresh the display several times to feature more books. And that will help me keep calm and displaying on!'

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a cool idea!