A quiet library turned into a buzzing café of curiosity—and it changed how students read. We sit down with Olean High School librarian Brianna Howard to unpack the “book tasting” that quadrupled circulation in a month, the power of visible mentorship, and the small choices that make reading feel irresistible instead of required. Starting as a social studies teacher and now in her second year as librarian, Brianna blends data, design, and heart to build a space where students explore freely. She walks us through eight high-interest genres, the simple menu system that invites quick sampling, and the classroom partnerships that keep momentum going.
We zoom out to the bigger literacy picture: why foundational reading skills and digital literacy matter in an information-saturated world, and how students learn to evaluate sources, navigate online feeds, and make sense of complex media. Brianna shares how a countywide network of school librarians swaps ideas each quarter, how a neighboring district sparked the tasting concept, and why adapting ideas to your own community is the secret to success. Along the way, we talk genre surprises, Stephen King devotees, and the staff reading wall that turns hallway chats into book recommendations students actually follow.
Mentors matter. When teachers and families talk about what they’re reading—paperbacks, audiobooks, memoirs like Matthew McConaughey’s Greenlights—students see reading as a living habit. Brianna offers a timely book recommendation, Mel Robbins’s Let Them Theory, and explains how it reshaped her approach to daily interactions: suggest and support, then let readers choose. We close with a look ahead at new collaborations, family engagement ideas, and the ongoing goal: more students finding books they didn’t expect to love. If you care about school libraries, student choice, and practical literacy strategies you can use tomorrow, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a quick review telling us the last book you couldn’t put down.