Take 5: Resources for RA Ideas

Sometime, like magic, great ideas for RA just come to me. I love those moments. There are times, however, when I feel like I don’t have a creative bone in my body and I don’t even know where to start to come up with a good RA idea. Thankfully, there are places that help me with that. Today, I am going to share 5 of my go to RA resources.

Fierce Reads

Fierce Reads is a blog put together by MacMillan that focused on Teen/YA books. In addition to finding author and general book promotions, they often have If You Like/Try recommendations and a variety of fun themes YA lists. For example, if you click on the LISTS option, they have lists like novels in verse, books to read if you liked a particular show and pick a Taylor Swift Era and get a book rec.

Epic Reads

Epic Reads is similar to Fierce Reads but it is a Harper Collins focused website. They also have a large variety of fun RA ideas to help get your creative juices flowing, including standalone fantasy novels, books with dual timelines, and star-crossed lovers. I visit both Fierce Reads and Epic Reads often for collection development and RA reasons.

Reading Middle Grade

Reading Middle Grade is another great website, especially for middle grade focused sparks of imagination. Though make no mistake, there are picture book and YA book lists to be found here as well. This is a great resource for both book releases by date and book lists by themes.

Visual Book Lists

If you are short on time as well as ideas, Visual Book Lists is where librarian Melissa Corey shares Canva templates that you can easily copy and edit to fit your library catalog.

Jbrary Book List Menu

The fine folks wrote a post about book list menus, based on a post I wrote about Book List Menus back in 2022. In this post they share 35 book lists which you can easily customize for your library.

There are other amazing librarians who generously share their readalike posters, like Kelsey Bogan at Don’t Shush Me. And you can find more sources compiled by Kelsey Bogan on her padlet for Readalike Posters for Libraries.

And finally, as a bonus, you can find lots of great ideas and shared templates in the Canva Librarians and Teachers Group on Facebook, which I mentioned recently when discussing the YA quotes RA fun I had in a previous TLT post.

Did I cheat and make this Take 5 list longer than 5 entries? Yes, I did. Let’s be honest, I almost always do. I’m not even sorry. These resources have helped me when me creative well was dry, and I think they can help you too if you ever need a moment of inspiration.

Share with me in the comments: What are some of your go to RA sites when you need inspiration?

Filed under: Uncategorized