BPL Book Bingo: Reading Across the Ages

"Mommy, did you bring me another book from the libralee?"  

This is what my five-year-old greets me with as soon as I come home from work. (“Librarlee” is what he currently says instead of "library," and since he's getting older and losing a lot of these adorable toddler pronunciations, this isn't one I'm ready to correct anytime soon.) Ever since I decided we would take on BPL's Book Bingo as a mother/son team, I've been bringing home books by the armful so we can check off the categories on the bingo board together, and now he expects more books whenever I come home from work!

At first glance, #BPLbookbingo might seem "only" for adults and teens, but it doesn't have to be that way. I did have to tweak the categories a bit to make the challenge more accommodating for a five-year-old, but that wasn’t too hard to do. For example, for the "romance novel" category, I changed it to a "book about love." We wound up reading Slugs in Love by Susan Pearson. (And, I'd be remiss if I didn’t mention a book we should all read to our children, for book bingo or not, called Love, Z by Jessie Sima.)

For the “childhood favorite” category, since my son is currently in his childhood, I'll be sharing with him one of my childhood favorites: The Little Red Hen. For the bonus “book flex” category, instead of having my five-year-old read a book over 1000 pages, I asked a few children's librarians how we could change this for young readers, and there were some fun suggestions: read a chapter book, read a whole book series (for example, every Pete the Cat book!) or read a total number of pages adding up to 1,000! For my five-year-old, I'm settling on reading a chapter book with him.  

While my son and I are having fun reading for BPL's Book Bingo together, I’m also enjoying reading my way through books from the Adult and YA collection for my own bingo card. I got my first “bingo” a week after my son, and now I'm working on completing my second "bingo" by reading through the first row of categories, starting with a book on BPL’s New Year book list. For that category, I read The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix Harrow. I’m calling it now, but this will be my favorite book I read this whole year! It’s such a beautiful ode to the love of stories, with a bit of historical fiction and fantasy mixed in. I wanted this book to last longer than it did, and need a sequel ASAP.

One of the harder categories to complete (if you don't work at a library) will probably be a “book with a previous patron’s bookmark." Since I process books as they’re returned to my branch, I found a bookmark in Creativity by John Cleese, which was serendipitous because I needed a book about creativity when it comes to writing, as I’m working on writing a book of my own about being pregnant after my mother died.

The book in translation that I'll be reading is Bookseller’s Notebook by Jalal Barjas, translated from Arabic by Paul G. Starkey. I was drawn to the book because the main character assumes the identities of the heroes in novels that he’s read: sounds intriguing! As for the eBook category, I have a Kindle, so it wasn't too hard to find a book I wanted to read. I will say that for me, there still isn’t a substitute for holding, smelling (yes, smelling!), and reading an actual book, but I do like the immediacy of getting an eBook when it’s 10:47 PM and you don’t want to wait for the library to open to get your hands on a book (writing from experience here!). The eBook I read was Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis.   

Finally, the graphic novel I read was a delightful book called I Will Judge You By Your Bookshelf by Grant Snider. (Maybe you’re sensing a theme here: not only do I love books, I love books about books.) If you’re looking for a quick, hilarious and relatable (if you’re a bookworm) read, I definitely recommend this one!  

Our staff has created book lists with lots of recommendations for how adults and teens can get bingo. For additional ideas about how to participate in book bingo with your five- to seven-year-old child, I curated a book list with recommended titles. Or, come check out the display at Adams Street Library in the children's section!

Happy reading!

And, as promised, we said we would highlight a few patrons who are reading through BPL Book Bingo with us! Ben Ackerman is reading Maame by Jessica George, Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong, and Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv, among other titles, and Esther G is reading all POC authors for her BPL Book Bingo challenge. If you’re reading through the bingo board, share a picture of your board or the books you’re reading and use the hashtag #BPLbookbingo. Download a printable version of the bingo board here. You could get a shoutout in our next bingo check-in post!