Book Tasting at Kutztown University

Welcome to the world of book tasting!

This guide is intended to explain the background of book tasting and give several examples of how we do it at Kutztown University of PA with our education majors AND other majors. 

• Use the pages along the left to navigate to various examples of book tasting that we have done.

• Book tastings provide an excellent way for librarians and educators to give readers, researchers, or anyone an inquiry-based opportunity to explore a topic through resources based on a common theme. This can include books, e-books, databases, manipulatives, toys, posters, and so much more. 

• Each book tasting focuses on the needs of that particular audience. 

• We use a shared Google Sheets or Excel file to develop the list of resources for each tasting. This way we can each collaborate to build the tasting event.

• I have included lots of photos to inspire you to create your own book tasting events. If you have any questions, please reach out to me. I love book tastings and would love to help you develop one for your audience. 

• I have presented or co-presented about our book tastings at multiple conferences at local, state, and national conferences. Most recently, I presented at ACRL in Pittsburgh in 2023. My ACRL Poster Session focused on book tasting with our Pre-service teachers, but I also showed people information about the art history and the illustration tastings to encourage them to use tastings with college-level students in a variety of subject areas. 

My ACRL Poster highlighted photos and listed some of t he key benefits of doing book tastings:

The photo below is from one of our social studies book tastings. This text set supports the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) Them 2: Time, Continuity, and Change, and we designed this one for teaching about the Revolutionary War.