Adults

Banned Booooks: There's Nothing Scarier

Sep 29, 2023

$101-250

Byline

Becca Maree, Adult Services Supervisor, Bourbonnais (Ill.) Public Library

Banned Booooks: There's Nothing Scarier! is a reading challenge geared toward readers ages 18 and up.

Hosted on Beanstack, this reading challenge invites adult readers to spend time reading banned books in the month of October, with curated reading lists and Banned Book prize bundles as incentives.

Banned Books Week is October 1 - 7, 2023.

Advanced Planning

Our adult programming team began planning for this reading challenge in August right after Summer Reading ended. Having had success with Beanstack reading challenges in the summer and winter, our team wanted to creatively expand our offerings and looked toward our love of banned books for inspiration.

Our team also enjoys the month of October and thought pairing banned books with a ghostly theme would speak to many of the adult readers in our community who are looking for seasonal activities that allow them to engage at their own pace on their own time.

Marketing

We began promoting this reading challenge at the beginning of September on all of our social media, as well as with flyers and a central book display in our library.

Budgeting

We spent ~$200 on prize bundles (see prizes in photo slideshow) for this reading challenge and all prizes were purchased with our Amazon Business account.

Advice

We made our own Beanstack challenge from scratch for this program, but Beanstack also has ready-made banned book reading challenges that could be edited to fit your library's needs. I highly recommend using them if you're planning a program in a pinch.