How to Host a Book Tasting in Your Classroom

With Read Across America Day coming up, it’s a great time to think about fun reading related activities to do in the classroom. Getting kids to read more and encouraging them to find new books to love is so important, and a book tasting is a fun and easy way to encourage kids to learn more about books they might not otherwise know about.

A book tasting can be done in a lot of different ways. My daughter’s class once did one where each group of kids read a “Who Was?” book and did a little report about it, so each table had biographical information about the person they learned about as well as the book they read.

You could have kids do “reports” on their favorite books, or have them choose a book from the library in a preferred genre that they haven’t read before to read and do a report on.

Or you can do genre tables and have kids (and/or the librarian if you don’t have a bunch of books in the classroom) bring in books they can then sort by genre and explore options they might not have heard of before.

Check out this post at Alyssa Teaches all about how to design a book tasting and how you can use it to teach kids how to determine if they’d like to read a book by scanning the cover, flipping through and reading a little. She also has printables you can use for your own book tasting.

[Photo: Alyssa Teaches.]

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Fun Ideas for Read Across America

Human brains are pretty amazing, allowing us to think, feel, create, communicate, move and more. But humans aren’t the only animals with cool brains, as Crab Museum explains in the book The No-Brainer Brain Explainer (illustrated by Bruno Valasse).

This book, aimed at kids in grades 1-4, is colorful and silly but also educational about how brains actually work, with billions of neurons sending electrical and chemical signals around the body.

“Everything we think, feel and experience comes from an electrical relay race, with neurons passing chemical batons to each other,” the book says. “The constant chatter of billions of brain cells creates your entire world.”

The book compares the brains of mammals to those of crabs (the book is “written” by a crab after all) and notes that crabs have fewer neurons and of course are much smaller, but they have separate parts of their brains that control their eyes and their legs. Crabs are also capable of remembering things, using tools and solving puzzles.

Some animals’ brains allow them to know more about their world in different ways from humans, such as spiders being sensitive to vibrations in their webs and catfish having an amazing sense of taste, with taste sensors all over their bodies.

It notes that 95 percent of brain activity goes toward things we do unconsciously, like breathing, walking and catching a ball flying toward us. It also talks about dreams, memory, how our emotions try to predict the future, where brains came from and fun facts about brains. For example, did you know a sperm whale is believed to have the biggest brain of any creature that’s even lived? Their brains weigh 18 pounds, compared to just 2.5 pounds for humans.

Information on what creatures have the smallest brains, the toughest brains, the most brains and those who actually eat their own brains will delight kids (and maybe gross them out a little bit). They’ll also enjoy learning about the mycelium network of fungi, which is like a brain without a body, and slime molds, which are like a brain without a brain.

It ends talking about why human brains are so special because we’ve found ways to work together, communicate and build communities on a scale bigger than any other animal.

Kids and adults alike will enjoy this colorful, silly and informational book about brains!

About the book: 64 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Wide Eyed Editions. Suggested retail price $19.99.

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