What We Do

    Bookelicious blends research on reading motivation, expert curation by teachers and librarians, and personalization enabled by artificial intelligence, to match readers with books they truly want to read. Bookelicious.com works like a personal librarian, matching readers with a curated collection of topic-specific, high-quality, age-appropriate books at the right level of difficulty. The site makes recommended books easily accessible by offering them for sale as well as linking to local libraries. Bookelicious has also developed special tools for teachers, students and parents/caregivers that encourage deep engagement with the site and track reading progress, including fun, book-themed games and activities. This level of home-school integration has become even more vital as schools incorporate distance learning into their programs. We also offer special collections that celebrate diversity and promote social-emotional learning, to meet the needs of educators and families.

    • Personal relevance by recommending books on topics kids are excited about. Is a child interested in dinosaurs or magic, superheroes or baseball? Children who find reading materials interesting are more motivated to read, and read with greater comprehension.i
    • Choice by offering a multitude of books that satisfy each reader’s individual interests. Offering students a choice increases their time spent reading and their sense of being “in charge.”ii
    • The highest-quality books. Our expert network of teachers and librarians guide our recommendations, as well as user-generated popularity ratings. Every book featured on Bookelicious has been curated by an educator.
    • Gamification and Engagement. The Bookelicious bookmojis are highly personalized avatars with their own special pets and accessories that enable users to express their individuality, convey information about their interests, and engage with a community of readers. Users can play games with their friends, collect special assets, read/comment on posts from Junior Curators, provide user ratings, create wish lists, and track reading progress and communicate with teachers via the online reading log. Our bookmojis encourage repeat visits from users and allow for a deeper level of personalization; students love using the site and teachers are reporting a greater interest in reading among their students.

    Bookelicious highly values its educator partners. Many of our interactive student/teacher tools, including student reading logs and teacher book recommendations, were developed in conjunction with educators and administrators. Principals, Librarians, and Literacy Coaches have year-round access to all of the personalized reading recommendations for all students. Each year, teachers will be able to review the reading history of their incoming students through access to the Bookelicious site. To help teachers encourage student engagement, Bookelicious also provides fun stickers and bookmarks for all students, as well as gifts for teachers and curated book collections for educators.

    Educators face the “Summer Slide” at the end of every school year with the root cause being lack of access to reading materials. We are just starting to project the impact of the “COVID-19 slide,” and know that independent reading and access to books are effective weapons against the resulting achievement gap.iii

    In response to the urgent need to implement distance learning, Bookelicious and the Bring Me a Book Foundation launched multiple pilots in 2020 focused on providing students in Title I schools with high-quality, high-interest, age-appropriate books chosen by the students themselves (with teacher or parent supervision). BMAB and Bookelicious helped students from multiple schools select and receive thousands of great books to read in 2020 and are meeting this need again in 2021.

    As part of our commitment to encouraging the love of reading, we established our location in Radford, VA in order to be hands-on with all orders, guaranteeing a consistently high level of customer service from start to finish. For schools and districts, this means that your order is overseen by a member of our staff from the time you start working with our sales staff until your books arrive.

    We take pride in our commitment to quality, from the titles curated by our collection development team to our sales team’s ability to develop custom solutions for you and your district to our warehouse staff working hard to ensure orders are packed quickly, efficiently, and accurately every time. We are located at 113 Corporate Dr Radford, VA 24141.

    The Bookelicious site is designed for:

    • Children to quickly and easily find books they love to read and share with their peers;
    • Educators to find engaging books that match their students’ abilities and interests from a resource beyond their individual classroom libraries, enrich their curriculum, and strengthen the home-school connection;
    • Librarians to improve their collections and better deploy books among students and teachers;
    • Parents and caregivers to identify interesting, high-quality books that match their children’s reading abilities, and to collaborate more effectively with teachers.

    Endnotes

    i Morrow, L., and Young, J. (1997), Parent, Teacher, and Child Participation in a Collaborative Family Literacy Program: The Effects of Attitude, Motivation, and Literacy Achievement, Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(4), 736-742.
    ii McRae, A. and Guthrie, J. (2008), Teacher Practices that Impact Reading Motivation, LD Online, Article No. 35746.
    iii Allington, R. L., & McGill-Franzen, A. (2013a). Summer reading: Closing the rich/poor reading achievement gap. New York: Teachers College Press.

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