Reading Constellations and Recommendations

Do you have favorite pairs of books you like to recommend to students?  Books where you see the connection, no matter how oblique, and use it to help people find the next "read-on" book?  Along the lines of "If you liked... then try...." kinds of lists -- but perhaps more nuanced.

Then please consider joining a Google+ Community called "Reading Constellations" -- which is a crowd-sourcing space for pairs or small bundles of books to recommend to students.

Angie Erickson, a middle school literacy coach at our other campus, and I started it after realizing that we both had favorite pairings.

E.g., I recommend "Liar" by Justine Larbastier and "We were Liars" by E. Lockhart under the heading "Lies and terrible family secrets," and Angie recommends pairing "To Kill a Mockingbird" with "Jasper Jones" by Craig Silvey under the heading "Discrimination and crime and coming-of-age"

We think of these constellations as micro-lists, where connections are perhaps in the eye of the experienced beholder and the number of books is too few to warrant utilizing the OPAC "create a list of related books" function (e.g., Resource Lists in Follett Destiny), which could be considered mini-lists, in contrast to the macro-list capability of a common Subject Heading in the OPAC.

Angie literally ties the books together in her classroom -- to make the connection explicit.