Face Out Book-Shelves

Oh how I love the concept of face-out bookshelves! The idea is simple. Think about a book store. How do they face the books they want to promote and sell? Are they spine in, or cover out? Cover out right? Seeing the cover of a book increases visibility, which increases how often it gets read (or purchased in a book store).

Jim Trelease suggests you find a place to do face out bookshelves in your home for your children in The Read Aloud Handbook. (See his website here for full info and pictures: http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/rah-ch7-pg3.html#raingutters). 

Ever since reading about this brilliant idea over a year ago, I have wanted it in my house. For this past Mother's Day, my wish came true! My husband designed and built these shelves for me. This picture was taken shortly after the completion, so obviously things were not all in place yet...and they are not today, either. 

The very top shelf is for pictures and whatever....I haven't nailed that one down yet.

The empty shelf in the picture is my "picture shelf." This is where I am putting photos of my children reading. I got a picture taken of the three of them reading and had it put on a canvas. The other photos will be printed normally so I can easily and inexpensively change them as I want to.

The uppermost row of books you can see is the shelf for chapter books and books my husband and I are reading. I am always reading several books at a time, and this seriously makes it so much easier for me to keep straight what I am reading and what I should be reading. 

The next shelf down I use as a shelf for books we have checked out from the library that I will be returning on our next visit. This encourages the children to read the book and also warns them if a favorite book is about to return.

The bottom two shelves are for books that fit the theme of the current week for learning activities and the next week of learning activities.

These shelves are so very worth it. I love having them. My children love them. They look at the books all the time. This Wednesday, I will have a full tutorial for you with instructions for how to build these exact shelves.

But this is not the only way to do these shelves. We talked about this in a reading book club I am in and here are ideas found on the web by ladies in that group. You can see there are many amazing ways to do these shelves!

Hanging Book Sleeves--easy to make

Flat Wall Book Holders--great for small spaces. Make yourself.

This is from IKEA. You apparently can't see the entire book, but it is an option for  you.

10 Dollar Ledges--make yourself

Another DIY book sling

This is what inspired mine

Raingutters are a very inexpensive and easy way to go.

Another inexpensive option is the spice racks here!

So there you have some ideas! Manda will share what she has done tomorrow, and I will share our tutorial for the ones we made. The neat thing about ours is that you can't see the hardware--how we hung it. No screws--it looks free floating. I love that.