Do you remember Fortune Tellers? Or perhaps you knew them better as Cootie Catchers? These folded pieces of paper had the mystical power to answer all of your deepest childhood questions. Did Jimmy have a crush on you? Should you wear your blue shirt to Jenny's birthday party? Would you mom mind if you ate a few more cookies? Just make a few easy choices, open and close the Fortune Teller appropriately, and BAM! A virtually instant answer from the universe, offering guidance and wisdom during troubling times.
I decided to take this trope and use it as a way to help bored teens pick their next read. Teens can pick up a Fortune Teller (I made three different ones to pick from), make their choices, and then find out exactly which genre of book they are destined to try today. If they don't like the answer that the Fortune Teller gives them (because hey, sometimes the universe gets it wrong), they of course are more than welcome to try again.
I put the Fortune Tellers on top of one of our book displays, along with a selection of books that fell into some of these genres. Amazingly enough, with 24 different book fortunes, some of which are as broad as, "Read a book by a female author," literally anything at all from the collection goes. Sneaky, right? I used this as an opportunity to display books that are under-circulated and that need a little extra help getting into people's hands.
There is absolutely no way to track how many people are using the Fortune Tellers, but I'm really okay with that. In a halfhearted attempt at more concrete usage-tracking I did put out a few slips of paper that people could fill out telling me what their fortune was and which book they selected, but I honestly don't really expect the teens to bother with this without further motivation. I have been keeping an eye on display and have seen that the fortune tellers have moved a bit and that some of the books on the display have been checked out, so I suspect that it's seeing at least a little traffic.
In the interest of full disclosure: I did not come up with this idea all on my own. I found an image on Pinterest that used this idea. However, I am unable to link to the original source as it has since been taken down or moved, and my saved link on Pinterest is no longer valid. So big thanks to whoever it was that originally came up with the idea!
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