Shelftalkers was established by SLAV in 2021 as a platform for young people, at both primary and secondary school levels, who love books and reading to share written reviews with their peers, and engage others in their love of books. Shelftalkers is also designed to connect publishers with their target audience, by offering an opportunity for publishers to share advance titles for review by student readers in schools, under the supervision of teachers, librarians and library staff. We hope that Shelftalkers becomes an exciting engagement tool both for libraries, students and publishers to facilitate discussion of both established and forthcoming titles and ways to promote better reading and writing in school libraries and beyond.
Shelftalkers is designed to empower young readers, to give them a sense of ownership and autonomy in sharing their thoughts about what they read and what is being published onto the market for them. It is our hope that Shelftalkers will encourage and engage young readers in reading and writing, beyond the classroom.
Shelftalkers is a website maintained and moderated SLAV staff. We communicate directly with publishers who wish to send review copies to students in schools and ensure that interested schools receive titles for review.
It is the responsibility of the participant school to engage and select students to read books and submit reviews of no more than 100 words, and a rating out of five stars, by the date provided by the publisher. These reviews will then be published on the Shelftalkers website. Students are allowed to keep the book they have reviewed.
Guidelines and writing prompts to assist students with review writing have been provided on the Shelftalkers website and are free to download. We welcome you to link to these resources should you wish to share them with your readers.
If you would like to be a participating publisher and share advance titles for review by students please contact us on the email below, advising us of the title you wish to share. AI sheets are welcome, if these are not available, links to the landing page on your website for the proposed title is sufficient. We will then submit the address of the school for you to send the book to. We will share the student review with you as soon as we receive it.
Shelftalkers will also feature a ‘5 Questions With’ segment, where a student reviewer is encouraged to submit 5 interesting, out of the ordinary questions for an author or illustrator to answer and return (via SLAV) If you would like to submit a creator for consideration please feel free to reach out and let us know. For all queries please contact shelftalkers@slav.org.au