Westbury High School has been one of the hosts of a temporary program called Uber Reads, an initiative created by librarians across the country in an attempt to encourage students to read more and varied literature. The program ran through the month of November and has recently ended with the holiday season approaching.

Set up as takeout, each brown bag on the table in Westbury High School’s library contains one book, and has a “receipt” stapled to it with the title and a few choice descriptors. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, for example, has terms such as “man-woman relationship,” “romance,” and “scientists” listed under it. This is all the information the student has to go on upon when choosing a bag and the book within it. Linda Grisafi, the Westbury High librarian, explained that the display is meant to pique students’ interest in borrowing books in general, but they can still take a bag that particularly calls to them. 

“I really wanted to be surprised, and not judge a book by its cover,” said sophomore Janae Smith. Smith chose a bag containing the book Queen of the Tiles by Hanna Alkaf which she described as a book about “modern day high school with the main character who is a hijabi.” She chose it partially because she “really likes reading books about [different] cultures,” and was “enticed by the few vague words [she] received about what the book was about.” Self-described as a harsh critic “when it comes to books,” Smith gave it a 6/10 rating.

Though Uber Reads was no longer available at the time of the interview, Smith said that had it been, she would have definitely gotten another book through this process. While there are no definite plans to reimplement Uber Reads at the library as of now, the program did prove successful in increasing student engagement with book borrowing, and will hopefully make a reappearance in the future.