大象传媒

The school using giant book murals to encourage reading

  • Published
Photograph showing two murals in the corridor of Mundelein High SchoolImage source, Mundelein High School

For many students, this week saw the end of the Christmas break and a return to school.

However, one school in Illinois, US, has taken a novel and eye-catching approach to motivating its students in the new year.

Students of Mundelein High returned to find six floor-to-ceiling book covers lining the corridor of the school's English department.

The vinyl prints, which wrap around sections of wall like the jackets of giant books, flank the doorways of three of the school's English classrooms.

The school explained in a post on Facebook that a "routine hallway has been transformed into a giant motivational tableau to encourage reading".

Image source, Mundelein High School

School spokesman Ron Girard told the 大象传媒 that the project was intended to "get students talking about the reading that they do".

"That usually occurs in classrooms but now the chatter among students even takes place in the hallways when they see images of books they have read."

The project has , where it was greeted with cheers of "awesome", "fantastic" and "amazing".

Ron describes the online reaction as "incredible".

The striking images also caught the attention of the author of one the featured books.

Jason Reynolds who, along with Kiely Brendan, wrote "All American Boys" shared the mural with his Twitter followers.

Image source, Jason Reynolds / Twitter

The other books selected are: "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte; "Beartown" by Fredrik Backman; "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro; "October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard" by Leslea Newman; and "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall.

The images of the large book covers also moved other teachers to share examples of similar projects designed to inspire students at their own schools.

Nate Djupstrom, a teacher from Michigan, shared a photograph of lockers painted to look like the books of the Harry Potter series.

Image source, Nate Djupstrom

Nate also shared photos of lockers decorated like books from the Hunger Games trilogy and the Lord of the Rings.

He wrote that his "students love them".

Image source, Nate Djupstrom

Given the positive response to the project, Mundelein High hope to add more giant books to it's collection soon.

All photographs copyright as show.