Our Book Selection Criteria
Our Book Club selection criteria
At the Avriano Book Club we have delineated the criteria based on which we curate our book recommendations. We present them to our readers to ensure transparency of our selection principles and to present the framework based on which our research is conducted. Upon these research criteria, the book categories are outlined with specific books recommended and reviewed per theme.
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Book philosophy
There are as many book reviews, as there are opinions. It therefore makes it difficult to understand, even if you can find a book recommended, whether it would fit your personal taste and scope. Our Book Club serves exactly this purpose: if you have enjoyed our book “Albert Goes to Oxford” and how we think, our recommendations could help you fill your children’s library with books you all love.
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Happy, uplifting story
We look at books where the story is happy, uplifting, and positive, bringing warm emotions and smiles, spurring curiosity or excitement. We believe in young children finding inspiration and joy in reading books, and we have therefore excluded books that we feel cause unpleasant or sad feelings.
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Learning
Most of the books in our selection offer something to learn, from knowledge and skills to art and language. Children are curious and they love to learn! What could be better than giving kids the opportunity to discover the world through joyful stories and books?
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Beautiful art
We are aiming to recommend books where the illustrations are creative and beautiful. Nevertheless, in some of our recommendations we have personally felt that the artwork could have been improved. We will still be recommending the books where we feel the overall result with the story and lesson taught is valuable, while making relevant comments in our reviews.
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Lovely rhyme
We believe that rhyme makes books more melodic to young children, and therefore more appealing and memorable. “The Snail and the Whale” of Julia Donaldson is an example of one of the most melodic books we have read; by reading it you can already feel the musicality in your voice. Not all books we will recommend will be rhyming, but we will make an effort to find rhyme and we will mention it in our reviews.
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No age banding
No to age banding. We believe that children’s different interests and individual development can potentially align with certain books regardless of their indicated age bracket. I am not saying that there is no point in having an age bracket indication, but it is an indication, not an absolute rule. We each know our children better and can decide what book level is most suitable for them. If you would like to read more about the initiative to not age band books, you can read here: https://notoagebanding.org
