The 48-Hour Book Challenge

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Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 7/12/2006

How many books can you read and review in 48 hours? Pam Coughlan, a children's library assistant in northern Virginia wanted to find out. So in late May, she posted an irresistible challenge on her blog, MotherReader, asking fellow children's and young adult book lovers to join her in a 48-hour book challenge.

The rules were simple: during the weekend of June 16 to 18, read as many books (fourth-grade level and up) as possible and blog for any 48-hour period during those days. The response from more than a dozen bloggers was overwhelming, and it looks like the contest could turn into an annual event.

SLJ talked to Coughlan about the results of her readathon and what inspired her to do it.

The 48-Hour Book Challenge went very well. We had 15 participants, bloggers in kids' literature. The winner, MidWestern Lodestar, read 14 books, 3,155 pages, and read for 26 hours! Jen Robinson's Book Page came in with 10 books, 2,692 pages, and 27 hours. MotherReader (me) had eight books, 2,262 pages, and 30 hours.

Little Willow won the alternate challenge by plowing through 15 books (mostly early elementary) in about 10 hours. MidWestern Lodestar posted the list of books reviewed on her page. It is quite a lot. Everyone wants to make it an annual thing, so I suspect we'll be back again next year—if I can wait that long.

What inspired you to start this contest?

I started the challenge on a whim. I had a stack of young adult books I kept bringing home from work with the idea that I would read them soon. Instead, I was reading other, shorter books, so the stack kept getting higher.

I began to wonder how many books I could read if I devoted a weekend to the project. Then having come out of the 48-Hour Film Project—where you write, film, edit, and score a short film in 48 hours—I wondered if anyone would be interested in taking on a challenge. I posted the idea on my blog, not sure if I was throwing a party that no one would come to, but everyone seemed excited about the idea.

Were you surprised by the response?

I was honestly surprised to have garnered such immediate interest in the blogging world, but it makes me think that this could be something big—relatively speaking, of course.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I work as a children's library assistant in a public library and have been doing so for six years. I do the same things as the librarians there, but I don't have a degree yet. I have put in my dues in the library world, working in the university library where I attended college, working in a law library for a few years after college, and in a health organization's library for five years after that. So, that is the long answer to "are you a librarian"—it is no, but I've been working in libraries for about 20 years.