TD SRC Kids’ Site – New features for 2017!

The national kids’ website has been live since June 13 – have you checked it out yet? We’re so proud of the site this year, and we really hope you’ll help us spread the word about it to the kids and families in your libraries. 

Our web team has made some great improvements to the “Suggest a Book” feature. In previous years, kid-submitted titles wouldn’t have cover images associated with them, and there was no way to group reviews for the same title together. This meant that if 50 different kids suggested Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, there would be 50 separate appearances of it, making it very difficult if a user wished to read all its reviews. This has all changed! Our site is now connected to the Google Books database, so that when a user begins to type a title, they are prompted to select a match from a drop down menu. Now when you browse through titles in the “Kids Suggest” section, the book covers are shown, and all reviews are grouped together under each title!

Another new feature is the “Popular” section, which displays the most popular books on the TD SRC site (both ones we recommend and ones submitted by kids) in descending order, according to the number of reviews. It’s fascinating to check in on this section every so often, to see what book is in the lead. So far Double Down by Jeff Kinney is the holding strong as the frontrunner, but it’s great to see older titles like Charlotte’s Web are still favourites. Don’t forget that kids can also read e-books on the site! 

In the first two weeks alone, over 4,500 online notebooks have been created! Silly stories are proving to be the most popular feature, but kids are submitting jokes and book reviews in great numbers, as well.

And wow, do kids ever love to “like” other kids’ submissions! Take a look at this next chart, which shows that kids are liking jokes at astonishing rates.

There are still a few features yet to roll out on the site. Please take some time to explore, so you’re well equipped to tell your young patrons about all the fun things they can do. If you have any comments or questions about the site, feel free to leave them below and we’ll get back to you ASAP.