Longstanding hassle...

For about as long as I've had kids, the size of kids books has been a bit of a hassle to me. I mean, there is no earthly reason that children's books need bigger spines...except that the current arrangements makes them so hard to read on the shelf!

My older boys, being who they were, were quite happy to pull the entire shelf down in search of a specific book - - or even just to have a browse.

Jack, being who *he* is, is not happy to pull down the entire shelf. He tends to ignore books that are too tightly packed to read easily.

So, we display a few books here and a few books there around the house.

Some in the parlour, which are mainly non-fiction. History, language, poetry, science, music and art...

Some in the office, which are mainly fiction. Largely picture books -- novels live upstairs in Jack's bedroom.

A few stay out on a table or on the freezer when they're in heavy use. That would be all things dinosaur, for the moment.

And the rest languish in closets until they get their turn to cycle in again.

The big question is, can we find a better way? I have seen various ways to display homeschooling "topical" books. The one I like best is the rain gutter nailed into the wall. http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/oliver.html

But that method does require more wall space than we really have at the moment if we are to display more than a very few books at a time.

We tried using more bookends to separate them and that was easier to search through, but it didn't actually display them any better.

I am wondering whether anyone else has come up with any truly clever ways of making the picture book display more engaging and easier to browse. Ideally in away that doesn't require miles and miles of wall space, since we don't have that much. (The serious downside of an open-plan house is that there is a lot of space and very little place to put anything.)

I haven't found much -- but I've decided to head out to the hardware store to price rain gutters. A little is better than none!

But really, does your family have a great idea that might help us?