Tools for Kids & Teen Librarians (Summer Reading)

These are ideas and simple tools that can help with summer reading: ordering the right books, spotting “slop” titles, and making lightweight reports. Everything here is meant to be optional, transparent, and easy to look under the hood.

1. Spotting Sloppy or Low-Value Titles

Suspicious / slop-like nonfiction

`suspicious_books_screener.py`

Use this on vendor lists or carts that are heavy on “how-to” nonfiction (especially for parents/teens). It looks for generic, hype-y marketing language and flags titles for you to double-check.

Export a cart/list as CSV (with Title, Author, Description).
Run: python suspicious_books_screener.py cart.csv cart_with_flags.csv
Sort by suspicious_ai_like_score and skim the 2s and 3s.

Details & how it works →

Weird / hype-y titles

`weird_title_highlighter.py`

Use this when you want to immediately see titles with phrases you don’t trust (for example “passive income”, “instant results”, “using ChatGPT”). Great for quickly skimming YA/parenting nonfiction carts.

Adjust the WEIRD_WORDS list if you like.
Run: python weird_title_highlighter.py cart.csv cart_with_weird_titles.csv
Open the output and filter on weird_flag = "yes".

Missing / tiny descriptions

`short_description_finder.py`

Use this on kids/YA records where you rely heavily on description for RA and displays. It marks records that have no description or one that is extremely short.

Run: python short_description_finder.py books.csv books_with_desc_flags.csv
Sort by description_issue to see which titles might be hard for families to evaluate.

2. Summer Orders & Cart Sanity

Who is this cart for?

`cart_mix_summary.py`

Use this at any point in building a summer cart to see the age mix (Adult / YA / J / etc.).

Make sure your cart CSV has an Audience / AgeGroup column.
Run: python cart_mix_summary.py cart.csv
Read the quick summary in Terminal (total titles, % per audience).

Series awareness

`series_number_finder.py`

Helps you see where you are buying “Book 3” or “Vol. 5” without the earlier volumes in the same cart.

Run: python series_number_finder.py cart.csv cart_with_series_guess.csv
Look at maybe_series_number and group by series/title stem in Excel to spot gaps.

Empty key fields

`empty_field_checker.py`

Good for seeing how many kids/YA records are missing Authors, series info, or descriptions before you rely on them for summer displays.

Example: check missing Authors in a list:

python empty_field_checker.py kids_books.csv Author kids_books_checked.csv

The script prints how many rows are missing that field and adds a missing_Author column to the output file.

3. Ideas for Future Kid-Focused Tools

These are not built yet, but could be added in the same simple style:

“Graphic Novels & Comics Balance” – summarize how many titles in a cart are GNs/comics vs. prose, by age group.
“Summer Holds Pressure” – combine holds + owned copies for high-demand kids series, to decide where to add copies before summer.
“Activity/Challenge Generator” – turn a list of themes (e.g., “water”, “friendship”, “animals”) into a simple printable bingo/activities sheet.

You can always go back to the main tools page here: Library Pop-Up Tools home →