Libraries & Librarians

Escape (Room) Your Book Club at #alsc26

October 3, 2026

This afternoon was full of play at #alsc26 as I learned how to transform my book club into an engaging tabletop escape room for teens and tweens!

Example of Ferraro’s tabletop escape rooms, photo courtesy of blogger

Austin Ferraro, Teen Services Librarian in Loudoun County, shared that they started their escape room programming to provide “positive, literacy-adjacent experiences” for neurodivergent teens in their area. Beginning as a virtual program in 2021 and transitioning to a monthly in-person offering, he has seen a consistent following from middle- and high-school library patrons. These tabletop programs typically run for 45 minutes on a monthly basis.

If you’re interested in hosting your own bookish escape room, Ferraro offered a few guidelines for a successful program.

Pick a book
- Try to find one that is currently available in your system, and set aside a few copies in case the program sparks the attendees’ interest enough to check it out.
Design your puzzles
- There are two types of puzzles: spatially oriented and information-oriented. Spatially oriented puzzles aim to have participants find something, whereas information-oriented puzzles aim to have participants deduce information. It is often helpful to work backwards from your end goal to create these puzzles.
Think about the end goal
- What do you want participants to do or solve at the end? Open a lock? Crack a code? Ferraro shares that teens in their program often have to unlock a box filled with snacks and ARCs by the end of their time in the escape room.

Ferraro’s program has seen a high level of success in their home system. Not only are teens engaged in the program and coming back monthly, but they were able to package their themed escape rooms to share with colleagues around the system, essentially creating escape room in-a-box programs. Ferraro also shared that they have used this program as an outreach tool, sparking higher interest in the program-specific titles from local teens.

This is one idea that I am super excited to take back to my branch, especially since so many ideas were low- or no-cost. If you are interested in more variations of escape room programming, check out some past posts from ALSC bloggers!

Annaliese Melvin (she/they) is a children’s librarian at a neighborhood library in Washington, D.C. Originally from Pennsylvania, she moved to the DC-area in 2020 to become a special education teacher after graduating with her bachelor’s from Arcadia University. In 2023, she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi with a master’s degree in Library and Information Science and transitioned into the library field. Annaliese currently works to bring more inclusive programming to DC Public Libraries for children of all ages. She is passionate about equity, inclusion, reading, and Philadelphia sports.