Secret Shopper

 I felt that the best way to complete this assignment was to go with my younger sister to the public library in her city, which is about an hour away from mine. She is a very picky reader, so I knew that it would take longer to find something for her to read than it would for myself. Lately, she has been a nonfiction trend after reading Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. 

I thought that this would be a really interesting example for Reader's Advisory because nonfiction topics are very nuanced. My sister is working on her undergraduate degree in social work. This book was interesting to her because it focused on the ways cities and their zoning and housing rules have created a way for poverty to persist and thrive. The goal of our visit was to find more books that examine this very specific topic.

Right away, the librarian suggested Desmond's most recent book, Poverty, By America which my sister had expressed interest in. But it was clear to the librarian that my sister was looking for something more specific than that, and she did a wonderful job of engaging my sister in a conversation to reach the heart of her book request as we had settled on as our goal. Once that was shared, the book recommendations my sister left with were Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by M. Nolan Gray and The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.