Do you think of libraries when you hear the word literature? I do. I always have.

When I was younger and wanted to picture what a good library looked like, I always pictured something like the image above. The George Peabody Library is grand and full of history. Full of the kind of knowledge that I thought I wanted to ascribe to. I wanted to be smart like that. Like the people who walked those halls and touched those books.

The truth is that libraries come in all shapes and sizes. Teachers house mini-libraries in their classrooms to keep students interested in new topics or motivate them to keep reading. You might have a library in your reading room at home or tucked in a corner of your bedroom. In 2025, we each carry digital libraries in our phones or tablets allowing us the flexibility to jump into books wherever we are in our day.

Whether your library is digital or one that is a bit of a drive, the act of entering a library and selecting a book is a sacred right of passage for any human being. There are so many type of books out there– you should be reading texts you’re interested in. Yes, you will have required or assigned reading material (in school and in your adult life), but I urge you to get to know yourself as a reader as soon as you can. Nurture your love of reading and take note of how your interests change over time.

I hope this page serves as a starting point for your reading journey. I update it often, so if you want to see something added, just send me an email.

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Genres

The term genre is a noun that represents “a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content.”¹ Knowing what genre of literature you are interested in reading opens up a whole world of possibilities for you. That knowledge can help you find authors similar to the texts you enjoy reading or even help you push yourself outside of your comfort zone to discover different types of writing you wish to try out yourself.

Take a look at the basics below.

Prose versus poetry. What’s the difference?

Prose is all the writing we do on a normal basis:

• The sentence you jotted down in your journal this morning.
• The email you sent this morning.
• The paragraph you wrote in your Chemistry notebook detailing your lab’s findings.
• The essay that is comprised of multiple paragraphs (hopefully, logically organized paragraphs).
• The transcription of the voice memo you recorded after that meeting.
• The speech you wrote for the school election.

Usually, when you think about writing, you’re actually thinking about prose.

If you nerd out to official definitions like I do, see below.

Prose: (n) “the ordinary language people use in speaking or writing.” In literary terms, prose is “distinguished from poetry especially by its greater irregularity and variety of rhythm and its closer correspondence to the patterns of everyday speech.”²

Poetry is verse. It’s different from prose in that writers can use incomplete lines, funky spacing, no punctuation, … anything poets want! It’s a creative way to examine a topic or describe an event. Poetry doesn’t have to have a concrete message or answer a particular question. Sometimes poetry poses a question that people explain through prose.

There are so many different types of poetry: some adhere to rules. Some do not. Some are long, others short. Some incorporate elements of prose, while others are only comprised of a few words. Poetry can be anything you want it to be. How freeing!

Here’s the official definition:

Poetry: (n) “writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm.”³

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What genre am I interested in?

Let’s look again to libraries. Librarians organize libraries based on specific genres to make books or resources easier to find. I’ve included many of these genres below with an image from one of the authors that typify the genre. Click the image to discover more. Please note that this is not a definitive list of genres; take a look at Goodreads list of genres.

The Four Main Genres:

• Nonfiction
• Fiction
• Poetry
• Drama

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Learning Links

Need a quick link to literary terms from credible websites? One that’s not created by generative AI? See below.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Poetry:

Types-

Teachers, remember that you can always return to the main resources page “Teachers Corner” by clicking the Resources tab or by clicking here.

Footnotes

1. Genre as defined by The Merriam Webster Dictionary. ↩︎
2. Prose as defined by The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. ↩︎
3. Poetry as defined by The Merriam-Webster Dictionary. ↩︎