Only the educator can be the judge of a book's appropriateness in the classroom. The Booktalks Web site had its origins in an index card file that Keane kept on various books. Keane first put booktalks online. She began with approximately 100 books. The booktalks list has expanded to about 700 books as of January 2000.
Users can search for booktalks using author, title, and subject indexes.
Books are also cataloged by grade according to interest level, and the site provides bibliographical information. The site is extremely user friendly. Tietze teaches at Minnetonka Middle School-West in Excelsior, Minnesota. Kids are pretty conservative, so they tend to pick out the same genres or authors all the time, and they miss out on some good reads. She calls it the Book March Madness Tournament.