The Indiana Young Readers Center at the Indiana State Library (IYRC) is looking for Indiana librarians and teachers who are interested in testing “escape room” type experience kits the IYRC is developing. Indiana librarians and teachers are encouraged to check out and use any of the six circulating escape room kits with their patrons and students and provide IYRC feedback. IYRC is also interested in learning how many librarians and teachers are interested in checking out the kits once they are completed in early 2025.

The kits are “escape room” type experiences where students are left in a room with clues, puzzles, and locked boxes and must work together to search the room, crack codes, and eventually unlock the last box that will allow them to escape.

All six planned experiences include narratives based on Indiana history and feature facsimiles of actual primary source documents located in the Indiana State Library’s collections or collections from the Library of Congress. Most of the experiences have the same “villain,” Sammy, the Interviewing Toucan, who you might be familiar with from Author Interviews on the Indiana State Library’s YouTube channel.

The six topics covered by the Escape Rooms include:

President Benjamin Harrison – Featuring the only Indiana president to date.

Genealogy – Featuring a diary written in 1904 by a 9-year-old from Rensselaer, Indiana.

Aviation – Featuring Octave Chanute, an early aviator from Indiana who worked with the Wright Brothers and conducted experiments in the Gary dunes.

Basketball – Featuring the Indianapolis Crispus Attucks High School state championships in 1955 and 1956.

Quakers – Featuring Levi and Catherine Coffin, Indiana Quakers and abolitionists.

Hoosier Women – Featuring Madame C. J. Walker, Amelia Earhart, Eva Kor, and more.

IYRC designed the kits with varying levels of difficulty, so that students young and old will be able to enjoy the mysteries. The kits, however, are for middle and high school students and are best used in small groups of four to eight students. For larger group of students, facilitators can book multiple kits as four copies of each kit will be available.

For more information on:
the preliminary kit for teachers and librarians

the October 2024 in-person and webinar trainings

other related issues, email Suzanne Walker