Read the Rainbow: BPL's Adult Reading Scavenger Hunt

Brooklyn summers are full of color. Whether it's Coney Island’s beachside cerulean blues and carnival reds or the radiant oranges and feathered emeralds of Crown Heights’ annual West Indian Day Parade, color is everywhere.

Just like colors, book covers come in a wide variety of shades and hues. We’ve all heard it before—never judge a book by its cover. And sometimes those books which look the most vivid from the outside are only so-so on the inside. But let’s be honest: when it comes to books, we judge them not just by the cover, but by what we know about the author, the genre, or its readers.

This summer, we challenge you to explore the stacks of your local branch in search of the most eye-catching covers. Throw all of the usual ways of evaluating books out the window and let color guide you. This is your permission to use a book's cover as an excuse to try something new! Take a multicolored trip through our catalog, and read the rainbow:

1. In Translation with a Red Cover
2. Autobiography with an Orange Cover
3. Coming-of-Age with a Yellow Cover
4. Mystery with a Green Cover
5. About Summer with a Blue Cover
6. Romance with a Purple Cover 

Need help? Check out our handy guide for searching the catalog. Still stumped? Get inspired by our color-themed booklists for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. Or take your pick from the rainbow with the combined booklist!

There are all sorts of ways to interpret the challenge. For example, you could read Tara M. Stringfellow’s midnight blue Memphis about racism, domestic abuse, and survival set in the summer of 1995; Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney’s navy Good Company, about the discovery of a wedding ring lost many summers ago; or Rose Carlyse’s azure The Girl in the Mirror, about one sister’s obsession with her twin, Summer.

From Riku Onda’s tender and scarlet Honeybees and Distant Thunder about a prestigious piano competition in Japan, to Georgi Gospodinov’s melancholy and burgundy The Physics of Sorrow about a man finding solace in the myth of the Minotaur as he recalls his childhood in Bulgaria, there’s as vast a landscape of books in translation as there are shades of red.

The goal of this challenge is to explore Brooklyn Public Library's online catalog and bookshelves with an eye for color and an open spirit. Share your list with us in the comments below—we can’t wait to hear what you come up with. Happy hunting!