Escape Rooms and Other Immersive Experiences in the Library

by Ellyssa Kroski

"Escape rooms are live, interactive, adventure games in which participants must team up to solve a series of riddles, puzzles, and challenges in order to win. "Immersive experiences" are a sort of Escape-Room Lite, more casual, no timers or lockdowns. Escape Rooms worldwide have quadrupled in the past three years, and libraries are getting in the act. Scavenger hunts have been a library orientation staple, puzzles, clues, and team competitions add to the fun. When it comes to STEM or curriculum support, what better way to learn chemistry than the immersive play of a wizardry potion class. Author Ellyssa Kroski, an escape room enthusiast and potions class graduate, shows a full range of options with how-to guidance, on such topics as: Hosting a pre-designed game from leading educational supplier, BreakoutEDU.com. Start-to-finish, replicable model Kroski developed for her library--Search for Alexander Hamilton and the Missing Librarian. How to design your own escape room from scratch. Descriptive listing of 16 library projects with audience demographics, run-time, required staff, and budget. Resources for making crossword, soduku, or jigsaw puzzles. Escape room board games or a digital breakout with Google tools. Pop-up escape rooms to take on the road for outreach. Bring LARP to your library, live-action role-playing, the most popular immersive experience. How to create an escape room flow-chart for planning. Designing a kid-friendly escape room. Vendor listings of the all the supplies you'll need. Planning template for an escape room project"--

Genres: Nonfiction, Games, Librarianship

245 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 31, 2018

About the author

Ellyssa Valenti Kroski is the Director of Innovation & Engagement at the New York Law Institute as well as an award-winning editor and author of 77 books. She is a librarian, an adjunct faculty member at San Jose State University, and an international conference speaker. She can be found at: http://www.amazon.com/author/ellyssa and https://ellyssakroski.com/

Reviews

[Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads like an ALA published book, which is cool because I finished this book so fast. But now I have extra information to create my own escape room! Now, if I can only talk my library into doing a program...

[Debbie VanZandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have done escape rooms for my high school's Grad Nite for the last 4 years. I bought this hoping to pick up some tips and tricks, and I did. Kroski gave me lots of food for thought for planning this year's edition, and a great many new resources as well.
I also enjoyed the other immersive experiences the book contains as well. The reviews were helpful and the examples from others were, too.
Definitely worth it if you are planning to create your own room or experience, or even if you've thought about it.

[Beronica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book helped me to create my own escape room at my library for middle school-aged students! I could have done Breakout EDU but I wanted to get a good sense of what I was doing (since it was my first one) and am happy to say that I feel prepared to develop other Escape Rooms in the future! This book was given to me by a coworker and I am grateful for her assistance and knowledge on this!

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

gah!!!!!!!!!!

AMAZING!

If you as a library employee ever wanted to create, implement, or facilitate Escape rooms or bring in immersive programs to the library, GAHHHH, THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU!

Amazing resource!! Step by step, easy to use, lots of ideas, this book was just...gahhh, AMAZING!

Truly, I think every public library who provides programming needs this book! STAT!

[Jim D'Ambrosia · Rating 3 out of 5]

For all the popularity of escape rooms, this is the only book out there (that I know of) that pulls it all together, with suggestions for how to make them. It's a bit cobbled together, but that's fine. The book nominally focuses on libraries, but you certainly don't need to own a library to make use of the information. Lots of fun ideas here.

[Amber · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see how this book would be good for beginners, but as someone with a bit of experience with escape rooms and libraries, a good amount was redundant. I really loved the section about incorporating more tech into the games - I’ll definitely be looking into that more.

[H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably, of the few books on this topic, I have read this is the best one. It helps outline how to go about designing an escape room (or immersive experience). Would rec to those who want to make one of these programs.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful, I thought. Lots of references to online resources and suggestions for starting from scratch, probably a good reference to go back to.

[Bobbi Galvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book of lists and ideas