Make Your Own Literary Fortune Teller

I have never called one of these a ‘cootie catcher’ in all my life but coming from England we don’t really do ‘cooties’ at all. Here in the UK they’re called paper fortune tellers if we call them anything at all, we usually just make them and play with them.

Usually they just reveal a compliment, or more often an insult but occasionally they are written to reveal your predicted crush or some other snippet of fortune telling and are just a bit of fun for the children but this one here is essential kit for any bibliophile. Don’t know what to read next? Leave it to the literary fortune teller to decide for you.

LiteraryHoots created this book selector version of the classic fortune teller and they have even provided free printables and excellent instructions.

Al you need to do is substitute the titles for the ones you want to choose from and you’re ready to go.

Of course most of us know how to make these fun paper fortune tellers, for me they were an essential form of entertainment and an outlet for my subversive abuse aimed towards my siblings; but for those of us who don’t:

Here is a free printable and some instructions for you.

First, fold along the diagonals and then open the square back out.

Next fold the corners in to the middle.

Turn your fortune teller over and fold the corners in to the centre again.

And you’re done!

If you run a book club you could use this as a method of choosing your next club read, or if you are a teacher or a librarian you could choose a selection of books and leave several of these lying around for people to use as a way of picking their next read.

The printable for the poster can be found here.

You could even just make a load of these for yourself and solve that eternal ‘what to read next’ dilemma.