LA GRANDE — A new cafe at La Grande Middle School is helping students expand their taste for reading.

Introducing the Genre Book Cafe at the LMS Library, a place where cooking knives are not sharpened but pencils and minds are. The cafe is a temporary site with the look of an Italian restaurant, designed to help students develop an interest in book categories outside of those they now read.

“The kids love it. It is providing them with a really fun way to learn about new books,” LMS sixth grade teacher Parker McKinley said.

All middle school students have the opportunity to visit the Genre Book Cafe at set times, and it is proving to be as popular as fresh baked pizza.

Students coming to the cafe sit at tables decorated in the manner they would be in an Italian cafe. At the center of each table are two stacks of about six books from LMS’s library, each from a genre LMS’s library director Keri Myer, the creator of the cafe, has chosen for that day. Genres students have been able to choose since the cafe program started in the fall are adventure, mystery, novels in verse, realistic fiction, historical fiction and supernatural fiction.

All of the volumes of the genre of the day are considered to be the cafe’s main entrees.

“I want you to taste a different entree,” Myer tells the students after they are seated for a Genre Book Cafe session.

Students are asked to examine one book each and then fill out a brief questionnaire about it after reading its jacket and some of its initial pages. Next students are served actual hors d’oeuvres, such as parmesan knots made by a local pizza restaurant and purchased with funds provided by the La Grande Education Foundation.

The hors d’oeuvres are eaten at tables with tablecloths that have a checkered Italian look and battery-powered tea lights that look like candles. Italian music is played over the library’s sound system.

“We want to create the ambiance of an Italian cafe,” Myer said.

Some classes have visited the Genre Book Cafe as many as five times for 20-minute sessions since it started. At the conclusion of each session, students have the opportunity to check out books from the library. A number of students choose books they read at their table.

Nothing could make Myer happier, because this often means the students are showing an interest in a genre of books they have not read before. Myer said she is delighted when this happens and compared it to someone leaving a big tip at a real cafe.

“I consider these my tips,’’ Myer said, referring to students checking out books from the table they were sitting at.

Students who have enjoyed coming to the Genre Book Cafe include sixth graders Jordyn Waters and Kaylynn Smith. Waters said she likes learning about new genres, and Smith said she enjoys the chance it has provided her to read more historical fiction, which is a favorite genre of hers.

The most popular genres of middle school students are fantasy and graphic novels, according to Myer. The librarian said it is wonderful that students are reading books in these categories but there are benefits to being exposed to other genres that offer new challenges.

“It is important that they move out of their comfort zones,” Myer said.

McKinley said the success of the Genre Book Cafe is a credit in large part to excellent work by Myer and her heartfelt devotion to it.

“When kids see their teacher is passionate about something they buy into it,” McKinley said.