First Lady's Advice on Reading and Writing

I was pleased to see that our president's wife gave a shout-out to reading and writing in a recent Q&A at a girls' academy, Elizabeth Anderson Garrett School. Better still, she emphasized revising!

Here's the quote, in response to a question about what she and her husband tell their daughters to encourage them in their studies:

Read, write, read, read. If the president were here--one of his greatest strengths is reading. That's one of the reasons why he's a good communicator, why he's such a good writer. He's a voracious reader. So we're trying to get our girls, no matter what, to just be--to love reading and to challenge themselves with what they read, and not just read the gossip books but to push themselves beyond and do things that maybe they wouldn't do.

So I would encourage you all to read, read, read. Just keep reading. And writing is another skill. It's practice. It's practice. The more you write, the better you get. Drafts--our kids are learning the first draft means nothing. You're going to do seven, 10 drafts. That's writing, it's not failure, it's not the teacher not liking you because it's all marked up in red. When you get to be a good writer, you mark your own stuff in red, and you rewrite, and you rewrite, and you rewrite. That's what writing is.

Secret Weapons: Choosing the Right Books

NOTES FROM THE TRENCHES

As a teacher and reading zealot, I swear by the mantra, "The right book for the right child." This directive is a fishing how-to, the intent being to hook a young reader. Or a non-reader, actually. I want that kid who doesn't reach for a book to start reaching.

When a child has specialized needs and interests, finding the right book can be a little tricky. The other day a fellow teacher asked me to suggest a book for her student who's a teenage father. I could picture a book cover, but I couldn't remember the title or the author. It wasn't till I got home that I was able to track the thing down on Amazon: Angela Johnson's The First Part Last.

Sometimes choosing the right book feels like an art form. Ask any librarian! But I think it's an art you can learn, or certainly get better at. Here are some examples of book picks for my recent and current students, who are mostly teens, but include younger kids, as well. (I'll change the names for privacy purposes.) You should know that I'm a full-time home teacher for the school district, working with students in grades K-12 who are homebound for two months to a year with serious medical conditions such as cancer.

Eddy—He's a second grader who thinks that reading is hard, especially when he's faced with an entire page of prose. He'll say, "That's too long. You read it." But his skills really aren't that bad. Eddy likes video games about Spiderman and Batman. My four-pronged approach is this:
1. Read him a good picture book to start each class session.
2. Have him read the stories in the required reading book by taking turns—he reads the left-hand page, I read the right-hand page. Humor him when he wants to trade pages because his side is longer.
3. Leave him a Let's Read and Find Out science book for homework. Have him read 1/4 to 1/3 when it becomes apparent that reading an entire book in one fell swoop is overwhelming.
4. ESPECIALLY—give him Jarrett J. Krosoczka's Lunch Lady series to read.

Bingo! This kid is simply nuts about Lunch Lady. I want him to do math, but he just wants to sit and read Lunch Lady to me. He finds little inside jokes and recounts them. He especially likes the bit in Lunch Lady and the Summer Camp Shakedown when a camp counselor says, smiling, "Shouldn't we tell them the story about..." and in the next frame gets this diabolical face, yelling, "The Swamp Monster?!?" (I'm paraphrasing because my student still has the book!) Anyway, Eddy likes to hide in doorways and act out that part for my benefit.

"Okay," I say, "you can read Lunch Lady to me now, and then we'll do some more math." And this reluctant reader will read to me from Lunch Lady for 15 or 20 minutes straight before he gets tired. Plus I have him read more for homework. There are five books, and I wish there were more. But I'm thinking Zita the Spacegirl next. After that, I'll try weaning him away from graphic novels with Captain Underpants.

One more thing—today when I got to Eddy's house and walked in, the first words out of his mouth were, "Do you have another Lunch Lady book? Because I know you told me to read 10 pages, but I finished the whole book." I said yes I did and continued getting ready to start class, but he said, "Can I see the new book? I just want to see it." He felt a lot better once he'd seen the book and held it in his own two hands. Like I said, crazy mad book love!

Carolina—She's an eleventh grader who likes literature and wants to be an architect. Carolina had already read three of the four Twilight books when I met her. I brought her some Sarah Dessen books, Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins, a couple of other YA paranormals and school romances, and a book about American architecture to go with our study of U.S. history. I also got her some books about the first woman doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell, because she wants to write a paper about her.

As part of our American Literature class, I've supplemented our readings from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau with excerpts from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard and with the poetry of Mary Oliver.

When a student is already a reader, you want to focus on broadening their horizons. Don't forget nonfiction and poetry!

Jeffrey—This student just turned eighteen, and he's not that interested in reading. But he told me that he did get into James Patterson's books for a while. In short, Jeffrey likes mystery and suspense. I brought him a few different things: The Bourne Identity, The Hunt for Red October, and Hunger Games, for example. I also got some Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. He is currently reading Christie's And Then There Were None, which, I told him, is probably the most famous mystery ever written, apart from the Sherlock Holmes stories. (Okay, and Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." I know!) At first the old-fashioned setting was off-putting for him. I told him to give it another chapter or two and then we'd switch books to something he likes better. (This is an important rule. And if they just plain hate the book, I drop it right away.) But he got hooked on the story, and now he's enjoying it very much.

Then a few days ago Jeffrey said, "Oh, my younger sister really likes The Hunger Games." She's fourteen. She saw him reading and wanted to read something, too. Jeffrey's sister asked him about the stack of books I had left with him, so he suggested she try The Hunger Games. Now she wants to read all three books! This reading bug is contagious...

Aiden—He's not my student, but his mother used to be a secretary in our office. She was worried that her son didn't like to read, so she e-mailed me four or five months ago and asked me for book recommendations. Since Aiden is ten, I suggested Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. Well, I saw Aiden's mom this week, and she told me with breathless excitement that he's read all four of the Wimpy Kid books cover to cover. (Of course, I let her know about Book #5, "the purple one.") She went on to tell me that Aiden is now competing fiercely in his class's reading contest: whoever reads the most books wins a prize.

Max—A seventeen-year-old who didn't like most of my book picks, but I kept trying. I eventually succeeded with a combination of poetry (by contemporary teens, see my post about that), Simone Elkeles's Perfect Chemistry, and Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's Dash and Lily's Book of Dares. I knew we were getting somewhere when Max reached the end of Dash and Lily and was cranky because it was over and he wanted to know what happened next.

Zoe—The daughter of another teacher, this ten-year-old girl has learning disabilities, and she used to really despise reading. When I suggested to her worried mother that she might like the Babymouse series by Matthew and Jennifer Holm, my friend was a little dubious. (Graphic novels?) But I pushed it, and she said she'd give it a try. Well, a few months later Zoe's mom was raving about these books! Zoe fell in love with them and read all ten, the first interest she'd ever shown in any books, ever.

David—A twenty-four-year-old studying for the GMAT (the test for getting into business school). I agreed to tutor him for a few weeks at the request of a friend. He was definitely having trouble, and I pointed out that one of his challenges is that he's not a reader. I put together a reading "starter kit" for him and suggested he vary his DVD habit by reading every other night and watching movies the off nights. His reading kit contained: Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer's book about climbing Everest; In-N-Out Burger: A Behind-the-Counter Look at the Fast-Food Chain That Breaks All the Rules by Stacy Perman; and a stack of magazines including Fortune, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, and Discover.

Keep in mind that a lot of boys are not into fiction, but feel like it is shoved down their throats all through elementary, middle, and high school. If they prefer nonfiction, run with it! In particular, consider books about science, sports, and cars. (Because yeah, a lot of boys really do love that stuff, just like many little girls gravitate toward Fancy Nancy.)


WHY ARE SOME KIDS AVERSE TO READING?

Of course, readers have different reasons for being reluctant. The two most common are lack of ability and lack of interest. In the case of lack of ability, the endless well-meaning pushing of books by teachers and parents can become a real burden, such that kids can become downright phobic about reading. I have a relative who couldn't read as a child, and when the umpteenth person, his grandmother (who happened to be a reading specialist), sat down with him to show him how, he said, "Look, Grandmother—Mom's tried to teach me to read, and Dad's tried to teach me to read, and all my teachers at school have tried to show me how to read, and it's not going to happen, so please don't bother."

The punchline of this story is that he learned to read when he was ten because he fell in love with Louis L'Amour's westerns.

One more pointer: the reading phobic kids are really attracted to thin books. Much less scary!

The children who simply think reading is a dull business are a little easier to hook. You just have to find the book that knocks their socks off. I make some kind of general pitch, too. I tell them they'll do better in school if they read for pleasure. I tell them I take a book when I have to stand in line at the post office. But most of all, I tell them they just haven't met the right book yet, and that I feel their pain if someone made them read books that bored them.

I also mention that books can be as much fun as movies, if not more so. For that matter, the question I use to start my "book diagnosis" is, "What are your favorite books?" And when kids shrug, I say, "Okay, what are your favorite movies and TV shows?" This helps me pin down the right genre(s) even for non-readers. I like to keep in mind, too, that most fiction readers prefer either realistic fiction or sci-fi/fantasy. (Though I consider high-action spy books another sort of fantasy, to tell you the truth!)


SECRET WEAPONS

Now, while book picks should be lovingly handcrafted for the specific student, there are a few sure-fire hits that seem to appeal to a lot of kids, particularly if they're not into reading. I call these my secret weapons. Here are some key titles:

For Grades 1 and 2

—Go, Dog. Go! (The perfect book for beginners. It's long, so break it up and let kids explore all the miniature stories at their leisure. Hop on Pop is another goodie.)

—Green Eggs and Ham (Not necessarily The Cat in the Hat, which is more difficult.)

—Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel (Brilliant, but a bit gentle for the rowdier kids.)

—Fox books by James Marshall (More action-packed than Frog and Toad. Also funny!)

—Let's Read and Find Out Science books (Terrific second-grade science titles, like the one where you follow a hamburger to see how digestion works.)

—Lunch Lady series by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Offer to help readers with the occasional hard word.)

—Geronimo Stilton series (Not my favorite, but cute. More to the point, lots of kids love them and will read all 30+ books as if they were eating potato chips.)

—Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey (I cringe when grown-ups question the quality of these books or object to the potty humor. Don't they know any 8-year-old boys? I'll just add that the vocabulary is surprisingly sophisticated—tell young readers you'll help them with any hard words.)

—Shel Silverstein's poems, e.g., Where the Sidewalk Ends (Nice little pockets of text, weird and funny and subversive.)

—Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown (Very reader friendly. And short—again I say, reluctant readers' faces light up when they see short books.)

—Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne (A bit bland, but many kids will glom on and read all zillion of them, which is excellent.)


For Grades 3-6

—Roald Dahl's books, especially Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach (Still grabbing kids after all these years!)

—Holes by Louis Sachar (But explain the flashbacks first, or kids may get confused.)

—Grossology by Sylvia Branzei or Oh, Yuck! by Joy Masoff (The science of snot. And so forth.)

—Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney (Hilarious and hugely popular.)

—Babymouse series by Matthew Holm and Jennifer L. Holm (Graphic novels with girl appeal.)

—DK's Eyewitness series (Nonfiction; see their Eye Wonder books for younger readers.)


For Grades 6-8

—Gordon Korman is my favorite author for hard-core reluctant readers in this age group. Try his easy-but-suspenseful On the Run and Island series, among others. (On the Run skews a bit younger. It's like The Fugitive with kids.)

—The Goosebumps series by R.L. Stine (You'd be surprised how many 15- and 16-year-olds still list these as their favorite books. Think of them as a gateway drug: use them to work up to the really good stuff.)

—Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief and sequels (These books are grabbing the attention of a lot of kids who haven't been that interested in reading previously, much like the Harry Potter books did 10-15 years ago.)


For Grades 9-12

—Sarah Dessen's books for teenage girls (My favorites are The Truth about Forever, Just Listen, and Along for the Ride.)

—Alex Rider spy series by Anthony Horowitz (One British boy who's a reluctant spy.)

—Cherub series by Robert Muchamore (A team of young Brits who are spies.)

—The Hunger Games books (Boys and girls like these, the hottest thing since Twilight.)

I recommend five pages a day as a starting point for reluctant readers. Taking turns (whether pages or paragraphs, but usually pages) is a good way to launch a super reluctant reader. Even if you don't specifically ask them to read independently, you can mention, "Oh, If I'm not around, you can read a little on your own if you want to. You'll have to tell me what happens next if you do that, though." Or I'll say lightly, "I'm assigning you 5 pages, but if you want to read a few more pages because it's just getting to the good part, that's okay." Like they won't be in trouble if they do that! I always ask kids to tell me what's happening in the book each time we meet. It's important to listen with sincere, even avid interest when they come back and report the latest goings-on in their book. It's like book gossip: "Really? So what happened when Violet ate the gum?"

Of course, the obvious academic justification here, besides reading comprehension, is that summarizing is a pretty useful school skill. For those adults who worry that "reading for pleasure" is just too fun and want kids perusing War and Peace at the age of nine to prove their giftedness, lighten up! If it helps, you can replace the term "reading for pleasure" with "reading practice," but don't tell the children. I can assure you that kids who read are better writers because they've seen thousands of models of how sentences and paragraphs should be constructed. They are also clearly better equipped to handle the mountains of text that will come their way in high school and college. But this really only works if they are happy readers, choosing their own books and finding their own satisfying paths through the realms created by the wizardly shelves of libraries and bookstores.

By the way, my mom used to read aloud to my younger brothers and sisters even when they were in their teens. (I was off at college!) Everybody really enjoyed the ritual and warmth of sharing a story.

One thing I'll emphasize is that I'm very casual about all this, like a good co-conspirator. And I always bring at least six books for a student to choose from. I pitch each book, usually letting the child read me the flap copy. Then I let them make their selection, pointing out that they can keep two or three if they want till they've read enough to make more of a decision. If it turns out they don't like any of them, I ask a few more questions and try again.

Welcome to the club, kid.


See my previous post on this topic, "Ten Books at a Time." And I have an Amazon Listmania list which includes additional titles: "Children's Books for Reluctant Readers."

Note for Worried Parents: Perfect Chemistry has some violence, drinking, and a brief teen sex scene. Sarah Dessen's books occasionally have mild references to sex and teen drinking. The Cherub series is pretty frank about teen sex, especially in the later books, though it's not nearly as important a plot component as the sometimes-violent (or video game-esque) military-style spy action. And, as most people know by now, The Hunger Games trilogy is quite violent.

Feel free to suggest other sure-fire book picks in the comments!


Suggestions from the Comments

—From GreenBeanTeenQueen: Emma Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis, A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban, and The Wedding Planner's Daughter by Coleen Murtagh Paratore (for tween girls); Found and other Margaret Peterson Haddix books (for tweens); Michael Carroll's Quantum Prophecy series (for teen boys who are reluctant readers); and The Agency series by Y.S. Lee (for teens who want mysteries).

—from YNL (Pink Me): "Other secret weapons: Ellen Hopkins for teen boys, The Far Flung Adventures as bridge books out of Magic Tree House and into longer stuff, and the very YA-looking cover on the exciting middle grade Super Human by Michael Owen Carroll. That one will interest young people who really really want to be moving into stronger stuff but who are only ten years old."

—Playing by the Book recommends another book about teen fatherhood, Malorie Blackman's Boys Don't Cry, and provides a link to a podcast with the author.

—Tammy Flanders of Apples with Many Seeds adds: "I too recommend Margaret Peterson Haddix as well as Gary Paulson and Jon Scieszka, especially for boys."

A Review of Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children's Book, edited by Anita Silvey

As mentioned in an earlier post, a friend tore out an ad in the New Yorker for this book and gave it to me, whereupon I rushed off to get a copy. And now this review is me "tearing out an ad" for you!

Anita Silvey is known for her books about children's literature, with titles like 100 Best Books for Children, The Essential Guide to Children's Books and Their Creators, and 500 Great Books for Teens. These books are useful for parents and librarians alike, not to mention teachers.

In this new work, Silvey compiles commentary from 110 "society leaders" about the children's book that has most influenced their lives—a marvelous premise.

For example, oceanographer Robert Ballard, the man who located the wreck of the Titanic, tells us about his favorite book at age ten, Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea:

My hero was Captain Nemo. I wanted to be inside his ship, the Nautilus. He built his own submarine, using advanced technology. He was a technologist, but also an adventurer. Through a giant window, he examined the sea.
I wanted to be an undersea explorer.

Another intriguing entry comes from Dr. William C. DeVries, who was the first cardiothoracic surgeon to perform successful implantation of an artificial heart. He speaks of his childhood love of The Wizard of Oz:

In the book, the Wizard of Oz talks to the Tin Woodman about whether or not he really wants a heart. The Wizard believes that having a heart is not such a good thing: "It makes most people unhappy." But the Tin Woodman says, "For my part, I will bear all the unhappiness without a murmur, if you will give me a heart." In my work, I have thought about those lines many, many times.

Many of the contributors are writers, although Silvey does give us politicians, scientists, businessmen, artists, and news broadcasters, also a few actors and an athlete. One factor I noticed is the way that book choices tend to correlate to age; for example, picks like Jack Schaefer's Shane (country songwriter Billy Edd Wheeler) and The Bobbsey Twins series (Kirk Douglas) are from an earlier era than young actor Tyler Hilton's selection, Maniac Magee.

Jay Leno's pick? Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. Jon Scieszka chooses another favorite of mine, Go, Dog. Go! I also like Steve Wozniak's pick, the Tom Swift series. As a boy, the future maker of the Apple computer was drawn by the character's inventions: "To me Tom Swift represented the epitome of creative freedom, scientific knowledge, and the ability to find solutions to problems."

When more than one person chooses the same book, readers get the delightful benefit of different perspectives. For example, author Linda Sue Park and movie reviewer Roger Ebert both select Elizabeth Enright's The Saturdays. Park comments on the author's strong, detailed portrayal of the city, while Ebert explains that these books showed him that stories could be wonderful—he was led to them by the librarian, whom he names, who led a book club when he was a boy. Her love of reading was contagious.

Children's book author-illustrators Maurice Sendak and Chris Van Allsburg both speak of being inspired by Crockett Johnson's Harold and the Purple Crayon. The book fostered a unique, "do your own thing" artistic spirit in these creative people. As Van Allsburg puts it, "I believe that the empowerment of Harold appealed to me as a reader—I loved the idea that I could be in control and create my own world."

Some contributors fell in love with certain books as adults, whether as creative people, parents, or literacy advocates. A few have even made careers out of the books. For example, scholar Michael Patrick Hearn has spent his life studying The Wizard of Oz and has created a definitive annotated edition.

I especially appreciate Wicked author Gregory Maguire's pick, Jane Langton's The Diamond in the Window. Langton's subtle fantasy series, with its focus on the Transcendentalist movement (think Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoroeau), is one of those terrific but less well-known reads for thoughtful children.

If you are in love with children's literature, you will probably enjoy this book as much as I did. It's also interesting just to see what people pick. My one quibble about the book is that it's hard to figure out who the contributors are if you don't recognize their names—the information is buried near the bottom of sidebar commentary. One might argue that the book picks are more important than the contributors, but it would have been fairly simple to give a brief bio in a separate little item for each entry. Instead, you must hunt through the sidebars or flip back and forth between the entries and a list of bios in the book's back matter.

I would also point out that this is not a book for children, although it might be a rich experience to share parts of it with children and ask them about their own favorite books. Everything I Need to Know I Learned from a Children's Book is a fairly serious and grown-up work. It is also a lovely walk down the lanes and side paths of children's literature. What's more, it reminds us of the great power of books to shape lives.

Ten Books at a Time

I was at a friend's house the other day when she mentioned that her 8-year-old son, whom I'll call Mark, doesn't like to read very much. She has him on a summer reading schedule of 20 minutes a day, but he fights her constantly.

"What's he reading?" I asked. She brought out the latest book to show me. I also interrogated her son, who clearly suspected that if he admitted to liking any kind of book at all, he would be forced to read more. After further pestering, he begrudgingly acknowledged a fondness for action and sci-fi.

I took a closer look at the book. It was contemporary realism about a kid who tries to build a spaceship out of cardboard boxes. He then pretends to have adventures in it. There were also some family problems, but I got the picture. This was the wrong book for my friend's son.

After a little more conversation, I discovered that every week my friend took her two boys to the library and asked them to pick out one book each. As part of their vacation homework, they would have to write a book report at the end of the week. "Sometimes Mark likes to read, though," she explained. "He loved those Magic Tree House books. Maybe we could find another series."

The next time I came over, I brought an emergency bag of books designed to pique Mark's interests, along with some suggestions for his younger brother Adam, who's currently reading Frog and Toad. My bag contained the following: the four Horrid Henry books by Francesca Simon that I recently reviewed; all six On the Run books by Gordon Korman; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl; The Heroic Adventures of Hercules Amsterdam by Melissa Glenn Haber; Dial-a-Ghost by Eva Ibbotsen; and Mister Monday by Garth Nix. (I suggested that this last book and its sequels should come after the others, as they're much denser reading.)

I also strongly recommended The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, although I couldn't find my own copy. It was actually my top pick for Mark.

Further prescriptions from Dr. Coombs? I explained, first to my friend and then to her wide-eyed sons, that when they go to the library they should each check out ten books for the week. Mark winced, so I hastily reassured him that he didn't have to read all ten. "It's so if one of them turns out to be a dud, you have other books to choose from."

I had already told my friend that when a book is boring you to tears, you shouldn't finish it. Whereupon she said that even she had been bored by this week's book, which she was helping her son get through, taking turns.

"Guess how many books I checked out at the library yesterday?" I asked the kids.

"A hundred?" Mark asked.

"Nope. I couldn't carry a hundred. I got 20. At my house I have 2,000." Or is it more?

The two boys looked at each other, suitably impressed.

"We only have 50," Mark informed me.

One thing I hear a lot from well-to-do suburban parents is that they have plenty of books at home. I remember doing a school visit at a private school a few years back and getting a sense of what was going on. After I made a big pitch for going to the library, some of the students' comments made me realize that their wealthy parents didn't ever take them to the library. Instead, they were proud of their supposedly extensive home libraries.

Sorry, but those libraries are just not good enough. They're a wonderful foundation, but the vision I want to instill in parents is that a kid should walk into a public library and feel the incredible power of owning hundreds of books, of having hundreds of choices.

When I was a kid, my mom took us to the library every week. Every week we checked out the maximum number of books we were allowed to get, which I think was in fact ten, and every week we finished those books in the first three or four days. My sister grew up to be an attorney, while I grew up to be a teacher and a writer. Those books weren't the only reason, but they were definitely a factor.

I should mention that I recommend having reading sessions designated by pages or chapters, not by time. That way kids can stop watching the clock and pay more attention to the story. This approach requires a certain amount of supervision and involvement, though. What I like to do is assign my students to read at least five pages. Then the next time I see them, I ask, "What happened in the book?" This question is meant to be gossipy, not teacherish. It's like asking a kid about a movie—they'll often retell the plot in gory detail. A corollary I've noticed is that kids who recount events in a book blithely for three days straight and then get stuck the fourth day have loudly broadcasted that they didn't do the reading. (I've also found out whether they were reading or simply retelling a movie that way, How to Eat Fried Worms being a recent example.)

"When you give Mark a book, tell him you want him to read a chapter a day, but he can read more if he feels like it. Be very casual about this," I told my friend.

While you're getting a kid hooked, you can take turns reading pages, of course. Depending on the child, I may explain to them that I'll get them started, and then they can read on their own.

When I bring books to students, I first find out their interests. If they can't name any books they like, I ask them what movies and TV shows they like, which gives me a pretty good idea. In broad terms, I've found that most kids prefer either sci-fi/fantasy and adventure, contemporary realism (family, school, and sports stories), or nonfiction. Then there are those kids who will read just about anything, given half the chance.

Some parents seem obsessed with having their precocious 6-year-olds read books intended for high schoolers because "my Johnny is reading at a 10th grade level." To which I say, "So?" Because Johnny is not emotionally ready for The Great Gatsby, and oh yeah, he'll probably hate it. Why should Johnny miss out on the great literature written for 6- to 9-year-olds just because he's "gifted"?

Now, my friend who is working on the great summer reading project is highly educated and is very supportive of her sons' academic progress. But she was not herself an avid childhood reader, so she doesn't happen to have a wide knowledge of children's literature. This is where a good children's librarian or the staff at a well-stocked independent bookstore specializing in children's books can be invaluable.

It's early days yet, but I suspect that with the reading list I've given Mark, he may yet be hooked on books. At the very least, reading won't feel so much like torture anymore. In addition, I recommended the Geronimo Stilton books for his little brother. Not because they're the best books of all time, but because they'll launch him into better books and they're just a lot of fun. I also suggested James Marshall's Fox books, which are well written.

Happily, potential readers are all around us. A few years ago, I worked with a tenth grade student who was very bright and articulate. He told me he read articles on the Internet, but he really didn't read books. I explained, "You were meant to be a reader. You're missing out." I brought him some books that didn't completely take, but he started catching on to the possibilities. His next teacher called to tell me that this boy had gone through a couple of assigned books and was now reading Machiavelli's The Prince on his own because he was interested in political theory.

Another time I was teaching a 12-year-old non-reader who informed me that there was no reason to read Harry Potter because he'd already seen the movie. I dialed it down to A Series of Unfortunate Events on the grounds that they were shorter. Pretty soon he'd read all ten of the Lemony Snicketts (then available) and was happily launching into Harry Potter. I remember his mom saying to me one day, mystified, "I don't understand it. I come into the living room, and he's sitting on the couch, reading a book. We go to the doctor's office, and he wants to bring his book."

"That's great!" I said. I waited till I got home to do a victory dance in my own living room.

It seems we are complacent in believing that the many college-educated parents in our society are successfully raising a generation of readers. It certainly isn't for lack of trying. But getting the right book into the hands of the right kid is not as easy as it looks. Of course, when it does happen, the results can be deep and rich and mind-altering.

Because there is simply nothing like a good book.


P.S. Thanks very much to Jen Robinson for mentioning this post on Booklights. More to the point, I recommend you visit Booklights, a site sponsored by PBS for parents, to get more insights into how to raise a reader. The current post is about summer reading, especially letting kids read for pleasure during the summer (as opposed to reading assigned books).