“It’s a really good book. You should read it.” How many times has someone recommended a book to you by saying it’s “really good”?  No explanation, no plot information, no why or how it’s good, you are just supposed to trust them.  Now nobody is perfect and I have been just as guilty as most in encouraging someone to read a book by not describing it, just declaring it “really good”.  But I promised myself with the completion of this, my final project in my Young Adult Literature class, that I would never, ever again recommend a book without enthusiastically explaining why I am sharing it and pointing out the connections I gained from reading it.

With that promise…Welcome to Read. Think. Share. 

Always Read.

Read anything, read everything! Reading is good for you.

Whether you are reading for pleasure, for information, or even if its required reading for work or school, it just doesn’t matter; whatever and whenever you chose to read is time well spent. Teri S. Lesesne in her book, Naked Reading, quotes the statistics from the National Assessment of Educational Progress linking students that read more than forty plus minutes a day to success in the ninetieth percentile of achievement (Lesesne, 3). Wow! The figures from the NEAP are impressive but I think the quote from Jim Trelease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook, says it best:  “The more you read, the better you get at it: the better you get at it, the more you like it; and the more you like it, the more you do it.  And the more you read, the more you know; and the more you know, the smarter you grow (Lesesne,38). 

O.K., reading is good for you. But from every direction you hear reading is on the decline.  That Book sales are down. The statistics are grim, 90% of all the books purchased are purchased by less than 10% of the population (Lesense,17). How do we stop this trend? How to create lifelong readers? (I would argue they should be called lifelong learners.) In any case, either description accomplishes the same results, a person that is constantly and continually developing knowledge and skills throughout their entire lifetime.

Everyone, young or old, has the potential of becoming a reader but in this final project the focus is how to share books with young adults to help create lifelong readers.  To do this you have to ask yourself about teens: What they like to read or even if they are reading? In class we spent a lot of time talking about possible teen reactions to reading.  Why they might not like to read? Are they just too busy to read? If they are reading, what they are choosing to read?  As an assignment, we were asked to create a teen reading survey.  Even though each class member surveyed only a small sampling of teens, some very interesting ideas were revealed, such as, if a teen’s group of friends likes to read it is more likely they will read too.  My survey revealed to me several beliefs I had held as fact which I had to reevaluate after my survey and this lead me to wanting to dig deeper into the subject of young adult literature.  The very best part of my survey was the answer to the question: Do you have someone in your family that loves to read?  The teens answered overwhelmingly YES. This is great news and I soon discovered in my Young Adult Literature class that this form of mentoring has the biggest impact in creating lifelong readers.  If you would like a peek into what else my survey revealed, just follow the teen survey results and final paper links to the right of this page.

Learn to Think.

In Jim Trelease’s quote, he says that the more you read, “the smarter you grow”.  This seems so reasonable…But then you realize teens read comic books, romance novels, magazines and you wonder: How does this make them smarter?

First, there is always the practice aspect of reading.  The more you read, the better reader you will become but there is more to it than that.  Pete Hautman, in his keynote speech at the Colorado Teen Literature Conference, says that teens want to know what the world is like; they want to find out what it is to be adult. He is right they are curious and reading can open up the whole world for a teen to experience with it all happening safely between the pages of a book.  Teens are able to try on new situations and feelings and even in a book with vampires and dating there are new points of view to shared.  Teens can learn about compassion, forgiveness, conflict resolution, compromise, and even experience strength of character.  Teens can find such a wide variety of thoughts and actions in any genre they read and they are all valid pieces to the understanding and feeling of empathy.  I have learned through all the young adult literature that I have read this semester that you don’t just find these elements in the classical cannon but also in graphic novels such as Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, in speculative fiction like The Lightening Thief by Rick Roirdon and even adventure novels like Peak by Roland Smith. No matter what genre of book a teen chooses to read, they are always taking a step toward learning something new. 

Continue to Share.

Once you read a book, thought about what you learned or liked about that book, it is time to share the book.  Reading is solitary but learning is not.  The most important part of my young adult literature class was the group discussions and the Socratic seminars.  Being surrounded by my classmate’s differing points of view, ideas, and experiences forced me to stretch my thinking.  Hearing their thoughts on a book or subject also helped me solidify my own thoughts and feelings about what I had read.  Even though many times my opinions might be echoed by others in our discussions, I frequently took the opportunity to stop and look again through their eyes.  I always learned something about the book we were discussing that I had not thought of because our group discussions were not only confined to what was between the pages of the books.  They were enhanced by the ideas brought forward through further research;  Podcasts of author interviews, websites, reader’s reviews and our own class discussion board always added a new dimension to the discussion.  I have so enjoyed the act of discussing and sharing ideas about the authors, stories and characters that I decided to add these to the summary pages I have created for each young adult book I read this semester.  I found many interesting discussion questions and different ways to think about every book I read.  I hope that something in my books’ Share sections will make you want to share what you learned with somebody too.

Please continue to read my final project, I think it was an outstanding semester and I am happy to share my thoughts about reading with you.

Xan Hammond

 

Reading Narrative

Telling the story of your reading life can be compared to being asked to name your all-time favorite book.  All these titles and places and situations come rushing at you and sorting through them all can feel a little overwhelming.  But it is necessary to think about what makes you a reader.  Recognizing that your individual journey to reading has taken so many different approaches and directions makes you realize that becoming a lifelong reader was not something that just happened.  It was a complicated, multilayered process that has built on itself over time, and everyone reaches this destination in a different way.  Taking that moment to reflect on your own journey helps you better understand how anyone can be inspired, at any moment, into becoming a lifelong reader.

My Reading Narrative: The Mystical Library

I can’t tell you which came first; my love of books or love of libraries.  It would seem logical, you love to read books and then you discover the library to find more books to read.  But this is not necessarily how I remember it happening. 

There were always books in our house while I was growing up.  I received books on special occasions and always written on the inside cover was “To Xan Louise with Love”.  I enjoyed all the books I received but I was never really driven to find more to read.  Through my elementary and junior high years (calling middle school, junior high, probably dates me) I didn’t read Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys or any other popular children books.  Even the first couple of years of high school I still was not all that interested in reading for pleasure.  It wasn’t until I was required to read Silas Marner by George Eliot in one of my High School English classes that books became a hope of being something more than an afterthought.  While everyone else was moaning and complaining about reading this book, I was secretly enjoying it.  It was also right around this time that I started volunteering in my High School library. 

You must understand my High School library was the coolest room in my school.  In a building made of cinder blocks with no outside windows in any classrooms, the library stood out as the brightest room in the building.  It was round! And had windows covering half of the room!  Unfortunately the windows did not look outside but instead into the lunch room/common area but it felt like you had a view of the whole school and everything that was happening within it.  My jobs in the library were to shelve returns and also help with reading shelves.   Those hours in the library were the best.  Though, I did not get a lot of work done; I was constantly being reprimanded for reading the books instead of putting them away.  Yet I still was not “in love” with reading.  I was interested enough to open up many of the books I was supposed to be shelving, reading a few pages here, a few pages there but none of those books made it home with me.  I don’t recall a single title.

Maybe because I was surrounded by books everyday in the library, I was beginning to enjoy reading more and more. How could you not?  Then an absolutely wonderful thing happened, my Mom became a member of the Library Board for our small town library.  Along with her budgeting responsibilities she received a set of keys to the library.  Keys to the library, this is the magic part--being allowed in the library after hours.  I could wax poetically for hours about my small town library with its tall arched windows and its twelve foot wooden built-in shelves filled with books to read and the piece de resistance, the Librarian’s desk.  It was this huge curved behemoth of a desk with a slide away covering hiding all the library cards and hundreds of wondrously secret nooks and crannies.  After one visit after hours with my Mom, I was hooked.

I lived at the library.  I would beg my Mom for the keys because I had finished all my books and needed more immediately.  There was more than one occasion where Pearl, the Librarian, would turn off the lights and begin to lock up before realizing I was hidden away in a corner quietly reading.

Those library keys were the final step to unlocking my love of reading.  From that point on I tried my darndest to know every book on those shelves.  I read everything from Jane Austen to Elizabeth Peters and beyond.  And once I got started I have never slowed down.  I know from experience that those that say “I have always loved to read” are not the only ones allowed to find their way to the joys of reading.  Everyone has a shot at this discovery; it is my hope that I can hand the keys to the next passionate reader.

Naked Reading by Teri S. Lesesne and more...

My best friend's mom told her after she had read a book I had recommended, “Now you need to read something good for you."

This is the message I received about my reading early in my life.  It never stopped me from reading what I wanted but it made me feel guilty about it.  Reading something “good for you” is a myth that has taken me many years to eliminate in my own life.  And what has helped me solidify my stance, for it is now as unmovable as the mountains, is the information I have received in my Young Adult Literature Class. 

Reading Teri S. Lesesne’s book, Naked Reading, put what I knew in my heart down in black and white.  All reading is good for you and “how much we read does matter” (Lesesne.3).  And she has the statistics to prove it, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, kids that read forty plus minutes of outside reading everyday achieve in the ninetieth percentile in achievement and gain 2.3 million words a year (Lesesne.3).  These kids were reading; not only from the classical cannon of literature but book and magazines chosen by them for whatever reason that made them sit down and read. 

This is great information and an exciting revelation, but really, not all books are good….some are bad, badly written, badly plotted, just plain bad.  There are badly written books in every genre but the difference is there are no bad genres.  In our classroom packet, the section on “Contemporary Realistic Fiction: From Tragedies to Romances”, the discussion is put forth about the importance of a young adult books being “realistic” to be of any value to the reader: “The general public seems to have an almost subconscious belief that children will model their lives after what they read” (Donelson.114).  Happy endings and fantasy elements being the main concerns for deciding if a negative value is placed on a book.  The reading points out that in romances the “happy ending [is] achieved only after the hero’s worth is proven through a crisis or an ordeal” and this suffering brings with it wisdom and knowledge (Donelson.136).  There is value in this description, though it is not wisdom that young adults are expected to take from any of the books they read, it is empathy.  Reading should give the young adult a view point or example of a situation that they, if having not experienced themselves, can for a moment share the experience of someone else’s life and choices.  This expectation when reading a book includes every genre, even fantasy: “Authors are incorporating multiple genres in their pieces as they lead readers directly from the consideration of serious everyday problems into magical realism” (Donelson.146).  The fantasy or science fiction novel may include the supernatural or a world that does not exist but it brings to the reader different choices and values that they are welcomed to consider.  This chapter of our packet was extremely helpful; it gave me the ability to look at every book in way that goes beyond a surface judgment to a deeper evaluation of a book’s importance to the young adult that may be reading it.  And I know I just labeled some books as “bad”.  I would like to clarify; young adults should read them all because reading is always good.

   Now that the myth about reading “good for you” books is completely out of the way and we recognize that reading anything and everything is “good” for us: How then to make reading important and a priority in the lives of young adults?   

            There are many parts to this goal but I believe the overriding factor, the one thing that holds all the bits and pieces together is ENTHUSIASM.  It is the glue that sticks kids and books together, without it all the reading activities, school libraries, book talks and lesson plans fall flat and fail.  Adults need to be mentors for each potential lifelong reader .  Lesesne had some wonderful ideas for sharing enthusiasm for books and we mirrored some of these ideas in our own class.  We gave book talks, had available to us choices in reading material, and we were given a chance to share our reading.  These are all powerful motivators to creating lifelong readers but it does not work without the contagious element of enthusiasm.  It has to start somewhere (Thanks Dr. Adams) and then it is guaranteed to be passed along.

            My favorite part of Naked Reading, was the last chapter about the “un-book report ideas”.  The idea that kids today have grown up surrounded by visual elements and how you can incorporate this knowledge into book related activities.  Lesesne gives the example of a chalk outline character study with words and images added to a person’s outline to represent that character’s thoughts and ideas.  Another interesting activity is asking a student to judge a book’s cover before they read it and go back to it after to revaluate if the cover was affective or not.  Along the same lines was the activity that we did in class, where we were asked to draw a picture to represent the major themes and emotions in a book we had just read.  This was a hard activity for those of us not artistically inclined but it was very useful to think of a book’s message as a whole and try to relate that to those who had not read it. (My group’s book was Esperanza Rising. Hope represented in art.) 

            I have read young adult literature for many years into my adult life and I considered myself fairly knowledgeable about that particular section of the library.  But this class introduced me to a number of young adult novels I have missed and in some cases, forced me to read some that I thought I would not enjoy.  I have appreciated all of novels I have read this semester from, The Rules of Survival, which I thought would be too heart wrenching to bear to The Absolutely True Dairy of a Part-Time Indian, which I thought was going to be too sarcastic to enjoy.  I am excited to have had my reading interests expanded and deepened and I look forward to enthusiastically doing the same for that next potential reading enthusiast: “Read!”

                 

Discussion Board

The discussion board was very useful in deepening the conversations we shared in class.  It also made available everyone’s thoughts and opinions, not just the insights of the few people that might have ended up in your group on a particular day.  My favorite discussion revolved around censorship and our textbook Naked Reading.  The discussions I chose to post here are from both the classroom investigation assignments and the Naked Reading textbook.  The information I discovered will be a nice resource for future classroom projects.

Webquest/Expeditionary Learning

When I went to the ASU site I have to admit I was a little disappointed. Several Webquests that I clicked on seemed more like on-line scavenger hunts. I was expecting a little more depth. The eduscapes.com site included the WebQuest attributes: set the stage, interesting task, info.resources, clear process, guidance and reflection. These ideas were a little closer to what I had been expecting. I then found a Greek Mythology WebQuest at http://www.uni.edu/schneidj/webquests/fall04/mythology/index.html.  This was much more detailed but still seemed like a bunch of English activities condensed into a Webquest. I did enjoy the idea at the end of the Greek Myth Webquest, the activity where the students take their research and create their own god/goddess for present day reasons.
The more I was read the more the WebQuest idea was beginning to looking like the idea behind Expeditionary Learning, only condensed into one lesson. My suspension was confirmed through two sites: http://www.readingonline.org/articles/art_index.aspHREF=teclehaimanot/index.html and http://eduscapes.com/ladders/themes/webquests.htm

The first site is an article written by Berhane Teclehaimanot and Annette Lamb. Their conclusion made the most sense to me, using literature as the focal point for meaningful activities that help connect books with outside ideas and relationships. A Webquest should be exploring the big ideas in a book. This particular title sounded interesting to me but the link was broken, Gangs throughout literature (big idea/conflict resolution).
The second site is associated with Annette Lamb and it confirmed my EL theory. She calls it project based and inquiry based learning but it is the EL educational model applied to a unit in a “regular” classroom. The catch phrases are “authentic” learning with “real world” scenarios and “deep knowledge” of a subject.
The most important aspect for me in a good Webquest experience is the transformation of ideas learned in the process: discussing, debating or demonstrating applications.
I learned so much and encourage everyone to read the eight strategies in the Teclehaimanot and Lamb article. Good Stuff!!

More websites:

A. Explore the following website that gives some history of webquests: http://eduscapes.com/sessions/travel/define.htm
B. Explore Arizona State’s English education webquest site: http://english.clas.asu.edu/enged-webquests

Podcasts

The podcast, Is the internet making us stupid?, struck me as a odd coincidence. It is a great question needing to be explored but it is also a take on a conversation I recently had after hearing an interview with Stephen Baker. Baker released a book last week about man vs. machine. His book is called Final Jeopardy and is about the IBM computer Watson taking on the two Jeopardy champions and who ultimately wins and why. I have tried to find a podcast of his interview but struck out. So to paraphrase his thoughts on the future of computers like Watson; machines are there to compile data but will never replace the human capacity for imagination and ideas. I found the whole conversation very fascinating.
So is the internet making us stupid? No way, it has given all of us the ability to dig deeper into things that interest and inspire us. And this takes me right to my podcast investigation. Hearing an author describe in their own words their books and ideas is empowering. I found two interviews where I learned something new.
One was with Laurie Halse Anderson where she describes how she did her research and why she thought it important to do it the way she did
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/book-review-podcast-childrens-books/
The second podcast I thoroughly enjoyed was from an author I had never heard of. The excitement in his voice and the way he described his writing so intrigued me that I now have his book on my “to read” list. Check it out: Boy Sherlock Holmes by Shane Peacock
http://www.cbc.ca/books/bookclub/2010/11/podcast-shane-peacock-on-his-award-winning-boy-sherlock-holmes-books-1.html
I will admit to some bad with the ability to google/podcasts….I can spend hours searching and listening to all the intriguing things I want to know.

Fan Fic

Author: Dr Jill Adams

Instructions
Read the article on Fan Fic at the following link: http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6673573.html. Visit the site www.fanfiction.net/book or another site for fan fiction (there are a few listed at the end of the article). Choose a young adult literature title included on the site and read at least two of the posts written by fans (mindful that they are not all written by teens and they are not typically moderated). Post either a response about the experience (making note of features on the site), posting the link to the hosting website and the link to the respective pieces or a start to your own fan-fiction piece.

Author: X. Hammond

Who knew!?
I admit, I had no idea. It is great to see that books can so inspire. I wonder if you ranked them by #of submissions it would be comparable to the rank of # sold. It is hard to miss the number of fanfics for Harry Potter on the fanfic.net site. 506,835! I couldn't read any though--I like my J.K. Rowling just how it is.
I chose to read some about my book talk book. Savvy by Ingrid Law.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6644138/1/Subtle_Savvy
This fanfic took the characters out of Law's book and made up a scene. I think it really carried with it the feeling of Law's book. It was short but wonderfully written and all the characters rang true.
The second took Law's savvy idea but built it around two new characters that weren't in the book. I didn't enjoy this one as much. It seemed to be missing the spirit and understanding of the first fanfic and Law's books.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6523940/1/My_Sticky_Little_Savvy
I still can't get over the number of entries. This goes way beyond, "it was a really good book, I really liked it". I'm impressed, these people are spending some serious time and energy to write about stories that inspire them.

Naked Reading by Teri S. Lesesne

Author: X. Hammond

"Sound track" as you read
I was very interested in the idea of the open ended response questions that Lesesne talked about on page 59. The idea that the students have a print out to help them jump start a reading response to the book they are reading. I really liked the question: Did this book have a "sound track" as you read it?
I had never associated a song with a book until I read Esperanza Rising. Throughout the whole book I could hear a song by Tish Hinojosa. She sings in both Spanish and English.
Has anyone else had the experience of a "sound track" while reading?

I really like this original way of looking at a book. Has anyone run across any other open ended questions like this that made you think a different way?

Author: Dr Jill Adams

Book or course soundtrack
Here is a past example:
Epic Tradition Soundtrack
The mechanical must-haves:
This is YOUR soundtrack to our course texts. You must pick at least 10 songs that tie in with your chosen text, but you may pick more if you wish. Along with the list of songs and artists is a justification paper that details why the songs were selected. As you brainstorm for this part of the project, it helps to list the songs you want to include in your paper and a few reasons as to why you want to use each particular song.
YOU MUST REPRESENT ALL TEXTS, although I would prefer that you focus more on the texts we spent more time on. Once you are finished with this brainstorming you may start writing your rough draft. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you go along:
ü Use at least TEN songs in this assignment—although you may use more.
ü Think of an overall CD title
Relevance to themes/issues/characters. The songs you choose must fit various parts of our readings. For instance, I don’t want most or all of the songs to come from any specific book or even section of the book. There is flexibility here, but it is imperative that you must pick songs that cover the entire course (even though you may emphasize certain parts over others).
ü Justify each song. For every song that you choose you must use supporting detail and evidence from the book. Explain the section for which you chose the song. Use quotations as specific evidence to justify your explanation as well as your song. The justification for your soundtrack should be approximately 2-3 pages. Just make sure that your explanation is THOROUGH.
ü Use quotations. Use quotations in your explanation of the song choices.
ü 2 songs per artist. You may only use two songs per artist.

Author: X. Hammond

Cool!
I love this! This is completely new to me. How did it go over in class? Were the kids excited?
Did the kids get to share in class one chosen song and why the picked it? I can't even image the eclectic mix that was turned in. Did you get many songs with no lyrics, explaining the idea or the feeling. How was the grading, did you look up to see if it really fit or did you go with their reasons as long as they were clearly voiced?
Sorry, lots of questions---
Right now in my head I'm trying to match music to the books I have recently read.

Author: Dr Jill Adams

They loved it...

We would listen to each of the albums in class during writing time during the rest of the semester...I also like that the assignment includes research components (infusing quotations,citing sources)

As I recall, most of the songs has lyrics (but not all). I could easily look up the song if I had questions. Students also had a sense of what was appropriate to hand it. I'll try and find one for The Odyssey if I can...I still listen to it at times