“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
