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Getting Lost In The Classics

Over the past few days I’ve found that one thing just leads to another when it comes to the classics. One book I’ve been reading, Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, led me to reconsider a reread of some of the books I read many years ago, in the hope that I’d find something different, and maybe something more, than I did when I was twelve, or sixteen. Quite frankly, I thought maybe I needed the break. Some of the characters and situations I’ve been encountering in genre fiction recently have been really annoying, and it’s hard to enjoy a book when you want to shake the characters, or, alternatively, the author. I remembered loving Dickens, so I found myself a copy of Oliver Twist (which is free on Kindle, another benefit of many of the classics). And even with background knowledge of Dickens, I might very well have been stopped by his style and vocabulary in the first few pages if I hadn’t been determined to read it. I might add that Dickens’ dislike of the British workhouse system and treatment of the poor results in such heavy-handed sarcasm that anyone who didn’t understand what he was trying to do would be completely baffled. So I get it. It can require guidance to read one of these books, and persistence. It’s not necessarily easy to get into the flow. When Kelly Gallagher writes about teaching reading in a critical sense in his book Readicide, this is what he’s talking about. Some books are worth the effort. You CAN get into the story, but you need help to get through it.

What reading the classics SHOULDN’T mean is that they’re taught in isolation from context, or taught as a means to an end. As I was looking through my library’s catalog to see if it happened to own Tales of Mystery and Imagination, the Poe book with the terrifying illustrations that I wrote about previously, I discovered that while they didn’t own that particular collection, they did own the Kaplan SAT version. WHAT? I guess it’s one way to learn vocabulary, but what a turnoff.  You don’t need Poe to learn vocabulary. And that’s not the reason to read him.

There are so many versions of Poe’s work, including student editions like this one, which unobtrusively provides help with words kids might not know, with a focus on the STORIES, graphic novels like this one, and awesomely illustrated ones like this, all of which give their readers compelling reasons to master Poe’s language and style without getting beaten over the head with the test practice opportunities his work may provide. You can memorize words and their definitions all day long if you want but you might as well just memorize the dictionary in that case- for understanding (which you’ll need for those analogy questions) and for enjoyment, wide and deep reading are what’s necessary.

You might need a push and a little guidance from someone else to get going, but promoting Poe as vocabulary practice for the SAT? That’s not how they’ll grab you. Once you get past the first words and start to feel the terror in the beating of your heart, you won’t rest in peace until the tale is done.

Posted on June 3, 2012 by , Reply

Summer Reading Is Killing Me!

As the end of school nears (well, here it’s actually over) stories about summer reading loss and editorials in favor of a year round calendar start to make an appearance.  Politics aside, research really does show that kids who don’t read over summer break actually backslide in their reading ability and skills. Enter the required summer reading list.

Here are a couple of books that appear on the the local high school’s reading list for kids going into their sophomore year of high school.

  • Night by Elie Wiesel
  • How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
  • I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier

Are these really books teens should read on their own? I’m not saying that tenth graders are unable to read the words, but the content is pretty disturbing. To be fair, the list also includes Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and students are required to read only one of the books on the list (there are about 20), while they can choose the other. But still. Kelly Gallagher, author of Readicide, discusses the problem of assigning a book like Night in his book- it’s a powerful book, but not a book I’d call recreational reading. I might be wrong, but I don’t think it’s likely to inspire recreational reading, either.

But there ARE a lot of great resources for encouraging summer reading. Your local library probably has a summer reading program (ours does- in fact, it has separate programs for kids, YA’s and adults), and if you or your kids aren’t intrinsically motivated to pick up a book and read, go sign up and you’ll usually get prizes for reading- free food, books, and so on. Generally the library has lists of books for different age ranges that can get you started.Don’t be scared to ask the librarian (a surprising number of people are).

There are also some fun websites with reading recommendations for kids and teens. I’ll just mention a few.Believe me, there are many!

  • Jon Scieszka, author of many awesome books for kids, has a great program called Guys Read, aimed at, well, getting guys to read. I love the categories of books on the site! You can’t not, with topics like “At least one explosion” and “Mysterious Occurences” stored in their vault. As a bonus, right on the home page, if you scroll down and look under “Let’s Get To The Books”, there is a list of “scary stories”. Guys Read actually promotes scary stories for kids! Go there, check it out, and then check some of those books out of your library.
  • James Patterson also sponsors a website intended to promote reading called ReadKiddoRead. While some of the booklists are outdated, the current reviews are great, and the site is geared toward creating an online community supportive of getting all kinds of kids reading. I’d say this one is aimed much more at parents and educators than Guys Read is, but it’s another resource with suggestions for all kinds of reads.
  • Finally, some good lists for summer reading choices for teens can be found through YALSA, the American Library Association’s division for young adult library services, particularly their “Best of the Best”.

Oh my gosh, it’s a flood of books! Kelly Gallagher would be proud. Pick a couple and read them on your own, or together with your kids, your family, your friends…  Just do it.  And have a great summer.

Posted on June 7, 2011 by , Reply

The H-Word.

Horror fiction.

There. I said it.

There IS such a thing as horror fiction. There’s actually enough of it to constitute a genre.

That would be the HORROR GENRE. Not science fiction, not fantasy, not “thrillers”, urban fantasy, or paranormal romance. Nothing wrong with those. There are a lot of fantastic crossover titles, and there is a reason that we review them.

But, hello? The horror genre exists. It’s here. And I’m tired of not reading about it when it is completely discounted, or when books that clearly fall into the category of horror fiction are described as everything else.

Let’s see… In the past month here’s what I found (or didn’t find).

First, in the field of research on literacy, reading engagement, and advocacy…

1.) I was rereading Stephen Krashen’s The Power of Reading. I admire Krashen and his research has been and is incredibly important because it’s about engaging and creating readers, and it’s backed by data. Krashen was an early advocate of (ahem) “light reading” for kids. In the book, he mentions a study he co-authored in 2000. In this particular study (not the only study he’s done, this is just an example) Krashen found that 53% of 124 fourth grade students remembered the first book to make a major impact on them (in his words, a “home run book”). That’s about 65 kids. Of these, SIXTEEN were “scary books”. In other words, nearly a quarter of kids who remembered their “home run book” remembered a “scary book”. And that’s just one study.

Krashen discussed the value of teen romances and strongly advocated the use of comics and graphic novels to engage kids and teens in reading. But in all his discussion of “light reading” he never uses the H-word, and when he does mention scary stories, he is dismissive of the books of R.L. Stine, who was hugely popular at the time the first edition was published. That is, he dismissed the valued reading material of nearly 25% of the kids (fifteen of the sixteen books mentioned were R.L. Stine books). Since Krashen wrote this book, graphic novels have become relatively accepted as legitimate reading material, and there’s been a lot written about their value. Scary stories? Horror fiction? Not so much.

2.) Let’s fast-forward a bit to a more recent book, Readicide, by Kelly Gallagher. Gallagher addresses the problems inherent in giving kids the opportunity to get “lost in a book” when teachers and schools are overwhelmed with the pressure to succeed on standardized tests. He’s a passionate advocate and it’s an important book.

And then we get to the book list at the end. “101 Books My Reluctant Readers Love To Read”. A list of coming of age stories, sports stories, nonfiction and memoirs, poetry, mystery, and (surprise!) graphic novels. And… the extremely awkwardly named category award goes to… “Fantasy/Science Fiction/Vampire”!

Yep. Christopher Pike is on that list. He wrote Point Horror titles. Is it THAT HARD to say “horror”? Which of those categories does World War Z fall into, Kelly? I’m pretty sure most readers of zombie fiction would be surprised to find themselves described as readers of “Fantasy/Science Fiction/Vampire”. Heck, do any of your students call themselves readers of “Fantasy/Science Fiction/Vampire”?

And these are the advocates for reluctant readers and reading choice in schools, in libraries, and at home. I have tremendous respect for the work they do- it informs my whole way of looking at the world. I am so disappointed that horror fiction is so far beneath the radar that they don’t notice what is right in front of them.

But there’s more. It will have to wait though, because it’s time for dinner.

Posted on May 28, 2011 by , Reply