{"id":314,"date":"2011-06-07T09:42:12","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T13:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/?p=314"},"modified":"2011-06-07T09:46:49","modified_gmt":"2011-06-07T13:46:49","slug":"summer-reading-is-killing-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/summer-reading-is-killing-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Reading Is Killing Me!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the end of school nears (well, here it&#8217;s actually over) stories about summer reading loss and editorials in favor of a year round calendar start to make an appearance.\u00a0 Politics aside, research really does show that kids who don&#8217;t read over summer break actually backslide in their reading ability and skills. Enter the required summer reading list.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a couple of books that appear on the the local high school&#8217;s reading list for kids going into their sophomore year of high school.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Night<\/em> by Elie Wiesel<\/li>\n<li><em>How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents<\/em> by Julia Alvarez<\/li>\n<li><em>I Am The Cheese<\/em> by Robert Cormier<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Are these really books teens should read on their own? I&#8217;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 <em>Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince<\/em>, 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 <em>Readicide<\/em>, discusses the problem of assigning a book like <em>Night<\/em> in his book- it&#8217;s a powerful book, but not a book I&#8217;d call recreational reading. I might be wrong, but I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s likely to inspire recreational reading, either.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s and adults), and if you or your kids aren&#8217;t intrinsically motivated to pick up a book and read, go sign up and you&#8217;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&#8217;t be scared to ask the librarian (a surprising number of people are).<\/p>\n<p>There are also some fun websites with reading recommendations for kids and teens. I&#8217;ll just mention a few.Believe me, there are many!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jon Scieszka, author of many awesome books for kids, has a great program called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guysread.com\/\">Guys Read<\/a>, aimed at, well, getting guys to read. I love the categories of books on the site! You can&#8217;t not, with topics like &#8220;At least one explosion&#8221; and &#8220;Mysterious Occurences&#8221; stored in their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guysread.com\/books\/\">vault<\/a>. As a bonus, right on the home page, if you scroll down and look under &#8220;Let&#8217;s Get To The Books&#8221;, there is a list of &#8220;scary stories&#8221;. Guys Read actually promotes scary stories for kids! Go there, check it out, and then check some of those books out of your library.<\/li>\n<li>James Patterson also sponsors a website intended to promote reading called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.readkiddoread.com\/home#\">ReadKiddoRead<\/a>. 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&#8217;d say this one is aimed much more at parents and educators than Guys Read is, but it&#8217;s another resource with suggestions for all kinds of reads.<\/li>\n<li>Finally, some good lists for summer reading choices for teens can be found through <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ala.org\/ala\/mgrps\/divs\/yalsa\/booklistsawards\/booklistsbook.cfm\">YALSA<\/a>, the American Library Association&#8217;s division for young adult library services, particularly their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ala.org\/ala\/mgrps\/divs\/yalsa\/booklistsawards\/best\/bob11.cfm\">&#8220;Best of the Best&#8221;<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Oh my gosh, it&#8217;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&#8230;\u00a0 Just do it.\u00a0 And have a great summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the end of school nears (well, here it&#8217;s actually over) stories about summer reading loss and editorials in favor of a year round calendar start to make an appearance.\u00a0 Politics aside, research really does show that kids who don&#8217;t read over summer break actually backslide in their reading ability and skills. Enter the required<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/summer-reading-is-killing-me\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[87,2581,261,269,266,262,264,271,270,263,190,6,88,260,189,272,259,265,131,258,267,37,268,41,273],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-library-association","tag-children","tag-elie-wiesel","tag-guys-read","tag-harry-potter-and-the-half-blood-prince","tag-how-the-garcia-girls-lost-their-accents","tag-i-am-the-cheese","tag-james-patterson","tag-jon-scieszka","tag-julia-alvarez","tag-kelly-gallagher","tag-libraries","tag-library","tag-night","tag-readicide","tag-readkiddoread","tag-required-summer-reading","tag-robert-cormier","tag-scary-stories","tag-summer-reading-loss","tag-summer-reading-programs","tag-teens","tag-ya","tag-ya-fiction","tag-yalsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monsterlibrarian.com\/TheCirculationDesk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}