Tunnell, Michael O. and James S. Jacobs. Children's Literature Briefly. 4e. Upper Saddle River NJ: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall, 2008.
Having just read chapters 1-5 in our textbook I can really identify with one section in paticular. The section titled "Why Do So Few People Read" really rang true with me. I began thinking back and remember loving to read when I was little. My parents were always taking my brother and I to the bookstore to buy new books. As I got into junior high and especially high school, that feeling eventually wore off. "Despite having completed the required reading that marks the path to a diploma, a suprising number of supposedly educated graduates have rarely, if ever, known the sustaining thrill of reading a book...". It is true for a large number of people that as you get older you began to do only the required reading (if that), and it stops there. I know I didn't read for enjoyment or the thrill of reading a good book, I read because I had to get a grade for the assignment. I am hoping that as I continue to read, not only for this class, but on my own I will get that excitement back I had when I was little!
1 comment:
Lacee: it's an amazing thing how so many of us go through the same thing, basically. And worse, that so many of us, when we get in front of our own students, perpetuate this literacy crime: to make of reading a chore, a task, nothing more than an assignment for a grade, instead of making of it, what Louise Rosenblatt calls an "event," something magical. I think we can do this by balancing the reading with in-class assignments and read-alouds and SSRs.
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