Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers - Softcover

Kittle, Penny

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0325042950 ISBN 13: 9780325042954

Publisher: HEINEMANN, 2012

Synopsis

"I believe each of my students must craft an individual reading life of challenge, whim, curiosity, and hunger, and I've discovered that it is not too late in high school to lead a non-reader to reading. It's never too late."-Penny Kittle

Penny Kittle wants us to face the hard truths every English teacher fears: too many kids don't read the assigned texts, and some even manage to slip by without having ever read a single book by the time they graduate. As middle and high school reading declines, college professors lament students' inability to comprehend and analyze complex texts, while the rest of us wonder: what do we lose as a society when so many of our high school graduates have no interest in reading anything?

In Book Love Penny takes student apathy head on, first by recognizing why students don't read and then showing us that when we give kids books that are right for them, along with time to read and regular response to their thinking, we can create a pathway to satisfying reading that leads to more challenging literature and ultimately, a love of reading.

With a clear eye on the reality of today's classrooms, Penny provides practical strategies and advice on:

• increasing volume, capacity, and complexity over time
• creating a balance of independent reading, text study, and novel study
• helping students deepen their thinking through writing about reading
• building a classroom library with themes that matter to 21st century kids.

Book Love is a call to arms for putting every single kid, no exceptions allowed, on a personal reading journey. But much more than that, it's a powerful reminder of why we became English teachers in the first place: our passion for books. Books matter. Stories heal. The right book in the hands of a kid can change a life forever. We can't wait for anyone else to teach our students a love of books-it's up to us and the time is now. If not you, who?

For information about the Book Love Foundation, which provides classroom libraries to deserving teachers and schools, visit booklovefoundation.org.

About this title

About the Author

Penny Kittle teaches freshman composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years, 21 of those spent at Kennett High School in North Conway. She is the co-author of 180 Days with Kelly Gallagher, and is the author of Book Love, and Write Beside Them, which won the James Britton award. She also co-authored two books with her mentor, Don Graves, and co-edited (with Tom Newkirk) a collection of Graves' work, Children Want to Write. She is the president of the Book Love Foundation and was given the Exemplary Leader Award from NCTE's Conference on English Leadership. In the summer Penny teaches graduate students at the University of New Hampshire Literacy Institutes. Throughout the year, she travels across the U.S. and Canada (and once in awhile quite a bit farther) speaking to teachers about empowering students through independence in literacy. She believes in curiosity, engagement, and deep thinking in schools for both students and their teachers. Penny stands on the shoulders of her mentors, the Dons (Murray & Graves), and the Toms (Newkirk & Romano), in her belief that intentional teaching in a reading and writing workshop brings the greatest student investment and learning in a classroom. Learn more about Penny Kittle on her websites, pennykittle.net and booklovefoundation.org, or follow her on twitter. Penny's students make a statement about how student choice in reading has affected them.

Review

The Beatles might have thought that all you need is love, but lucky for teachers, Penny Kittle knows better. She knows that when you want to create lifetime readers, you not only need to fill the room with books, not only need to show your own passion about books, but need to help kids develop lifetime reading habits. In this book, Penny shows all of us how to help kids develop those habits as she shares her masterful teaching strategies that turn aliterate students into kids who not only can read, but want to read. --Kylene Beers, author of When Kids Can't Read/What Teachers Can Do

Book Love is nothing short of miraculous. Penny Kittle knows the developmental stage of adolescence like she invented it. This book alone could make me a good teacher. It's detailed, so incredibly readable and I swear, filled with simple miracles. --Chris Crutcher, author of Period 8

Book Love focuses on a critical question all but forgotten in this age of standards and testing: What can we, as teachers, do to help our students develop a love for reading? Book Love is a breath of fresh air. It challenges many damaging practices that have become norms in our nation s classrooms, offering insightful, practical ways for teachers to begin instilling a love of reading in our students and showing teachers and administrators how to build reading lives that last. Kittle is right we cannot wait for someone else to teach our students to love reading. It starts with us, and I am hopeful that for many teachers it will start with this book. --Kelly Gallagher, author of Readicide

Worried the teenagers you teach will never pick up a book on their own? Let Penny Kittle show you how to kindle a passion for reading with authentic texts and techniques aimed at students' most vulnerable spot their hearts. --Carol Jago, author of With Rigor for All

Penny Kittle invites us into her high school classroom where many of her students fall in love with reading for the first time. Through reading research, her practical classroom rituals, and the powerful words of her students as they describe years spent not reading, Penny builds an undeniable case for pleasure reading in the high school English classroom as a path to reading competence, stamina, and engagement. --Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer


Worried the teenagers you teach will never pick up a book on their own? Let Penny Kittle show you how to kindle a passion for reading with authentic texts and techniques aimed at students' most vulnerable spot their hearts. --Carol Jago, author of With Rigor for All

Penny Kittle invites us into her high school classroom where many of her students fall in love with reading for the first time. Through reading research, her practical classroom rituals, and the powerful words of her students as they describe years spent not reading, Penny builds an undeniable case for pleasure reading in the high school English classroom as a path to reading competence, stamina, and engagement. --Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer

Edition details

• Publisher: HEINEMANN
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0325042950
• ISBN 13: 9780325042954
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192