Reading about reading

Teaching Pre K-8, Nov/Dec 1999 by Hurst, Carol Otis

Books that celebrate the pleasures of reading.

Lois Lowry's latest book, Zooman Sam (Houghton Mifflin, 1999, ISBN 0-395-97393-7), besides being yet another delightful romp with the Krupnik family, revolves around Sam's learning to read - a process he pretty much accomplishes on his own.

There are many books that involve reading as more than the process with which each book is read. It might be fun to put some of these "reading" books together and see what we can do with them.

Some books, like Zooman Sam involve the lean-dng process itself, showing a child teaching him or herself or another child. Other books deal with child and adult, but it isn't always the adult who teaches and the child who learns. (Still other books are about the actual books read. We'll deal with those later.) Gather some books that involve learning to read and, with the kids, begin to categorize them. Some books to start with:

Picture Books

Bogart, Jo Men. Jeremiah Learns to Read, (Orchard, 1999, ISBN 0-531-30190-7).

Bunting, Eve. The Wednesday Surprise (Clarion, 1989, ISBN 0-395-54776-8).

Duvoisin, Roger. Petunia (Knopf, 1962, ISBN 0-394-90865-1).

Johnston, Tony. Amber on the Montain (Dial, 1994, ISBN 0-8037-1219-7).

Lionni, Leo. The Alphabet Tree (Knopf, 1990, ISBN 0-679-80835-3).

Polacco, Patricia. Thank Yai4 Mr. Falker (Philomel, 1998, ISBN 0-399-23166-8).

Polacco, Patricia. The Bee Tree (Philomel, 1993, ISBN 0-399-21965-X).

Rahaman, Vashanti. Read for Me, Mama (Boyds Mills Press, 1997, ISBN 1-56397313-8).

Novels

Fleischman, Sid. The Whipping Boy (Greenwillow, 1986, ISBN 0-688-)6216-4).

Lowry, Lois. Zooman Sam (Houghton Mifflin, 1999, ISBN 0-395-97393-7).

Paulsen, Gary. Nightjohn (Laurel Leaf, 1995, ISBN 0-440-21936-1).

Charting always works for me to organize and categorize information. I'd set up one like this after reading Zoom,an Sam aloud to any group from first grade up.

Mastering the art. Sam uses phonetic cues to master the art of reading. Conduct a poll among adults and children to see how different people learned to read. Collect anecdotes of people discovering reading on their own and learning it in school.

Interview kindergarten and first grade teachers in your own and other schools to see how they go about helping children learn to read. Have they always taught reading that way? Talk to people who teach adults to read. Do they use the same techniques?

Together, try to learn to read simple material in a language that doesn't use our alphabet. Make illustrations labeled with words from other languages or alphabets.

Let's move on to books which celebrate books and reading beyond the learning stage. Here's the beginning of such a list:

Picture Books

Kimmel, Eric. I Took My Frog to the Library(Vildng, 1990, ISBN 0-670-82418-6).

McPhail, David. Edward and the Pirates (Little, Brown, 1997, ISBN 0-316-563447).

McPhail, David. Fix-It (Dutton, 1984, ISBN 0-52544093-3).

Thompson, Cohn. How to Live Forever (Knopf, 1996, ISBN 0-679-87898-X).

Williams, Suzanne. Library Lil (Dial, 1997, ISBN 0-8037-1698-2).

Winch, John. The Old Woman Mw Loved to Read (Holiday House, 1996, ISBN 08234-12814).

Novels

Avi. Who Stole the Wizard of Oz? (Knopf, 1981, ISBN 0-394-84992-2).

Lasky, Kathryn. Memoirs of a Bookbat (Harcourt Brace, 1994, ISBN 0-15215727-1).

Miles, Betty. Maudie & Me & the Dirty Book (Avon, 1981, ISBN 0380-55541-7).

Spinelli Jerry The L?bmr Card (Scholastic, 1997, ISBN 0,59046731A).

Information and inspiration. People in these books are actively involved in getting information and inspiration from books. Start a list of highly recommended reading from kids in each grade. Publish their reviews in a newspaper, web page or some other means.

Make a mural labeled "Don't Miss Says..." on which recommended titles are displayed with the name of the person endorsing them. Start a bulletin board entitled "One Good Book Leads to Another" on which children place a card bearing the citings of a book and connect it with yarn to another book which is related to it in some way - the same author, plot, characters, etc.

Have children pair off and read a picture book together, first looking only at the illustrations, then only at the text. Which was most informative? Which was most interesting?

Have a Read-In. Invite readers of all ages to come together to spend an evening at school, reading. Allow plenty of time afterward for conversations about their reading. Set up one part of the cafeteria as a readaloud area in which one person reads aloud as the others eat lunch.

Contact organizations that encourage reading, such as Reading Is Fundamental. Learn what they do and what you can do to help. Start a birthday campaign for library books in which children celebrate their birthdays by donating a book they like to the library. Be sure that a book plate is placed in each donated book naming the donor and the occasion.

Carol Otis Hurst, a former librarian, is a master storyteller, a children's literature consultant and a Teaching Editor of Teaching K-8. E-mail: Carol Hurst@aol.com; www.CarolHurst.com