Literature-Based Instruction for Middle School Readers: Harry Potter and More

ALAN Review, Spring 2003 by Carroll, Pamela Sissi, Gregg, Gail P

The need to fill classrooms with books that kids can and will read is particularly acute in the schools that serve low-income neighborhoods. Allington cites Smith, Constantino, and Krashen's study of the print environments for children in families in Beverly Hills (a middle to high-income area), Compton (a low-income area) and Watts (a very low-income area). The study reveals that the poorer the child, the less likely he or she is to have access to books at home and even at school: children in middle or high income families had access to approximately 199 books at home and 392 books in a classroom library. Students in low-income families had only 2.6 books at home and 54 to choose from in the classroom library. Students in the poorest families had, on average, less than one-half of a single book available at home, and fewer than 50 in classroom libraries (Smith, Constantino, and Krashen, 1997, in Allington, p. 57). We propose that teachers gather money and resources from county and statewide grants, the school's Parent Teacher Organizations, civic partners, and any available resources and stock their classroom libraries with the kinds of books adolescent readers have identified as the ones they not only can read, but also ones that they will read. Community standards may dictate some restrictions, but readers' interests should be a paramount consideration when teachers and media specialists make choices about the books that fill classroom and school library shelves.

Beers makes a practical, low-tech suggestion for helping students connect with books that are likely to appeal: Stock a "Good Books" box in middle school classrooms. To create a "Good Books Box," the teacher can use the classroom library, or work with the school media specialist, to choose several popular books that are deposited in a box. Members of the class make their selections from the books in the box. This strategy works, according to Beers, because it narrows the potentially overwhelming set of choices that readers face when they search for a title in the media center. As she reminds us, "Until you are comfortable with authors, genres, and interests, it's hard to find a good book" (295).

Through the survey, adolescent readers have shown us that they want their teachers to become acquainted with popular contemporary and award-winning authors and to bring them into classrooms, where they can read like readers do outside of the classroom: without interference. In addition to the others authors we have named above, we recommend these from among our list of students' favorites: Chris Crutcher, John H. Ritter, M.E. Kerr, Christopher Paul Curtis, Lois Lowry, Chris Lynch, Carol Lynch Williams, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Sharon Creech, Virginia Euwer Woolfe, Will Hobbs, David Lubar, James Howe, Jack Gantos, T.A. Barron, Anne C. LeMeiux, Walter Dean Myers, and Sue Ellen Bridgers. Writers and their books, if unfamiliar to teachers, are simply unlikely to make their way into reading and literature curricula. In order to serve our middle school students well, teachers must continually build our knowledge of those writers and books.