November Blogging Challenge: A book review

Day 21

Name a book you are thankful to have read and how it has inspired you to be better at what you do.

ISBN 1571103767

As a life-long reader, I have read any number of great books.  As a secondary English teacher, I enjoy teaching my students about the classics, having them read a plethora of various great literature, and trying to build within them a love of reading.

The one thing I don't know how to do, though, is teach my students how to read.  Secondary teachers are not taught how to teach a person to read. It was frustrating for me because I often come across students who are not reading at grade level or who have some gaps in their reading process.  So I began looking for some help.  I found it in this Cris Tovani book: Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?

It includes great strategies the secondary teacher can use right away with any kind of content to help her students to become better readers.  This book doesn't teach me how to teach reading from scratch, but it can--and does--help me to help my students where they are right now in order to help them move forward.  Our school used this book as a book study several years ago to help all of us teachers find ways to help our students.

Missouri Read-In Day (March 8th)

       It doesn't shock anyone who knows me that I'm an English teacher because they know I love books and reading.  I read through the entire fiction section in the library in high school.  I mean it; I started at "A" and read until I got to "Z."  And then I had to start over to catch up on the new books for the authors whose last names I'd already read.
       I have had any number of libraries of my own, too.  I don't want to start calculating how much money I've spent on books over the years.  I have stacks of books in my house I haven't even gotten to yet.  I have boxes of books still in my parents' attic (don't tell them; I don't have room in my house).  I have books everywhere: there isn't a room in my place that doesn't have books in it.
       Where did it start, though, this love of reading?  The love of the turn of a phrase?  The love of falling into a world of someone's creation and experiencing the joys and sorrows and celebrations and tragedies of those characters?  If I look back far enough, it was because of the books I loved as a child. One of my first favorite books was Little Cottontail by Carl Memling; a Little Golden Book about a baby bunny who wanted to grow up too fast.  "Not yet, Little Cottontail," the mother crooned...and those words still come to me when I am telling a student to be patient.  My favorite picture of me is a Christmas morning picture where I have unwrapped (you guessed it!) a book: T'was the Night Before Christmas by Clement C Moore.
       I remember being so excited in elementary school when, because I was already reading chapter books stage when the others in my class were still learning how to read, I was allowed to check out books from the "older kids' section" in the library.  I devoured the Black Beauty by Anna Sewell, and then The Black Stallion book series by Walter Farley (I was into horses then).  I moved on from horses to dogs and other animal stories.  The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder I read over and over again until I had to tape the covers.  Then I moved to fantasy.  I still remember fondly a book about a headstrong black-haired fairy named Bluebell.  I wish I remembered the name of that book; I don't, but that character has stayed with me for well over 30 years.  I still wish I had long dark hair like the main character did.
       When my sister and I were in the upper elementary, my dad read The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein to us as a bedtime story.  He even did the voices!  My, what a world was opened to me then!  I couldn't wait until I could read the whole series on my own.  It's still one of my favorite series to read.  I get something new each time.  Then, when I was a pre-teen, Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis overtook my imagination. I still own most of the first set my sister bought me for a Christmas present; I've had to replace a couple of the books in the series because students have "borrowed" them forever.
       I've already mentioned how I read all the fiction books in the school library, but I also made a nuisance of myself at the public library because during the summer (before I was old enough to get a job other than babysitting) I'd go through their shelves and borrow the maximum number of books I could--six--and then be back the next day to turn those in and check out new ones.  I was reading sweet romances --none of those Harlequin novels for me (yet)--about nurses who fell in love with their patients or the doctors they worked for.
       I then got into high school and college and met literary geniuses like Emerson and Wordsworth and Shakespeare and fell in love all over again with reading.  I couldn't get enough of those words "that take us Lands away" ("There is no frigate like a book" by Emily Dickinson) as I read the stores, poems, plays, and more that my own English teachers introduced to me.  It is little wonder that I love reading and sharing with my own students the literature that I hold dear.
       Each book (whether it be the actual book or on some e-reading device) is a ticket into a world away from our own.  I look at those books as portals that will wing me away to a ball in Regency England or to a futuristic world on Venus or back to ancient Rome or to linger on a hillside covered with golden daffodils.
       So, on this Missouri Read-In Day I encourage everyone to grab a book or magazine or anything that strikes your fancy: begin reading and enjoy the journey!