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Frustrated readers

Nothing But the TruthThe oth­er day I received a bunch of let­ters from a third grade class. Quite brief, these let­ters had the look, and word choice, of a class­room assign­ment. Indeed, they were word­ed almost exact­ly alike. The class had read my book Noth­ing but the Truth. Iron­i­cal­ly, the let­ters all not­ed that the part of the book they liked best was that moment when the pro­tag­o­nist express­es his hatred of the teacher. I am not sur­prised. Why third-graders should be asked to read this par­tic­u­lar book is beyond me. Their frus­tra­tion must have been high, indeed. True, it is a very pop­u­lar book, but usu­al­ly in mid­dle school and even high school where it engen­ders vig­or­ous debate, argu­ment, and many a mock tri­al, all which deal with the com­plex­i­ties of the sto­ry, a text that tries to strug­gle with the idea: what is truth?. Third graders, I think, can make lit­tle sense of the book. 

Noth­ing, I believe, will frus­trate young read­ers more than requir­ing them to read a book they are not ready to receive, enjoy, and under­stand. There are so many won­der­ful books avail­able, books for vir­tu­al­ly every read­ing age and skill level. 

Book choice need not have any­thing to do with cen­sor­ship. It can—and should have—everything to do with giv­ing a young read­er the joy of reading.

3 thoughts on “Frustrated readers”

  1. Oy.

    It may be a new teacher at one of those “aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly accel­er­at­ed” pri­vate schools, who thought it nifty not only to show the kids are read­ing a demand­ing book by a liv­ing author, but as part of the cur­ricu­lum they write to the author. I won­der if (or how) you responded…
    Smacks of teacher show­ing off.

    Reply
  2. Not so much show­ing off I think, but rather show­ing igno­rance. In this day and age of lay­ing off school librar­i­ans and clos­ing school libraries, there are few­er and few­er “experts” on the premis­es to assist teach­ers in choos­ing mean­ing­ful and appro­pri­ate lit­er­a­ture for class­room use. Teach­ers will often grab a book with a medal on it…it must be good, right?.…without even read­ing it before shar­ing it with stu­dents. A great dis­ser­vice to the stu­dents and the book!
    I have shared Noth­ing But the Truth with many young adult dis­cus­sion groups I have led since its pub­li­ca­tion and plan to do so again this sum­mer. It is a book rich with ideas and won­der­ful writ­ing and kids between 12 and 15 *always* respond to it with fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tions and debate.
    I hope those third graders dis­cov­er it again in a few years.

    Reply

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