Priming the Pump for Summer Reading

 “Mrs. Essenburg, are those new books?” Two 6th grade girls accosted me eagerly as I walked into the classroom Friday morning. On top of my stack were several new books. One was Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper, which I’d just finished the previous night and had helped me know a child with cerebral palsy as I never had before. There were 2 new arrivals I’d already read: Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai and Genius: The Game by Leopold Gout, and the old classic Black Beauty I’d snagged from the school library for our resident horse lover who hadn't heard of it.

The 2 girls looked over the books. (“Is this a poem?” for Thanhha Lai’s verse novel about fleeing Vietnam.) Then finally retreated to their seats with a plea, “Can I read this when I’m done with the book I’m reading?” I promised them that even if they didn’t finish the book they are reading, they can take an extra one or two—whatever my nascent classroom library will bear—home for the 6-week summer break. (One is working on Gary Schmidt’s Pay Attention, Carter Jones. My favorite line is the one the butler always sends the children off to school with: “Remember who you are, and make good decisions.” The other has both Prince Caspian and The Horse and His Boy—because after she’d finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, she started Prince Caspian, and then one day she forgot it, needed another for the 10 minutes of reading at the beginning of class, and ended up not wanting to give either back.)

I delivered Genius to the student who ripped through New Kid but has been moving more slowly through Samurai Shortstop. He loves computers, though, so maybe this one about 3 global adolescent digital natives—a Latino computer programmer, a Chinese human rights blogger, and an African engineer—teaming up to overcome evil will engage him a little above his reading level. By the end of the class he gives me the nod that he’ll keep the book. And when I checked in with the one reading Black Beauty she marveled, “I’ve never read a book with a horse as the first-person narrator before!” (Terms we’d just been learning to use talking about the short stories we’ve been reading together—“Yes, Ma’am” by Langston Hughs and “Funeral” by Ralph Fletcher.)

Why am I so excited about students reading? I haven’t committed as heavily to independent reading before (10 minutes the majority of class periods in the 3 weeks we’ve been meeting in person after distance learning due to Covid-19). But we’re heading into our final week of class before we finally hit summer break here in Japan. And if most of them have had a couple of engaging experiences before then, they’ll keep reading through that time. 

Why is it important for them to keep developing as readers? In addition to all the academic advantages it confers (vocabulary knowledge, writing prowess), it sets them up for a lifetime of growing in their knowledge of the world and their empathy for others. That’s knowledge of the amazing, interconnected, broken world God has entrusted to us, and empathy for our fellow image bearers we’re obligated to love.

That’s what it does for me as a reader. So currently I’m reading the first book in the Ranger’s Apprentice series because it might hook a boy on reading, and I’m reading The New Jim Crow and Me and White Supremacy to keep learning about the racial injustice happening in my home country and around the world, and even in me.

I'm hoping to send my students off to summer vacation next Friday with some books to read that will keep them from summer slide, but also keep them engaged with God’s world and with their neighbors’ lives in ways that will broaden their minds, deepen their hearts, and give them a desire to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.