For a Lifetime of Learning, Introduce Children to Books They Love

Why do I get excited about kids catching fire for reading? It isn’t that I think every adult needs to be a serial novel devourer. (Though it wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it?)

It’s that I want kids to amass so much vocabulary, to become so familiar with such an array of syntax, to build so much background knowledge, that text becomes their native habitat. That it becomes like breathing—second nature. That what was an impermeable or semipermeable membrane between them and another person’s recorded thought or experience or discovery dissolves. It takes no effort—the recorded thought, experience, discovery of others is immediately accessible. All that is required to learn about the world and our neighbors in it is finding something to read. 

This week a Facebook memory came up from when I taught high school honors and AP English. I had explained a jigsaw activity. I provided 4 articles on a topic. Students were to pick the article that most interested them, read it for homework, and the next day they would meet first with students who had read the same article to clarify their understanding of it. Then we would mix groups, so new groups would have at least one person who could summarize each article for the rest of the group, and they could build a fuller understanding of the topic together.

One 10th grader asked, “Is it okay if I read all 4 articles?” That’s what people do for whom reading is as effortless as breathing, and who have also discovered that it fills a mental craving—curiosity—that is almost as compelling as the body’s need for oxygen.

Those were the students who would come to class having done extra research, expanding my knowledge about for-profit prisons or the musical Hamilton. Those are people who have tools not only to succeed in high school and college, but also to keep growing and learning as they are confronted with the challenges life throws at us. (I am currently reading Departing in Peace: Biblical Decision-Making at the End of Life with my husband, Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age with my daughter, The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox with some elementary EFL teachers, Becoming a Globally Competent Teacher with my secondary EFL department colleagues, While I Was Away to consider it for a grade 6/7 unit on identity, and One Crazy Summer just for fun.)

But I didn’t really put it all together until I moved back to middle school last year, and then to 4th and 5th grade this year. How does a 4th grader amass the amount of vocabulary, the syntax sophistication, and the background knowledge that will set him or her up to be that 10th grader, that adult, who naturally turns to text to satisfy curiosity, solve problems, and learn? Reading. Reading books that are so compelling or fun or interesting that the minutes slip by while the child forgets that her brain is examining new words, untangling new sentence structures, and building new knowledge. For my 4th graders that tends to be Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Sideways Stories from Wayside School. No problem. For my 6th graders it has become Hatchet or Refugee or The Ranger's Apprentice series.

Recently a 7th grader came into class waving the copy of I Am Malala she was reading. “Mrs. Essenburg! This connects with some of the stuff I was researching on my own last summer!” This student had come into 6th grade saying she wanted to read Harry Potter, but it was too hard. She then spent most of the year reading the Percy Jackson series. Now she’s reading Malala. And researching women’s education on her own. During independent reading time, I stopped by her desk for a conference and mentioned the TED Talk "Our Century’s Greatest Injustice" by Sheryl WuDunn. The next day she had a question about it.

“Isn’t learning cool?” I asked. “The way things you learn start connecting with each other?”

“Yeah,” she beamed back at me.