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Strollerderby
Any child can learn to love books.
Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series, has created a world in which the hero is a young boy who has ADHD and dyslexia. In the stories, those two characteristics are indicators of Olympian blood, meaning kids with ADHD and dyslexia stand a good chance of having been descended from the gods. But in the real world, kids with such learning differences can find it difficult to even read such a book, let alone be made to feel heroic because of it.
To give the main character of an action adventure book series ADHD and dyslexia might seem a little unusual, but the author had a good reason for doing so. His own son, 16-year-old Haley, also has ADHD and dyslexia and Riordan says the novels began as a desperate attempt to keep his child interested in reading.
Riordan says that as a 7-year-old, Haley hated reading so much that he would hide under a table to avoid it. But today, Haley is not only an avid reader, but he’s also the proud author of his very own six-hundred-page manuscript. How did Riordan manage that? Continue reading »
Why won't boys read?
If you have a son who is a reluctant reader, despite the fact that his sister will sit for hours paging through the books on her shelf, you’re apparently in good company. Considerably more boys than girls aren’t meeting proficiency level standards on the annual National Assessment of Educational Progress reading report, according to a recent Center on Education Policy report.
“This disparity goes back to 1992, and in some states the percentage of boys proficient in reading is now more than ten points below that of girls,” Thomas Spence noted in the Wall Street Journal last week. “The male-female reading gap is found in every socio-economic and ethnic category, including the children of white, college-educated parents.”
Spence, the president of Spence Publishing Company, thinks he knows why boys aren’t reading enough to get their skills up to proficiency level. It’s not that we’re not giving them books that they’re interested. After all, the publishing industry is now meeting boys “where they are” with a whole gross-out genre of books aiming to appeal to elementary- and middle-school boys predilection for body humor, he argues.
Spence names this trend, charmingly, the “SweetFarts philosophy of education,” after a book, “SweetFarts” written by a self-published author who goes by the nom de plume Raymond Bean. “One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals,” Spence asserts. “If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.”
So if it’s not the reading material itself, why are so many fewer boys reading books – and mastering reading proficiency – than girls?
Of Thee I Sing, President Obama's new children's book
For Barack Obama’s new children’s book, the President puts politics aside and focuses instead on the people who have made our country great.
Written before he took office in January of 2009, Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters is a picture book billed as a tribute to 13 “groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped [the] nation.”
Obama’s inspiring Americans include George Washington, Georgia O’Keeffe and Jackie Robinson, among others.
A mere 40 pages in length, the book is illustrated by Loren Long and, according to Chip Gibson, president and publisher of Random House Children’s Books , promises to be “an inspiring marriage of words and images, history and story.”
As with President Obama’s previous literary efforts, this one is sure to be a best-seller. With a first print run of half-a-million copies, all author proceeds will be donated to “a scholarship fund for the children of fallen and disabled soldiers.”
Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters will be available November 16. Will you buy it?
Image: Amazon.com
Not sold on the benefits of summer reading? Persuaded by your second-graders argument that a vacation should really be a vacation, and reading is too much like school?
Then add today’s Well blog post to your own summer reading list. In it, Tara Parker-Pope tackles some of the research behind your school’s and libraries ubiquitous reading programs. Turns out, those books are good for more than just gold stars from your neighborhood librarian.
The “summer slide” in reading skills is well documented, and effects low income students most. A new study shows that just giving kids books – any books – makes up for that lost time in a big way.
As school comes to a close, my child’s teacher has assigned her 3rd graders some required reading. The students must choose a book from a list and write a report on it over the summer. An avid reader, my kid was totally psyched about this until we had a look at the list of books from which she must choose: Four Flat Stanley books and a couple of Beverly Cleary’s Henry stories.
Some kids might seriously enjoy reading those books but my kid’s literary tastes are a little more mature. She will read and write a report on one of those books, but she won’t enjoy it one bit.
In the meantime, I have been casting around for books that, while appropriate for her maturity level, might also challenge her and expose her to new ideas. You know, grown up books that aren’t too grown up. Continue reading »
You walk to the park. You buy the right toilet paper. You cut out meat. You don’t just recycle, you reduce and reuse. But your efforts to live green might come into conflict with a certain truism of raising smart kids. All those books you stock their shelves with — so that the grow up literate and smart and destined for college? Those books have got a carbon footprint worse than you could imagine.
Even the so-called “green” ones. And the ones about rainforest destruction! Continue reading »
It’s been well-documented that children who are read to on a regular basis become better readers themselves and do better in school. But new research indicates that if you want your child to be highly educated, don’t just read the books, collect the books. Continue reading »
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