Making Time to Read and Reading Takes Time

I started a book on April 19th. I know this because I logged it in on Good Reads. I just finished it on Sunday. Whew! I was off for a week during that time. You would think that I could read a young adult book faster than that. I liked the book, but my life got in the way. I will spend lots of my free time reading, but when visitors come in to town, and the festival season starts in New Orleans; it is hard to curl up with a book. When I attended the AASL conference in October, a member of the YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults committee told me that she reads a book a day. I love to read, but I want to savor a book, so racing through it in a day will not allow me to enjoy or internalize it at all. I can never remember character names now. If I read a book a day, then reading the book would be useless to me because I would not remember how the book made me feel or allowed the book to get under my skin and change how I think.

Right now I have some reading deadlines looming over me. I have a review for Library Media Connection due on May 20th. Then I have a meeting with my middle school book group on May 16th. Then on May 22nd, the middle school group is going to Skype with an author, and I haven't even bought that book yet. Needless to say, I have just started the book to review, but I will need to read the other two books too.

The students in my high school book group have agreed to review books for the twice monthly online newsletter, SLJ Teen, put out by School Library Journal. Most of the members of the group are sophomores, and they are busy with end of the year school work deadlines. I am nervous that they will not be able to get the reviews to me when I need them. Today during our regular meeting, we discussed what needed to be in each review. They only need to write 250 words or so, but I don't think the writing is the issue. The issue is if they have time to read. They are all reading for the literary analysis due in English class. They have plenty of science to read to finish their Independent Research Projects (IRP). They haven't taken the time to read for pleasure. They have lists of books that they want to read and share with each other, but school work and life is getting in the way.

Should we schedule reading time so that we always take the time stop and read? I believe that reading feeds the soul, and we do need to read for pleasure. Sometimes time is not in our favor.


Want to know what is on my bedside table?
I just finished the Printz Honor Book, Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. I liked it a lot and loved the fairy tale quality of it. I am not sure of its appeal to teens, as none of my students have read it yet. I will be interested to find out how some of them like it. I am reading The Exceptionals by Erin Cashman to review in LMC. I am about a third of the way through it, but I can't say what I think until after my review is published. For BRiMS, the middle school group, we are reading Airborn by Kenneth Oppel. The kids who finished it have said that they loved it. Yea!! I picked well. Then the BRiMS skype will be with author Sherry Shahan who wrote Ice Island.

There you have it. I am going to stop now and go back to my book. What are you reading?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Holidays from BRiMS and Bookmarked

I run two book groups at Patrick Taylor. My high school book group, Bookmarked , was created in the fall of 2007 which was my second year as librarian at the school. The students really wanted a library club, but the square footage of the library was so small that I could not imagine how any students could do any actual library work. Instead I created a book discussion group. Not only did we meet to talk books, but I tapped these students to help me with fundraisers and special programming like Teen Read Week. Helping me with these special activities seemed to appease the members. I waited until February of 2009 to institute a book discussion group for my middle school students called BRiMS, or Books Rule in Middle School . Both of the groups meet during lunch, and this year, the school added a third lunch. Now BRiMS is made up of only 6th and 7th graders. Bookmarked has 8th-12th grade students. This has actually worked well because in 2014 and 2015, Bookmarked lost a lot of members w...
Read more

Banned Book Week: Students Make Comments Pro & Con Censorship

Image
This blog post is being designed as a lesson for the English I students at PFTSTA. The teachers and I have collaborated on an activity to celebrate Banned Book Week (BBW). Many times in the past during BBW, I have invited the 8th graders into the library to discuss the banning and challenging of books in schools and libraries. I usually show some videos and share books owned by our library that have been banned or challenged somewhere in the US. This activity always spurs great discussion among the students and teachers. This year we wanted the students to create a written response to the presentation. We thought there was a real world connection if we had the students post their opinion online as a comment to someone writing about censorship in schools. The teachers and I want the students to learn how to compose a well thought out comment that is supported by evidence and concrete details. How more real world could it be than having the students comment directly on their librar...
Read more

Students Weigh in on Banned Books and the Freedom to Read

Image
Every year, for Banned Book Week, I prepare a lesson for our 8th graders. It was always teacher directed with discussion until last year . The English I teachers and I created a lesson for the students that included research and writing. I pulled the materials that I wanted them to read, and the students would write a very short essay declaring their belief in the need for teens to be able to exercise their freedom to read what they want to or the need for certain books to be taken off the shelves of the library or pulled from the English curriculum.  Above is the slide presentation that I have made for the students. Included in the slides are several videos that I thought would get the students thinking. There are slides with links to specific articles that we want the students to read and use for the concrete evidence to support their stance. A rubric is included at the end so the students know exactly what is expected. The teachers and I want the writing to have a...
Read more