Post for Sep 13 2010
Greetings!
Have you ever had a student who was reading voraciously in the lower grades and wanted to start reading books that were technically on their reading level, but the subject matter was more mature? What do we do with these kids? We must keep them reading, but we do need to find reading material that will challenge them yet be age appropriate. I decided to see what I could do about this.
I happened to read an article about a public school librarian who had the same issue and decided to duplicate her project. She worked with a group of high school students to compile a list of books that were higher level reading, yet age appropriate for middle graders. I looked at her list and realized that only a few of those titles would be appropriate for Adventist schools, so I decided that someone should compile a list of books that would be
1. Challenging for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders,
2. Age appropriate, and
3. Appropriate for a Seventh-day Adventist school.
I wrote to the author of the original article and asked permission to use her forms along with permission to tweak them a little. She graciously gave permission and I began.
Last year in the Fall of 2009 I worked on this project with a few junior high students in my Honors Reading class. I had compiled a list of books in our library here at Rogers that I thought might be good for this list. I then explained to the students what we were going to do. We were going to read, read, read. For each book they read, they were to complete two different evaluation forms. At the end of the semester, I compiled a list of the books that the students liked and thought would be good for the list. I also had a couple of students tell me about other books that they found that would be good for the list and requested permission to evaluate them.
This project accomplished two things. One, I have a list of books that we feel are challenging, age appropriate and SDA appropriate. Two, those students learned how to read a book for evaluation purposes.
I will admit that I added a number of my favorites that the students just did not have time to read. There are a lot of older books that we read as children that kids today don’t read. Louisa May Alcott, Carol Ryrie Brink, Marguerite Henry, Walter Farley, and more. If you have trouble getting kids to read these, try reading part of a story to hook them in. For one example, the book Anne of Green Gables – I want to scream when I suggest this series and a student says, “I saw the movie.” I reply, “The movie is not the book.” Then I usually suggest they read the first three chapters and if they don’t like the book, please let me know so I will be able to help them find something better. Usually by the third chapter they are hooked, but if not, it is OK.
Most of these authors are great, but we always need to be careful. You never know when a beloved author starts writing books that might not fit with Adventist values. Here are some words of wisdom about a few of these authors.
1. Avi – he is a prolific writer and writes in many genres. His historical fiction is top notch, but I stay away from the fantasy books.
2. Andrew Clements – We love his books and they fly off the shelves here, BUT he has a few titles that I avoid. “Things Not Seen” is one of them. Just be careful.
3. I didn’t put Gary Paulsen on the list, but he has some great stories. “Hatchet” is a classic example. Just watch out for some of his. One of my favorites of his books is his account of his Itidarod race titled “Winterdance”. There is a lot of language, so I never could put this particular book in one of our libraries.
If you have ideas of books that would fit this list, I am very willing to update my list. Send ideas along to me as you come across them. I’ll include the list in a separate email that I post immediately after this one. You know I wouldn’t keep you waiting a week for it!
Have a great week.
Audrey
Sdalibrarian.blogspot.com
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