So, I have been doing research on how to motivate students to read, and most of the research studies show that if you bribe a kid to do it, they will. When I was little, bribing me to read wasn't that hard, it was when I got into high school that it became a problem. I finally figured out why I lost interest in reading--part of it is due to the fact that I didn't like the selection of classroom texts, except for
Frankenstein, Macbeth, and maybe
Lord of the Flies--reader burn out!
So maybe in the second grade I shouldn't have read over 200 books, but I was in a competition, and had to be the best . . . at reading. Later, in the fifth grade we had to read
From the Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
, a Newbery winner, and I hated it. I thought it was the worst book ever written, but apparently people loved it enough to give it an award. The only thing I liked about the book was that it gave me the idea to runaway and live in a museum, that's cool! My favorite book in the fifth grade was
Wait 'Til Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn, a story about a girl that becomes friends with a ghost that wants to kill her (hello!! smart one) it's a really good book, and it should have won an award. I read it again in the sixth grade and did a book report on it. I would suggest it for reluctant readers because kids like scary stories.
I think another reason that I didn't read as much in high school is also because I created the excuse that I was too busy to read books for pleasure, even during college, but really I was lazy (a symptom of reader burn out). It wasn't until
Harry Potter came along that I got back into reading--it's like a shot of morphine, I'm addicted! I read the first four in the summer of 2001 within a week, and then read them again, and then the first one again before the movie. The fifth book came out while I was in Thailand, so I had to wait until I came home. The first week home, I didn't do anything until I finished. I watched the third movie, which wasn't good enough to hold me over until the sixth book, the movie sucked. (There were too many gaps between the books.)
Harry Potter made reading cool again, and I embraced my nerdiness, and found people that were equally, if not greater, nerds than me (it's sooo nice to have a community of nerds). Now I am trying to read
Wuthering Heights, and I'm having a hard time with it, but I am a member of SparkNotes (but not really), and use it when I am stuck with a difficult text **(Please see disclaimer).
So, I guess the point of this is that we shouldn't push kids to read a lot, and read stuff they don't want to. We should offer them opportunities to read when they want to, but not punish them with reading, like telling them they can't play XBox until they have read for an hour. This causes early onset RR, reading then becomes drudgery, and you lost him/her to the disease.
I decided that I want a husband like the Beast-- someone who will give me a library filled with books, all kinds of books, floor to ceiling, with 100 foot walls--that would be the perfect man (the beast not the prince 'cause he wasn't a very good looking prince).
**I really only use SparkNotes if I didn't do the reading, but hey, at least I can fake it in class. It should really be called "How to fake knowing what you are talking about in your English class"!
surreal: sur·re·al