Reading Unbound: Why Kids Need to Read What They Want, and Why We Should Let Them

Never doubt that reading has the power to transform lives. This groundbreaking book provides an in-depth exploration of the secret reading lives of avid adolescent readers-and how their reading choices affect their lives and learning. Through the pow... Read more

Never doubt that reading has the power to transform lives. This groundbreaking book provides an in-depth exploration of the secret reading lives of avid adolescent readers-and how their reading choices affect their lives and learning. Through the powerful voices of the teens themselves, you'll discover the books, authors, genres, and topics that engage students both intellectually and emotionally as they work to figure out who they are in the world and who they want to become. The best spokespersons for the power of reading are the young adolescent readers themselves. Alternately heartbreaking and funny, moving and irreverent, they grapple with a surprising range of profound questions and issues. And it all begins with reading liberation-having the freedom to explore widely and immerse themselves in the sheer joy of reading books that call to both the intellect and the heart. Read this book and..., Rediscover the joy of reading and rethink why pleasure matters! Learn the nature and variety of the pleasures adolescents gain from the reading they do outside of school-and what this means for their in-school reading. Understand why interpretive complexity should be equal to text complexity. Discover the power of talking about books-and why students' talk about their books should be an essential part of every school day. Learn how you can make pleasure more central to your practice. Learn why building inquiry units around essential questions supports reading pleasure and invites conversation among students who may have read different texts. Become the kind of teacher who helps students fall in love with books in ways that foster a lifelong devotion to reading. Book jacket. Less