Tag: Newberry Award

How to Select a Memorable Gift Book

(Cross posted at Dailykos)

I have been asked to post a list of books for the Holidays….or just general gift-giving… I don’t know if I can do that because the list would really be very long and the number of categories would be really diverse

I am a little out-of-date since I have neglected reading the books my students read (being retired, I have no students but I am active in a couple of organizations that promote literature and literacy). So now, I concentrate on books for ME!!!! Unfortunately, they seem to have taken a current events and political nature and are thoroughly depressing and I can’t recommend them to anyone except people here.

As a Reading Teacher, my philosophy was that there is a book out there for everyone and no one should be afraid to read a book.After all, a book is not god….I know this is debatable, but not here.

So, I decided that, in order to find a book for the reluctant readers of the world, I needed to start reading those books, sometimes to the tune of 100 to 150 per year! (I don’t read anywhere near that now!) It was not as daunting as it sounds….Children’s Lit and Young Adult Lit were usually under 200 pages, often near 100 pages and the reading level was generally around the 5-th Grade level. (Most popular Adult novels – ie. Romance, Mystery, Adventure-Thriller-Spy type novels and Horror novels are written at the 6-th Grade level. That is why it is so easy for a person to read one in a day or two, even if it is 4 or 500 pages thick)

The advent of the huge, wordy, descriptive books has really turned a lot of slower readers off. That is why it has become more urgent for teachers and parents to find the book (or books) that will turn on youngsters to reading. There are several ways to select an appropriate book. The most popular is the “rule of thumb”.