RCS Reading Resources

How to Help a Teen Choose a Book:

• Ask a librarian or teacher. Librarians and teachers know what books appeal to and are appropriate for teen readers. Visit the library with your teen so that you can talk with the librarian together to find some great (and perhaps unexpected) titles for your teen to try. Many libraries also sponsor books clubs where teens can connect over books. Librarians can point you to lists of suggested titles published online. Some schools also publish suggested and/or required lists of books for summer reading.

• Go to the blogs. Teens want to read what their peers are reading. There are many wonderful blogs where teens can teens can read and chat about the books they and their peers. This is a great way to learn about new titles and to help teens broaden their reading interests, as well as integrate reading and social activities.

• Peruse the aisles of your library or bookstores. Bookstores organize stock by level of age-appropriateness, as well as by subject matter and type of book. Encourage your teen to sit down with a read a bit of while you're still at the library or bookstore. Encourage your teen to check out several different titles, rather than just one or two.

• Find out what books your teen has enjoyed in the past. One way to help out is by choosing other titles by the same author. A teen who enjoyed Walter Dean Myers' Monster might also like Sunrise Over Fallujah. A teen who liked Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak might want to read Prom. Teens also like to read novels that occur in a series, like the Twilight and Harry Potter books. Once you know what the subjects and genres that your teen enjoys, consult librarians and even amazon,com to find other titles you might not have known about.

• Check out graphic novels. There are many great, high quality graphic novels appealing to a wide range of readers. If your teen read Maus, a graphic novel account of the Holocaust, check out Persepolis, a graphic autobiography of a young girl growing up during the Iranian revolution.

• Address problems with book. Teens who are exploring and perhaps struggling with their identities or personal problems might like help choosing books related to those issues.

"How to Help a Teen Choose a Book - ReadWriteThink." Readwritethink.org. International Literacy Association/National Council of Teachers of English, 2017.

Research on the Importance of Summer Reading:

• • Many students experience learning loss when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer. Further, they score lower on standardized tests at the end of summer vacation than they do on the same tests at the beginning of summer vacation (Cooper, 1996).

  • Summer reading is the single summer activity that is most strongly and consistently related to summer learning (Heyns, 1978).

  • Since motivation is the key to voluntary reading, the two critical features of book selection are individual students' interests and reading levels (Smith and Brewer, 2007).

  • When they return to school after summer break, some students are showing as much as a two-month loss in reading ability from the previous school year - simply because they don't have opportunities to practice their skills (Smith and Brewer, 2007).

  • According to Stephen Krashen in The Power of Reading:

    • People who read more write better.

    • Reading as a leisure activity is the best predictor of comprehension, vocabulary, and reading speed.

    • Outstanding high school writers reported extensive summer reading.

    • The relationship between free voluntary reading and literacy is extremely consistent, even when different tests, different methods of reading habits, and different definitions of free reading are used.

    • If children read one million words a year, at least one thousand words will be added to their vocabulary.

  • A study led by James Kim of the Harvard Graduate School of Education found that regardless of family income, the effect of reading four to five books over the summer was large enough to prevent a decline in reading-achievement scores from the spring to the fall. Kim’s other finding: children who said they had easy access to books over the summer ended up reading more. So seasonal alarm bells aside, the best way to push back against the summer slide is with your library card (Paul, 2013).

  • Richard Allington, a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and his colleagues found that giving kids 12 books to read over the summer was as effective as summer school in raising the students’ reading scores (Paul, 2013).

  • According to Key Findings of Scholastic’s Kids & Family Reading Report: The National Survey on the State of Kids and Reading, 2015, there are three powerful factors that can predict whether a child (across all ages 6-17) will be a frequent reader. These include children's level of reading enjoyment, parents who are frequent readers, and a child's belief that reading for fun is important.

Quotes on the Importance of Reading:

• • Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift. —Kate DiCamillo

  • Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his needs, is good for him. —Maya Angelou

  • It is not enough to simply teach children to read; we have to give them something worth reading. Something that will stretch their imaginations—something that will help them make sense of their own lives and encourage them to reach out toward people whose lives are quite different from their own. —Katherine Patterson

  • Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada, and Keith Oatley, a professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, reported in studies published in 2006 and 2009 that individuals who often read fiction appear to be better able to understand other people, empathize with them and view the world from their perspective.

  • Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. “If you want your children to be intelligent,” he said, “read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.