Marsha Ross Routman-Chapter 3-Share Your Reading Life November Blog

Routman-Chapter 3-Share Your Reading Life

       When I began reading this chapter, I took a moment to think of myself as a reader.  I love to read for pleasure.  I love to cuddle up with a blanket and a warm drink and read.  I like to get lost in the book and not put it down.  There are many nights that I do not want to go to sleep because I have to know what’s going to happen next or how the story is going to end.

       I have lots of friends that read on their Nooks or Kindles but for me I like the feel of the book.  I have always said you can see if a book was good by its wear and tear.  The way it was held, the folds in the pages can tell so much about the reader’s experience.  I do not like to get to books from the library.  I like to own them.

       I once read a book that had a great impact on me, but I don’t remember its title or author.  It was juvenile fiction.  It was about a boy who was an orphan.  On his eighteenth birthday, he was free to leave the orphanage and enter the adult world on his own.  He was able to take all his things with him and he did. All he had was a couple of pairs of clothes and all the books he had ever read.  When asked about them, he referred to them as his history.  They were everything he had accomplished, and every place that he had traveled.  They were his background knowledge to the world.

      I think that is the way that we want our children to see the books they read.  We want them to love them and experience them.  We want them to enjoy them.  I thought it was very sad that reading for enjoyment rarely comes up when asked why you think we spend so much time reading.  Unfortunately, there is a large amount of children in the world today that come from homes that are not full of books and the background knowledge that comes with them.  Sometimes the only books they see are at school and the only readers they see are at school.  At schools where students do not have independent reading times and independent book selections students will only see reading as a way of learning.  Students are like sponges and they learn from watching those around them.  If they see others reading for enjoyment they will want to as well.  They need to know that teachers read when they leave the classroom and they do it because they want to not have to.  If they see us as readers and sharing what we are reading they will want to do it too.  It is no different than the child in the book center sitting at the easel reading a big book copying the teacher’s mannerisms.  Students learn from example.