Naked Reading

Naked Reading

            Naked Reading, what a great title!  This was one of the texts for my Young Adult Literature class, and it was written by a professor of YA Lit.  The title refers to the habit of her young daughter, who used to hop straight out of the bathtub and hide away and read, waiting for herself to drip dry.  To me, it means the level of enchantment with a book that makes you try to hold it in one hand and read while you’re going down the stairs, or when use a can of tomatoes to prop your book up on the kitchen windowsill, so you can read while you do dishes because you just don’t want to put it down.  It’s the kind of reading that a boy I nanny for described when he was curled up in my lap, explaining that Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation was his daytime book, and that Harry Potter was his “falling-to-sleep” book.  I had to suppress a smile when I told him I had a “falling-to-sleep” and a daytime book, too.

Teri Lesesne examines ways to engage young people with books and instill a lifelong love of reading.  Firstly, she discusses what these young readers need for their healthy psychological development.  Newsweek calls them The Five C’s, and they are: competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring.  She provides example books that can tap into these emotional needs and will be likely to resonate with readers.  For instance, she suggests Blue Balliet’s adventure mystery Chasing Vermeer as one of the books in the Competence category.  I think this is a good choice, as the characters in this novel are clever and resourceful, but not in an unrealistic way.  It’s a great read for encouraging a young reader, too, because there are some small puzzles and clues that need to be pieced together throughout the story.

Another concept Lesesne discusses is the development of readers.  She delineates the stages that adolescent and preteens progress through.  First, she claims, we read for delight: the pleasure of being totally lost in a book.  Then, as young readers age, they branch out into reading autobiographically, or to see characters like themselves.  However, she points out that some readers want nothing to do with characters like them, and rather, choose to read for the experience: to learn about new cultures, to “have” adventures, and enjoy the exploits of others.  Later on, they begin to read for answers to the big questions, about death and the future and identity.  Finally, young readers read for the “aesthetic experience”, to find those “passages, characters, scenes, and/or sentences that makes us pause as readers—usually because we connect with the books in some specific way” (21).  I enjoyed her description of the various social and emotional needs of readers, and I appreciated the example book suggestions.  I think choosing the right book, or rather, matching the right reader with the right book, is vital when it comes to creating life-long readers.

What is the importance of being a lifelong reader?  Lesnesne points out that lifelong readers are intrinsically motivated, an excellent quality that lends itself well to higher education and success in life.  Good reading skills are correlated with good writing schools and success in a work environment, as well.  Furthermore, being a lifelong reader allows one to tap into the cultural exchange that is literature.  After all, literature is a public forum where all the important cultural and social norms are discussed and adjusted.  Magazines, tweets, novels, and newspaper articles all use the medium of print to express what is most important to us as a culture, and lifelong readers have the advantage of tapping into that cultural richness.

Lesesne offers some suggestions designed to help adults guide younger readers into books that will be engaging and interesting for them, thus demonstrating to them that reading is rewarding and enticing them to read more.  She designed a system called TARGET: trust, access, response, guidance, enthusiasm, and tween-appeal.  Her suggestions are helpful in reconnecting young people with reading, and it has to begin with mutual trust.  Your reader has to believe that you will be able to provide them the appropriate text, and that you know them well enough to give them something they are likely to enjoy.  Then, the access part comes in. Young people are not likely to read if quality books are inaccessible.  Response is a necessary follow-up, as teachers help readers process the books they’ve read.  Teachers provide the valuable fourth step, guidance, as they suggest books that challenge readers’ abilities and encourage them to grow.  Through enthusiasm and encouragement, teachers send the message that reading is a worthwhile activity.  Finally, books with great tween-appeal should be winners in any collection.

Lesesne supports literature-rich classrooms and accessible, welcoming libraries with enticing displays.  I stored away some of her suggestions for my future library, especially her suggestion for a student-guided display shelf.  Any student who is so inclined can adopt a book, read it, summarize what they liked about it and display it on the shelf for other students to check out.  I think it’s a great way to get students more involved in the library.  I also loved her idea about reading ladders, and I’ve started creating some of my own.  Reading ladders are clusters of books that share similar features.  When a student expresses interest in a book, reading ladders are a useful tool when it comes to suggesting further reading.  For example, if a student enjoyed Crank by Ellen Hopkins, one could recommend the classic Go Ask Alice, which covers a similar subject, or any of Crank’s sequels.  If a student enjoyed the verse form, though, but not necessarily the subject, an appropriate selection would be Home of the Brave or any number of other well-written verse novels.  One of my favorite features of this blog is the recommendations I make at the end of every book review.  I try to identify the major features of a book and then suggest other books to read: it’s my own form of book ladders.

This was an interesting, useful text, and I won’t be selling it back to the bookstore at the end of the semester.  It’s really more of a handbook: a simple, user-friendly guide to encouraging students to read more.  I highly recommend it to anyone considering teaching or librarianship.

Lesesne, Teri S.  Naked Reading: Uncovering What Tweens Need to Become Lifelong Readers.

New York: Stenhouse Publishers, 2006.  118 pp.