this is how you learn

I've been obsessed with this author/blogger/videoblogger/nerdfighter guy John Green for a few weeks now. I've been reading his blog archives and keep coming finding great stuff like this:

I find it very strange that we acknowledge children’s ability to grapple with endlessly complex plot—that we don’t for one second question whether a novel is age-appropriate when it contains 430 characters with unpronounceable names, each caring for their own particular subspecies of dragon.

I can't decide whether I'm more excited that I totally agree with him or more excited that I get his kiddie-lit references.

I started teaching literature last year and it's been so interesting to watch kids grow as readers. Most of our students have been fed Open Court since kindergarten and it shows. Many of them have never read a book in school before. It is clear that a few have never even read a book on their own, ever. By the time the fourth lit circle cycle rolls around, and I FINALLY allow them to pick their own books, they cheer and gasp and smile like I handed them a new gaming system.

By the end of October, we have covered "theme," and this is where the children really start to shine. I never knew what the theme* of a book was. I think my eighth grade teacher probably touched upon theme but I was too busy rolling my eyes because she made me EXPLAIN Holden Caufield. The nerve.**

Watching students interact with literature makes me proud to be a reader. I have had students stand up in front of the whole class to argue that Jesse Tuck was selfish, or that Charlotte Doyle was heroic, or to explain that Despereaux really just wanted to be noticed. One student is in the process of explaining twelve reasons why Crispin is the most boring book ever. Another student begged her mom to buy her her own copy of Wolf Brother so that she could read it again later.

I've had students rush in in the morning to tell me how they cried all over the ending of The Book Thief or that they stayed up until three am because Scorpion King was so good. Today we began writing book reviews and one kid came in with EIGHT PAGES already typed up. Just this last week, one boy spent four days in a row sitting on the floor of my class reading The Supernaturalist. For the entire period. (I exempted him from all other work because isn't that the point?)

The moral of the story is that books rock.


*It's the lesson the main character learns, or the moral, or the message the author is trying to teach the reader.

**I could not, COULD NOT, understand why a teacher would force us to reveal our FEELINGS about books. Like, way too personal. Also, symbolism? I really did not want to consider that Salinger invented the red hunting cap as a literary device.