Reading for Pleasure: A passport to everywhere (Phil Beadle's How To Teach Series)

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Review ------ Pieper's book, Reading for Pleasure, happily, proved to be a great pleasure to read. He captures the complexity of reading: the private passions and the public (indeed political) power it can give to us all. His personal story and his love of reading shine luminously through each page. Reading for Pleasure is a clarion call to teachers, librarians, school leaders and even parents to make much of reading because it matters so much to the present and future lives of our children. This book is rich with evidence, pragmatic ins and practical strategies to enhance reading for pleasure. Read it for pleasure, then act upon it with purpose. --Alex Quigley, English teacher, author of The Confident Teacher Reading for Pleasure is a great antidote to some of the common problems surrounding reading in schools today. In the last twenty years, the world we live in has dramatically changed. When I was growing up in the 1980s, I could have easily read a whole book in the time it took a game to load on a computer. That was the Sinclair Spectrum for you! Today, students have instant access to games, films and other media. So, how do you get students to read books in the modern age? How do you get students reading in an age when you can have an instantly engaging experience at the click of a button? Thankfully, Kenny has some practical, easy-to-use and sensible remedies. The personal and anecdotal style of the books fits so well with the message here: reading is a personal experience. Each child, student, teenager, adult, teacher and reader has a different, unique reading experience and we often forget that when trying to engage students with reading. I found Kenny s own reading autobiography fascinating and, for me, it was interesting to see how his experience differed from my own. Yet both experiences produced avid readers, highlighting the fact that there is more than one way to make a reader for life. Furthermore, the book doesn t shy away from the difficult areas such as gender, class, politics, academic aspirations and the role and use of libraries in schools. Like a wise Gandalf for hobbity teachers, Kenny guides us through the pitfalls and over the sometimes overwhelmingly ainous terrain of teenagers and their reading habits. This is the book that literacy coordinators, teachers and school leaders should read if they want to develop, foster and maintain a reading culture in their schools. One thing is for sure: Kenny sensibly stops us from become Gollums and obsessing over our precious book reviews. Reading for Pleasure was a pleasure to read. --Chris Curtis, Head of English, St John Houghton Catholic Voluntary Academy Reading is something that so many of us take for granted. We fail to consider those for whom it is a struggle or how reading lacks appeal after trying and failing to access the worlds and experiences that books are supposed to unlock. Kenny Pieper seeks to put us in the shoes of those who don t, or can t, rush into the library or bookshop to devour page after page of whatever or whoever is our latest literary obsession. He makes us consider the often complex ways that we could help these children to be as excited and comfortable with immersion in a book as others and, most likely, we are. Kenny s writing is gentle and encouraging, rather like how you feel his lessons would be to the reluctant reader, but the book is not without comment that is both educational and political. Kenny explores the crime of illiteracy and what this means for people s ability to engage with the world and the political landscape around them and looks at the methods and strategies employed in schools, both now and in the past, that may have put off exactly those people they were supposed to encourage. This is no bombastic ego-driven polemic designed to gain notoriety or attention for the writer but a genuine exploration of what it is that prevents young people from engaging with reading and, importantly, what we can do to help break down these barriers. Kenny offers ideas and suggestions but doesn t ram these down your throat or at any point suggest that he is the font of all knowledge, preferring instead to share what s worked for him and see if you might like to try it. Everything from reading programmes to e-readers is discussed fairly and carefully, with seventeen years of experience of both readers and the act of reading in mind, by someone who clearly holds the written word dear and wants to open up the beauty of it to all. Kenny's blog is entitled Just trying to be better than yesterday and the humility of that title is also evident here in this book. It s a humility that many others in education could take a lesson from. In this case it s unnecessary read this and take the ideas he suggests into your classrooms and your schools and we ll all be far, far better off than before. --Colin Goffin, Executive Vice Principal, Inspiration Trust About the Author ---------------- Kenny Pieper has been teaching English for fifteen years and still loves every minute of it. He stands shakily on the shoulders of giants in the shape of his amazingly inspiring colleagues. Deep down, he still can t believe his luck that he gets to do this.