The Joy of Reading by Donalyn Miller and Teri Lesesne

The Joy of Reading 
By Donalyn Miller and Teri Lesesne
(Heinemann, 2022 – Learn much more)

Reviewed by Cheryl Mizerny

I started teaching English is 2008. For the initial calendar year I taught the way I experienced acquired and how I believed it was meant to be carried out.

I required my students to solution chapter queries, write definitions to vocabulary words and phrases, full e-book experiences, and take exams at the conclusion. I even tried to add a “fun” remaining challenge in the mix, but they ended up under no circumstances that important.

I was not loving it and neither were the small children.

The good thing is, I occurred on The E book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller in early 2009. Her e-book gave me permission to abandon these damaging tactics and do what I knew in my coronary heart was appropriate for my pupils. I made use of her work to foster a reading through neighborhood in my classroom and have never looked back again. She changed my instructing for the improved, and my learners and I are for good grateful.

A several years later, I extra guides by Teri Lesesne to my experienced library and incorporated her assistance and strategies into my training as nicely. I have also experienced the pleasure to see Donalyn and Teri existing with each other and separately many moments, and I have usually arrive away with some new knowledge or, at the extremely the very least, a renewed spark that would make me remember why I love this job so a great deal.

Quick Forward to 2022

The very last two several years of educating in person for the duration of a pandemic have been the most challenging of my 30-yr job. Like many others, I have contemplated leaving the career entirely. Regrettably, even my capability to focus on a single of my favorite activities – settling into a good novel – experienced.

I am grateful that The Joy of Reading has appear alongside to remind me at the time again of what a appreciate of books and reading adds to our life as adults and as educators. In the words of Miller and Lesesne: “Here’s the truth: It is possible to instruct young children how to examine well with no killing their love for looking at in the procedure.” (p. xvii)

Although I have attempted to make my classroom as joyful as achievable, there have been a lot of “those” times the last pair of yrs where I know this has not been the case. I desired the reminders in this book.

A Dialogue to Renovate Observe

If you have at any time noticed Donalyn and Teri speak in man or woman or watched them on movie, you know they are a dynamic duo. Equally whip-good, hilarious, and fiercely dedicated to sharing their awareness and practical experience to much better the career. Mainly because I am so acquainted with their work and beliefs, in a lot of techniques this ebook felt like a revisit of their previous work.

Even so, whereas a lot of of their previously guides had been theoretical in character with guidelines to adopt into practice, The Joy of Reading through feels like sitting in an auditorium listening to them share their ideas to change the practice of all those in attendance. Of course, it nevertheless contains the analysis to help their solutions, but it feels far more conversational in mother nature. Not only is the e book really desirable and quick to read through, but it also is made up of scores of functional tactics that can be implemented immediately as effectively as worthwhile methods to make sure results.

Rejecting Techniques That Depress Joy

Chapter One particular – Pleasure, What Is It Great For? – presents the myriad approaches that reading through adds joy to our lives. Miller and Lesesne share how to generate a looking through autobiography and why it is vital for us and our students. By reflecting on these early encounters, the authors hope for us to “identify times of looking through pleasure.” Our students’ reading through autobiographies provide useful information and facts that permits the instructor to begin constructing the basis of a group of audience.

In the area “What’s at Stake When We Lose Studying Pleasure,” Miller and Lesesne talk to the destruction of reading through for pleasure in our present-day knowledge-driven instruction programs the place examining is principally affiliated with rigor, accountability, incentives, and grades.

They supply research about what we drop when we demolish reading joy and shed light on how some widespread methods these types of as the warping of the intent of Miller’s possess “40 E book Challenge” have built studying a single of the least satisfying methods in a child’s day.

They supply a blueprint for preventing these practices and what to do instead. This analysis really should be enough to influence any administrator to want to boost the studying practice in lecture rooms.

Enlivening Procedures That Operate

The remaining chapters fortify the approaches that Miller and Lesesne have very long championed – supplying time and access, honoring choice, allowing for for authentic response, and acquiring a local community of audience.

Whilst they have each penned about these subjects just before, this guide is distinctive. They have utilized their mixed knowledge and experience to not only convey to the reader why these points are crucial, they have included practical ideas on how to realize them promptly. This is where by the reserve will be invaluable to instructors seeking to recapture reading pleasure in their classrooms.

In contemplating providing plentiful time and entry, Donalyn and Teri share suggestions and assets for how to discover textbooks for a classroom library, get books into students’ hands from the public library, and procure textbooks that students can preserve at residence for their quite individual. Chapter 3 speaks to how preference is the strongest motivator. The authors share how some school techniques and beliefs limit alternative and then give tips on how to match the reader to a “just right” e-book.

Solutions to Undertaking-driven Assignments

In Chapter 4 they discuss how visitors respond to a text authentically alternatively of for accountability. The authors look at how job-focused reading through destroys drive to study for satisfaction, but also what can be accomplished as possibilities. This chapter finishes with a attractive description of what a classroom that values aesthetic response can glimpse like. It reads practically like a layout guide for “creating a lifestyle where by learners sense absolutely free to answer and inspires them to interact with books and other viewers as they would like.” (p. 141)

Ultimately, Chapter 5 shares a lot of procedures for creating routines and rituals to develop a potent, joyful reading community. The appendices provide a multitude of methods such as sites, creators, reserve resources, and actions that are alone worthy of the price of the reserve.

The Pleasure of Looking through will come alongside as the 12 months is ending and I am fatigued, but in examining it, I am freshly invigorated to finish the 12 months solid and bolstered that in my classroom we are all viewers, and we can always locate pleasure in that!



Cheryl Mizerny (@cherylteaches) is a veteran educator with 25 many years expertise – most at the center school amount. She commenced her profession in specific instruction, turned a trainer guide and adjunct professor of Instructional Psychology, and at present teaches 6th grade English in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Study her rich selection of MiddleWeb articles in this article.