Selling Books

I jumped ahead a bit looking for a good topic but the notion of “selling books to students” struck me as something I wish I had known more about during my recent student-teaching placement.  Kylene Beers discusses methods of selling books to reluctant readers on page 290 and, while it may seem almost crass, like we’re fooling our students into reading, I experienced similar situations with students who either had 1. just finished a book, loved it and didn’t want to read another, 2. were constantly disappointed by the “lack of action” in books, 3. claimed there was nothing good around to read.  And on and on and on; there were many excuses and many times when I found myself thrusting The Giver into a students mistrusting hands, insisting “you’ll really like it.”

Beers writes about seven “book-selling” strategies.  Some are rather obvious, like read-alouds for students who won’t read on their own, the “read and tease” mentioned before by Tovani and creating class field trips to the school’s presumably seldom-used library.  I really liked Beers’ suggestions regarding the “Good Books Box” and her reading conferences.  The Good Books Box serves to limit the choices that sometimes overwhelm students; it is a box filled with “just-right” books that work for students who actually prefer to be pointed in a direction.  “Until you are comfortable with authors, genres and interests, it’s hard to find a good book.  We need to narrow that choice for students,” writes Beers on page 295.

Another useful strategy and one that I always thought about during my placement was “Suggestion #7: Talk About the Authors.”  I love to hear the background stories behind pieces of art, from The Beatles’ tumultuous White Album sessions to Sylvia Plath’s struggles with depression to the Francis Ford Coppola’s problematic Apocalypse Now shoot.  Hooking students in with similar stories is, for some reason, often an ignored strategy but, if reading is a conversation with an author, wouldn’t our students like to know who’s on the other end of the phone and what kind of person he or she might be?  Authors are often nameless, faceless entities to students and that’s a shame.  Beers’ reading conferences about which authors are students’ favorites might help those of them who need the inside story to be excited by literature.

Works Cited
Beers, Kylene. When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do:  A Guide for Teachers, 6-12. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003. Print.