How Reader Reviews Will Get Your Child Reading

Students engage with books as adults do large projects: one book equals hours of hard labour. If students are unsure of finding a book that they will like, they will often resort to rereading the same books (ie. Bone Series, Diary of a Wimpy Kid) or reading books that were made into movies (ie. Percy Jackson Series).

Part of the school curriculum in our area is to have students read book reviews and then try writing their own. I was hesitant to try this activity since introducing technology with reading usually gets students side-tracked. Near the end of the year, I had the students bring their devices and gave them brief instructions on how to find an online review. Far from being side-tracked, in a few minutes, I had unexpectedly solved my problem of expanding student readership.

Reader Review Exercise:

I had the students find a random chapter book on the shelf that they had never read before. They were then asked to input the title, author, and the word "review" into an Internet search. As the results came up, I encouraged them to choose the site "Good Reads." I explained to them what a review out of five stars meant (most of them are familiar with this so it was a good starting point). Then I simply read the summary, and scrolled down to show the students what other readers had commented.

After the students went through this process on their own, I was amazed to see that every student went home with a new book that they had never heard of before. So much for one-liners and you-should-read-this-book speech--online reviews had done all the work for me and more. 

My conclusions:

-Reading online reviews will get students excited about reading a book they have never read before with little teacher intervention
-With online reviews, students can feel confident that the effort they put into a certain book will pay-off -- because they know that (many) others have read the book and enjoyed it

Review: "Boy" by Roald Dahl

Boy: Tales of Childhood

Roald Dahl


Summary:

With his regular quirky sense of humour, Dahl recalls anecdotes from when he was child. These moments are humorous, strange, frightening, sad, or even violent. They may or not resemble stories in his fictional stories and books, but they certainly give you a sense of where the writer came from to create such characters as "The Witches" or the "BFG" or a chocolate factory.


Points of Concern for Parents:

There are extremely funny anecdotes in this book; there are also very violent ones. Dahl was frequently abused by his superiors as he made his way through different boarding schools in the UK. He describes in detail what it was like to be whipped and the cruelty of the people who were supposed to be watching over him. He also speaks of his lack of a need for a God, and his turning towards alcohol as a way of solving problems when he got older.

"The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage."

"Church-going never became a habit with me. Letter writing did."

There seems to be very good justification in this book for why Roald Dahl might have been turned off church-going, and turned instead for solace towards alcohol (and later, other drugs). Of course, other people might be better role models for your children.