Reading, Readin’, and Skimming: Preadolescent Girls Navigate the Sociocultural Landscapes of Books and Reading

This article shares the voices of preadolescent girls as they participated in an eight-month book selection study which enabled them to be active agents in their book and reading experiences.; The girls, school-identified as struggling readers and self-identified as resistant readers, complicate current notions of reading, as influenced by education policy, and trouble the potential tendencies of educators to equate books with reading.; For these girls, books and reading converged and diverged within various sociocultural spheres and ultimately served as conduits for academic success and social power as well as literary entryways into particular peer communities.“ The girls” words and actions reveal the social and economic currency of particular books within larger communities and remind educators that the social stories may be more valuable or more worthy of “readingâ” than the literal story within the bounded pages of books.