Professional Book Reviews - Children’s Reading Today and in the Future: Igniting their Passions and Engaging their Interests

Often, the reading practices that children encounter in school represent only a small range of the countless ways in which students engage meaningfully with texts. Recent reports indicate that children are reading less literature than they have in the past. Are children reading less overall, or is it simply that the texts they are reading are changing? The reviews in this column reflect the complexity of these questions. The review of Play, Creativity, and Digital Cultures edited by Rebekah Willett, Muriel Robinson, and Jackie Marsh examines how children’s interactions with digital media influences their multi modal literacy development. It addresses ways for teachers to connect children’s love of new media to classroom practice. In keeping with the theme of new literacies, the second entry in this column does not review a book, but rather a website, INK: “Interesting Non-fiction for Kids,”that seeks to encourage children’s reading of non-fiction. This site includes commentary by non-fiction authors and provides opportunities for sparking young readers’ interest in non-fiction texts. This is a particularly salient issue as the concern that children are reading less is perhaps exceeded only by the concern that readers have abandoned non-fiction altogether. The next title, Embracing, Evaluating, and Examining African American Children’s & Young Adult Literature edited by Wanda Brooks and Jonda McNair highlights the importance of including rich, culturally diverse literature in the classroom. If we are to engage all readers, then children of all cultures, ethnicities and races should be able to see themselves in the literature of our classrooms. The final title reviewed in this column is Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher. This book challenges educators and administrators to consider how policy and curriculum is extinguishing children’s passion for books. Gallagher asserts that the only way to create readers is to give them books that matter, and teach them to read deeply.