CODA: The Power of Pleasure: What about Helping Students Forge Their Own Reading Lives?

In this thought-provoking column, Wilhelm asks us to consider this premise: We are focusing too much on the what and not enough on the why and the how of reading. In pondering this idea, Wilhelm notes convincing research that challenges assumptions that quality is exclusive to canonical literature and that students don’t engage the “big” questions when reading non-canonical literature. If literature is a “transaction” and if the meaning of reading occurs in the transaction of reader and text, then we should focus on the meaning readers get from their textual experiences, as well as the power and nature of the various pleasures of these experiences. The commentary concludes by arguing that good readers are good because they read a lot, and that students will only read a lot if they find their reading meaningful and pleasurable.