{"id":10,"date":"2011-06-17T18:40:37","date_gmt":"2011-06-18T01:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/?p=10"},"modified":"2011-07-18T20:12:44","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T03:12:44","slug":"why-its-ok-for-kids-to-hate-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"Why It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s OK for Kids to Hate Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week I was at Chapters, slowly perusing the different selections of books, when a particular sign caught my eye.\u00c2\u00a0 A table was advertising a sale with a colourful sign drawing attention to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Books You Loved From School\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the books sitting on the table was Wuthering Heights<\/em>, by Emily Br\u00c3\u00b6nte.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, I know that opinions are different, and that this book is a classic because so many people enjoyed it.\u00c2\u00a0 However, all I could think about was how much I hated the book when I had to read it in school.\u00c2\u00a0 I remember being annoyed by all the cruelty Heathcliff and Catherine committed in the name of their all-consuming, caring-to-the-point-of-insanity love.\u00c2\u00a0 After pointing out the display to my husband, we started talking about all the books that were assigned to us in school that we really disliked.\u00c2\u00a0 On my list was The Lord of the Flies<\/em> (the teacher could never answer my question about what an island full of girls would do differently), while my husband appeared to be fairly irritated by the death of Leslie Burke in Katherine Patterson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Bridge to Terabitha<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 I started thinking that there are quite a few books that are commonly presented in schools that may not appeal to students.\u00c2\u00a0 How can we prevent these students from equating these particular books to a general dislike for reading?<\/p>\n

I believe that one way to overcome this issue is to teach children that it is OK to hate a book they have read.\u00c2\u00a0 Let kids know that if they take a book out of the library they do not have to finish it if it is unappealing to them.\u00c2\u00a0 Introduce them to the Reading Bill of Rights<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be upset if a student dislikes a book you have chosen for the class to read.\u00c2\u00a0 Teach them that Newberry Award winners are not enjoyed by everybody.\u00c2\u00a0 Create lessons where students are taught how to give reasons why they hate a book (this will give you more enjoyable reasons than \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was boring.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d).\u00c2\u00a0 Give assignments where students review and rate the books they have read, and post these reviews for other students to read.\u00c2\u00a0 Share your own experiences of reading books that you have hated.\u00c2\u00a0 Finally, let students know that by understanding what books they dislike, they are on their way to discovering what they do like to read and becoming a more discriminating and sophisticated reader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I was at Chapters, slowly perusing the different selections of books, when a particular sign caught my eye.\u00c2\u00a0 A table was advertising a sale with a colourful sign drawing attention to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Books You Loved From School\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the books sitting on the table was Wuthering Heights, by Emily Br\u00c3\u00b6nte.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, I know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yfMi-a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.somethingworthreading.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}