From Shaping Youth – Aug. 27, 2011: Last week the NYTimes Arts Beat ran a solid session on reluctant readers with an extra oomph of focus on boys, GuysRead.comstyle tips about literacy lag and an interesting video of uber-authors James Patterson (Read, Kiddo, Read project; the Maximum Ride series) and Rick Riordan (the Percy Jackson series).
Aside from the NYTimes’ sensationalized “Boys and Reading: Is There Any Hope?” headline which seemed to be a self-defeating hook to glean more eyeballs, it DID make me think a lot about the messages pummeling kids about reading as if it were a Mary Poppins tune “Just a Spoon Full of Sugar” (makes the medicine go down)…How can we flip the media message about reading into a pleasurable, positive, fully immersive and experiential mind candy point of view instead of cramming it into “mandatory/required” verbiage leaking into ‘summer fun?’
What kind of joy juice allure and coolness cache can be used to replicate the Harry Potter and Twilight series rabid reader pop culture phenom in peer to peer ‘viral marketing?’ What tried and true basic tips (like BIG print and lots of white space for early readers) have worked time and again?
Read the rest of Amy Jussel’s article on the Shaping Youth site