Odds Stacked Against Pleasure Reading

At Todd Elementary School in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y., fifth-grade teacher Diane M. Mallett routinely provides opportunities for her students to select books that excite them, and her students say the freedom to choose pays off. Ricky Grassui, 11, said he likes to read only "sort of" but admits to diving into books he can choose.

This year, Mallett added a new reading opportunity for her students: participating in the country's largest annual Children's Choices book list, run jointly by the Children's Book Council and the International Reading Association. Mallett's 21 students were among the 10,000 children asked this year to read books published in 2004 and review them for other children. (At the same time, teachers and older children also review books for separate lists.)

The students said they loved the freedom to choose what they read. "It was really fun," said Samantha Sternschein, 11. "We'd get a basket of books and got to pick out what looked good to us. At the end of the book, you'd fill out a form asking, 'Did you like the book and would you recommend it to anyone?' It made us want to read more."

It is more often in 10th grade and above where choice tightens and meaning is dictated, said John H. Bushman, director of the Writing Conference Inc. and a University of Kansas professor.

Curriculum often demands that these students read classics, even if students have no "clue about the theme, the syntax, the vocabulary and for the most part they really don't care because the literature does not connect to them," he said.

There is no "making meaning as readers" -- allowing students to bring their experiences and thoughts into the analysis of meaning -- because many students don't understand what they have read, he said. Teachers are left to "tell them what it means," he said.

That happened to Abbey Becker, a graduate of Richard Montgomery High School who attends Emerson College. During the summer before 11th grade English class, she read Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" and enjoyed it. The joy was lost in class, however, "ripping apart sentences and trying to figure out the metaphors."

"The word 'funny' might have meant one thing to me," she said, "but it supposedly had a definite counter-directional slant to it, in the author's mind. How did my teacher know this?"