The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

Do you want to be able to motivate your students to read more? Donalyn Miller has years of experience inculcating the joy of reading into her sixth grade elementary school students, and Miller’s The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child shows teachers and parents how they can get their children excited about reading. Her thesis is that children should be able to choose books they want to read and be given time to read them in school. In chapter 1, “There and Back Again,” Miller tells the story of how she became dissatisfied with the whole-class novel and switched to reading workshops. Miller tells how she created materials with challenging questions and activities for the novel her class was reading together. Unfortunately, though, students spent little time reading and way too much time answering questions and doing activities. The result was boredom, which students associated with reading. She abandoned this approach and switched to reading workshops in which students chose books from the classroom library and read them during class. In this way, students can read interesting, level-appropriate books. Most importantly, though, they will read much more. In chapter 2, “Everybody Is a Reader,” Miller describes the three types of readers: developing, dormant and underground. Developing readers haven’t yet learned to read fluently at grade level. Dormant readers can read at grade level; however, they haven’t yet found the joy in reading. Underground readers, on the other hand, love reading, but they see no connection between the books they love and books they read at school. Miller shows how the whole-class novel hurts all of these students and how reading workshops helps. As I read the descriptions and examples of these types of students, I could identify them in my own classes and the desire to switch to workshops grew within me. In the vignette following chapter 2, Miller explains how to create surveys and use the results to recommend books students will find compelling. In chapter 3, “There’s a Time and a Place,” Miller argues for giving students time to read during class. She starts by giving students 15 minutes and gradually builds up to 30 minutes. Miller claims that if students read in class, they are more likely to read at home. Miller is not advocating independent silent reading in which students read with little or no guidance or feedback. On the contrary, Miller advocates an array of interventions for assisting students in choosing and reading level-appropriate books they enjoy. That is, Miller advocates scaffolded silent reading (ScSR). In chapter 4, “Reading Freedom,” Miller explains how she assists students. First of all, she has high expectations of her students. She requires them to read 40 books, along with a minimum number of books for each genre but giving students the freedom to choose what they will read. By giving students such a high goal, they are bound to read much more than they have in the past. In fact, Miller says that those who read the required 40 always read more, usually more than 50! Next, Miller empowers her students with the 10 rights of the reader. Then, Miller clearly explains how she attracts student interest through read-alouds and book journals, which she uses to communicate with students about their reading. In chapter 5, “Walking the Walk,” Miller implores reading teachers to regularly read children’s novels in order to become good models, give students good recommendations, and better understand their students. She recommends children’s books throughout her book, and appendix A provides readers with the “Ultimate Library List,” a list of 100 books recommended not by Miller but rather by her students. In chapter 6, “Cutting the Teacher Strings,” Miller questions traditional reading activities and recommends alternatives. For traditional teachers, she shows how they can make slight modifications in their procedures to improve learning outcomes. For brave teachers who can defy tradition, she explains how to achieve course objectives while allowing students to choose books and providing them with time to read them in class. Furthermore, Miller offers superior alternatives to traditional comprehension tests, book reports, reading logs and round-robin reading. In the final chapter, “Letting Go,” Miller laments that the vast majority of teachers do not take her approach to reading. As a result, her students have to go back to traditional reading classes when they move up to the next grade. She wishes that more teachers would inculcate the love of reading into their students instead of inundating them with worksheets. The Book Whisperer should be read by parents and teachers who want their children to read a lot more. Parents will feel more confident in motivating their children to read. Teachers will feel more confident in creating the conditions for learning and enabling their students to read more than they have ever before. Foreign language teachers will appreciate Miller’s strategies, activities and techniques for extensive reading. In short, this is an indispensable book for anyone interested in creating a culture of reading.

I absolutely loved this book. It was on my to-read list for the longest time and once the school year ended in June, I finally had the time and energy to read teaching-related books. I initially borrowed this book for our local library, but immediately purchased it after I finished it (in one evening) so I that I could have my own copy to write in and plaster with post-its. This book was everything I was hoping for and more. This is the book I wish I was around when I first started teaching. It is no secret that I love reading and have loved reading for as far back as I can remember. One of the reasons I became a teacher was because I wanted to share my love reading with kids and instill that same love of reading within them. Even though I think I've done a decent job of sharing that with my students over the years with various things that I've implemented in my classroom, I loved that this book gave me practical ideas that would be easy to introduce in my classroom right away. The hardest thing about being a teacher nowadays is the pressure to perform on tests. It's all about the test scores and subsequently, what we know to be "good teaching" goes by the wayside because there really isn't any time to do it. About a year ago, I was almost at the end of the year and realized that I just did not like teaching reading anymore. I dreaded that part of the day because it was so dull to me. It was all about reading passages and answering test questions. No wonder they were bored, I WAS BORED! My grade-level and I had a deep discussion about it and we decided we need to do read-alouds again, not because we wanted to teach some standard or whatever, but just to enjoy the act of reading and sharing a story together. Go figure. I devoured this book in one evening and then promptly raved all about it on my facebook to share with my fellow colleagues and teacher friends. I feel like it started a little "Book Whisperer" revolution amongst my closest teacher friends and several of them bought, read and also implemented ideas from the book as well. My grade-level team also read the book and we started off this school year with a mutual enthusiasm to create lifelong readers in our students. My students plowed through the book tubs full of books from my classroom library on the first day of school. We all read together and it started my year on the right foot with reading at the core of my mornings. They are currently deeply into their 40 book challenge this year (and beating my measly 8 books) and on fire with the number of books they are reading. We have book commercials on Fridays and I love seeing how many of them are reading books that their peers have recommended. Even though sometimes I curse myself for doing them because they take up a lot of time each evening, my students and I converse once a week with letters that we write back and forth to each other in their reader's notebooks. I really know my students as readers. They come to me asking for recommendations and it delights my heart when they dig through my classroom library each day looking for their next favorite book. Thank you, Donalyn Miller, for helping me to create the classroom of readers that I always dreamed of. Overall: It was an fantastic read and I highly recommend it to teachers who love reading and want to create a classroom of lifelong readers. While it shared some theory and education philosophies, it definitely provided a lot of practical tips and ideas that were easy to implement into my classroom. The way Miller writes makes you feel like you're having coffee with an old friend. Her love of reading pours out of this book and it is so contagious, you can help but catch it and want to pass it on. Get this book now, you won't be disappointed!

Hi ha llibres que et fan pensar, n'hi ha que t'emocionen o t'enganxen. Alguns et mostren camins per transformar l'aula. Aquest ho té tot. Te fa volar, te mostra què fer si vols aconseguir alumnes lectors per tota la vida, que sapin elegir llibres amb in criteri propi i que ademés tenguin una xarxa social de lectors per aprendre. M'ha fascinat. Encara q la 1a part és millor, i a la 2a part es repeteixen les idees, igualment li pos un 5 perquè és un llibre que fa moltes ganes de ser mestre.

Very accessible book. It speaks of the LOVE of reading, which is the enduring point of our book clubs, book reports, library time and such. If these things are counter productive, then this book gives us a direction that isn’t really news, it’s something we all know - if you want to read, you need TIME. We know this, yet the elephant in the room: the question, “Why won’t kids read?” Is answered. We don’t let them, that’s why. We stifle that spark with forests of papers and endless dissection of what could have been a favourite book. I began reading this in the late spring and wished mightily that I had read it in the summer so I could begin the year with this book under my arm and a new perspective to teach from. Even so, my students had most likely read more in those few months than they had read last year, I’m sure. I’d also discovered that I was buying books I’d assumed would make good “classroom books” and realized it had been a while since I asked my own students what they liked to read (insert facepalm here). Rejuvenated and inspired again. Thank you.

I connected to this book. It made me evaluate my own methods and I am energised to put into practice some of the ideas that Donalyn Miller suggests. Extremely easy to read. Loved it.

Amazing insight from a teacher's perspective. I learned an awful lot from the book.. only complain, Donalyn Miller, didn't retweeted my book praise @CEOteacher :-) Here are some of the wonderful insights from The Book Whisperer: 1. Create a self owned reading library in the classroom 2. Encourage kids to read across genre 3. New genres for example - historical fiction, etc 4. Better book review method - its called Book Advertisement (excellent) 5. Challenging kids to read 42 book per year! Phew! And amazingly kids achieved it 6. Beautiful cross section of recommended books. 7. Lots of positive conversation and case studies in the book. Go ahead, be a Book Whisperer.

It's very American but the ideas are inspirational and have given me loads of ideas for my classroom.