The Book Whisperer Chapter 4

I am so honoured to be one of the bloggers hosting Chapter 4.   Are you still reading along?



Chapter 4 is all about Reading Freedom.  How do you choose a book to read?  Do you look at the front cover? Do you read the summary?  Do you look for the same author?  Maybe someone recommended a book?

What about all those reasons that we don't admit:  Do you choose a book because it's short?  the print is big? it's "fluffy", "silly" or contains for adults only materials?

Children should have the option to use whatever method they want to choose a book.  The important thing is that they are reading.  Right?

I really like the list that Donalyn Miller references in her book about the Rights of the Reader.   You can access the poster by clicking on the title.  I think my favourite is "the right to skip pages".   I'm not always into pages and pages of descriptions of scenery.  Who cares, just get to the story.  Those are the pages I tend to skip (ok, I admitted it.  Probably why I never did well in English but was more than likely the person that read the most books).

Here are the books that I got out of the library last week and the reasons I choose them.

The top 4 books are all by Margaret Peterson Haddix, an author that I love.   I hadn't read any of these titles yet so I scooped them up.  They are meant for a younger age group than the previous novels that I have read of her and are realistic fiction.  I loved them all and read 3 of them in one evening.  A lot of times I love books that are 1. easy to read 2. don't take a lot of brain power (this IS summer) 3. are fairly short (with 2 young children and a fully schedule, I don't have hours to devote to a book)

The bottom book, "Neptune's Children" by Boonie Dobkin was one that I just grabbed off the shelf and really liked the description.  Here's the description in the front of the book "A dream vacation at the Isles of Wonder theme park becomes a nightmare when biological terrorism causes the death of every adult on the Islands.  Younger teens and children survive, only to face the resulting horror and the chaos of a world without authority.  The figure of King Neptune, symbol of the Islands, unites them as they begin to build a society within the park, safe from outside dangers.  Led by a group called the Core, made up mostly of former park workers' children, the survivors slowly organize their world.  But when mysterious events bring danger, some of the Islanders begin to wonder if their home is as safe as they think and if their leaders can really be trusted.  As suspicions grow and rivalries intensify, the stage is set for a war that will determine the future of everyone on the Islands."  This book is taking me a little to read.  Mainly because darn housework keeps getting in the way.  But it is a really good book.  Makes you think about would truely happen if the children had to run the world.


How do you choose books to read?
Have you read any good books lately?
What would you recommend?