"Follow the amazing transformation of adolescents who went from reluctant to enthusiastic readers, reporting that reading not only helped them manage their stress but also helped them negotiate happier, more meaningful lives. Includes research on what students should and should not read and the consequences of censoring books that interest them"--

In a sea of troubling reporting about education, teaching, reading, and the wellbeing of teens, Ivey and Johnston bring some good news that shows what happens when we stop underestimating young people. This accessible book offers an engaging account of a 4-year study of adolescents who went from reluctant to enthusiastic readers. These youth reported that reading not only helped them manage their stress, but also helped them negotiate happier, more meaningful lives. This amazing transformation occurred when their teachers simply allowed them to select their own books, invited them to read, with no strings attached, and provided time for them to do so. These students, nearly all of whom reported a previously negative relationship with reading, began to read voraciously inside and outside of school; performed better on state tests; and transformed their personal, relational, emotional, and moral lives in the process. This illuminating book leads readers on a tour of adolescents’ reading lives in their own words, offering a long-overdue analysis of students’ deep engagement with literature. The text also includes research to inform arguments about what students should and should not read and the consequences of limiting students’ access to the books that interest them through censorship. Book Features: Links young adults’ reading engagement with socio-emotional and intellectual development.Provides nuanced descriptions of teaching practices that facilitate student agency in learning.Features student voices that have been absent in debates about what is appropriate for young people to read and under what circumstances.Connects student perspectives on reading, with positive outcomes of reading, to research from other disciplines.Illuminates the breadth and depth of the responsibilities of teaching English language arts.

Celebrate the freedom to read with this timely, empowering middle-grade debut in the spirit of The View from Saturday or Frindle. When twelve-year-old June Harper's parents discover what they deem an inappropriate library book, they take strict parenting to a whole new level. And everything June loves about Dogwood Middle School unravels: librarian Ms. Bradshaw is suspended, an author appearance is canceled, the library is gutted, and all books on the premises must have administrative approval. But June can't give up books . . . and she realizes she doesn't have to when she spies a Little Free Library on her walk to school. As the rules become stricter at school and at home, June keeps turning the pages of the banned books that continue to appear in the little library. It's a delicious secret . . . and one she can't keep to herself. June starts a banned book library of her own in an abandoned locker at school. The risks grow alongside her library's popularity, and a movement begins at Dogwood Middle--a movement that, if exposed, could destroy her. But if it's powerful enough, maybe it can save Ms. Bradshaw and all that she represents: the freedom to read. Equal parts fun and empowering, this novel explores censorship, freedom of speech, and activism. For any kid who doesn't believe one person can effect change...and for all the kids who already know they can!

In these changing times of global flows of media and technologies and reports of declining reading enjoyment, researchers, policymakers and educators need to engage anew with essential issues of what counts as reading, what kinds of reading matter and how to support teen reading engagement in school and out-of-school settings. Bringing together contributions from well-known and emerging adolescent literacy researchers from different disciplinary perspectives, this edited collection consolidates contemporary research on teens’ volitional print and digital reading, whether in school or out-of-school contexts. The first part of the book offers overviews of what teens are reading, followed by chapters on community support on reading and new ways of researching teen reading. With chapters from North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and the Middle East, the collection will offer multifaceted and complex insights into what, how and why teens read in different contexts. Reflection questions at the end of each chapter encourage readers to consider how the research can be applied in their own research, policy and practice contexts. This book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers and educators who are invested in supporting adolescent-engaged reading with evidence- based policies and strategies.

In the years since Choice Words: How Our Language Affects Children’s Learning was first published and quickly became a beloved bestseller, countless educators and their students have been impacted by this short, but powerful book. Throughout it, author Peter Johnston provides examples of seemingly ordinary words, phrases, and uses of language that are pivotal in the orchestration of the classroom. Grounded in a balance of research and classroom practice, Choice Words demonstrates how and what we say (and don't say) have surprising consequences for what children learn and for who they become as literate people. Now, in this second edition, Peter Johnston returns to the central message of the book—that teachers’ language is their most powerful tool for impacting children’s learning and creating classroom community. With updates throughout the chapters to both the research and classroom examples, and new chapters on social-emotional learning and mindsets, this book has much to offer to both those familiar with Choice Words and those who will read it for the first time. This book will be enlightening for any teacher who wishes to be more conscious of the many ways their language helps children acquire literacy skills and view the world, their peers, and themselves in new ways.

Identifies evidence-backed and easy-to-implement strategies for encouraging young people to read, and helps you to position your library as an indispensable resource for supporting reading. While most reading research focuses on young children, this book looks at how to support reading beyond the early years and into adulthood. Reporting on strong, peer-reviewed research supported by sound theoretical and methodological approaches, it emphasizes the practical implications of these findings, sharing what this means for you in terms of how you can be a powerful positive reading model and influence in young people's lives. Enriched with the voices of today's young people, the book includes quotes that allow readers to decide how to support reading engagement for tweens and teens based on what would make them read more, as expressed in their own words. Engaging and readable, it will be of interest to school and public librarians and can be shared with teachers, parents, and other literacy instructors and advocates.

What do we mean when we say that a text is relevant to a young person or to a group of young people? And how might a reimagining of relevance, shaped through the voices of young men of color, enhance literacy teaching and learning? Based on case studies of six young Black, Latino, and South Asian men and their reading experiences, this book reconceptualizes the term relevance as it applies to and is applied within literacy education (middle school through college). The author reveals how four dimensions of relevance--Identity, Spatiality, Temporality, and Ideology--can guide educators in supporting the reading and meaning-making experiences of students in ways that honor the complexities of their lives and enhance their criticality. Sciurba frames relevance from a student-centered perspective as conditions that are practically, socially, and/or conceptually applicable to one's life. Readers can use this book to disrupt problematic enactments of relevance in literacy spaces that are rooted in assumptions about who young people are, culturally or otherwise, as well as how they think and maneuver through their complex worlds. Book Features: Provides a nuanced understanding of relevance in literacy education in order to successfully enact culturally relevant pedagogy. Draws on scholarly literature from a broad range of fields, including sociology, cultural studies, literary studies, and physical science studies. Showcases what a nondeficit approach to working with Black, Latino, South Asian, and other young people of color can look like in educational contexts. Examines data from longitudinal qualitative studies with six students and young men of color that took place across 10 years beginning in a New York City middle school.

"The book is for preservice secondary teachers across all content areas and for beginning teachers who may not yet have much experience working in secondary classrooms. Connected to adolescent literacy, the authors encourage a "widened lens" approach that considers varied perspectives and research findings when engaging in various and often competing initiatives, issues, pedagogies, and strategies"--

Drawing on scholarly research findings, this book presents a cogent case that librarians can use to work towards prioritization of reading in libraries and in schools. Reading is more important than it has ever been—recent research on reading, such as PEW reports and Scholastic's "Kids and Family Reading Report," proves that fact. This new edition of Reading Matters provides powerful evidence that can be used to justify the establishment, maintenance, and growth of pleasure reading collections, both fiction and nonfiction, and of readers' advisory services. The authors assert that reading should be woven into the majority of library activities: reference, collection building, provision of leisure materials, readers' advisory services, storytelling and story time programs, adult literacy programs, and more. This edition also addresses emergent areas of interest, such as e-reading, e-writing, and e-publishing; multiple literacies; visual texts; the ascendancy of young adult fiction; and fan fiction. A new chapter addresses special communities of YA readers. The book will help library administrators and personnel convey the importance of reading to grant-funding agencies, stakeholders, and the public at large. LIS faculty who wish to establish and maintain courses in readers' advisory will find it of particular interest.

"Black African immigrant youth and young adults from countries south of the Sahara, among the most rapidly growing immigrant groups in the US given immigration, resettlement, and asylum programs, have long demonstrated varied racial, ethnic, gendered, cultural, linguistic, religious, and transnational identities in their diverse schooling and education practices. Moreover, African immigrant youth enacting complex, embodied practices within and across varied schooling and educational contexts, and at the interplay of language, literacy, and civic learning and action taking, complicate urgent questions of which students may engage civically in schools and communities, and how they may do so. Thus, transformative education research to support diverse schooling, education, and civic engagement experiences for African immigrant and refugee students will increasingly depend on enacting generative research frameworks, teaching approaches, and innovative methodologies. Such research and teaching hold possibilities for assisting and preparing researchers, teacher educators, teachers, and community-based educators to identify key schooling, education and civic engagement practices associated with student's varied identities, and / or taking up research approaches and learning contexts that affirm and extend the identified practices"--