I just finished reading Making the Match: The Right Book for the Right Reader at the Right Time, Grades 4-12 by Teri Lesesne. For the past two weeks, I read one chapter each morning as I drank my coffee and then posted a note or two on Facebook and Twitter about parts that resonated with me.
Lesesne makes explicit the complexity of adolescence and the hard work it takes to match readers and books. There is no short cut to knowing your students as individuals or being well-read so that you can indeed “make the match.” You have to put in the time and effort, but she helps teachers with many book suggestions, lists, strategies, and stories. Here is a glimpse into my reading experience with Making the Match.
Reader,Who Are You?
On day one, I read chapter one, which encourages teachers to better acquaint ourselves “with these curious creatures we call adolescents” (17) and consider what we need to know about our students to find that “right book for the right reader at the right time.” And so I thought I should start with myself and asked my Facebook teacher “friends” to join me. I posted this question on Facebook:
The comments on this post made Lesesne’s point that teachers can understand the theories of adolescence and make some recommendations for books knowing readers are figuring out who they are and how they fit in the world, but our students are individuals, and we cannot make assumptions. We have to get to know our students. Here are just a few comments shared here with permission:
Gary Anderson:They would have had to know that the persona I had in class was different from how I acted outside of school. The “real me” was funnier, spacier, and more unfocused than how I acted in class. The in-school version was given classic literature which I fake-read or ignored. Outside of class I was binge-reading horror stories, westerns, music magazines, plus Archie and Marvel comics.
Mary Hale:At that point, I was thrilled by any book that gave insight into adult life and especially strong female heroines living through difficulty– A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle come to mind. I also loved books about the past where personal stories intersected with historical events.I guess they’d have to know that I loved history and that I was very curious about the way adults lived but afraid to ask.
Sue Ellen:That I was super shy and had no idea how to speak with people, came from a divorced home, dealt with a lot of family issues, was an excellent reader and liked lengthy books to escape, and loved dancing.
Cindi Koudelka: That I definitely dwelled in the “no man’s land” referred to on p. 13. I would sneak into my parent’s room, so I could “borrow” my dad’s books because I had gone through all my own stuff , and I was hungry for grittier topics that didn’t necessarily end happily. As far as YA, I was a huge fun of all things SE Hinton and anything else that smacked of that writing.
As for me, I am not sure my teachers even saw me. Heck, I was forgotten all the time at home among my ten siblings. I was hungry to be noticed, to have some choice, to try new experiences, and, well, just plain hungry. I’d hide food and get up in the middle of the night to eat, and afterward, I’d listen to a record I liked with earphones over and over again trying to understand the words, and sometimes I’d sneak into my sibling’s rooms to “borrow” a shirt from an older sister (but you knew that right, Julie).
I was quiet and spacey and had ideas no one asked me about. I think I just needed someone to pay attention. I am not sure how I would have responded if a teacher even approached me to say, Hey, I wonder if you’d like to read this with me. Or, Ya know, this is a new book;will you read it and tell me what you think?
Imagine Gary, Mary, Sue Ellen, Cindi, and Sarah (me) were your students and you knew all this, which is just a glimpse into their teen self with the privilege of perspective to notice and name what they might have needed. What books would you recommend? What might you talk about in your conferences or blog-notebook exchanges? Which books or authors would you introduce to Cindy to offer her a grittier topic? Would you recommend Sue Ellen a book exploring divorce? Do you know some great comics for Gary, or maybe horror story in a graphic novel? Because horror stories give me nightmares, I don’t read them, so I’d seek out teacher-friends and other students to help me find a match for Gary (and then I’d offer to read a book with him to show I am trying to stretch as a reader, even if I have a nightmare). I would have to keep a timer for my conferences with Mary because her reading interests are so similar to mine. I can see us getting into good conversations about history.
Now consider all the students who don’t know, don’t care, or just can’t yet articulate what they want, need, or wonder –yet. Well, Making the Match does have a ton of lists and survey ideas to get the conversation started, and book talks and read-alouds will help these student-readers begin to notice what they might want, need, or wonder. Lesesne has a great chapter on how to give engaging book talks.
But the most important thing a reading teacher can do is to make time for individual conversations (verbal or virtual) to find out what each reader needs.
I see you. I know you’re here. I know when you are not here. I want to know you. I care about you.
What is the Purpose of Reading?
As I continued with Making the Match, I found myself reaching for my phone to place holds on titles of books, collections of short plays, and noting poems and short stories to revisit. The copyright is 2003, but so many of the lists Lesesne provides are timeless. Still, the lists and my quest to assuage my “condition of FOMO” (fear of missing out) can send me on a curriculum tangent, more concerned with “what” to read rather than “why” or “for whom.”
Lesesne’ s work is not really about the books. It is about the reader and the reader’s experience.
In chapter two, Teri Lesesne discusses Donelson and Nilsen’s stages of reading as one way of framing how a reader develops so that teachers can attend to readers in different stages (unconscious delight, reading autobiographically, reading for vicarious experiences, reading for philosophical speculation, and reading for aesthetic experience). In chapter ten, she provides a detailed discussion about what the stages mean for readers with tips for teachers.
I am not sure I see readers in stages any more than I do as letters, numbers, or any other category, so I am considering these varied reading stages as “experiences” we can nurture in our classroom practice at different times and for different students (and I think Lesesne would support this interpretation). I see these experiences as ongoing and concurrent. The purpose of reading is these varied experiences because of how they help us become.
I’ve created a chart to help me “see” that how we match students with texts is complex and involves an uncovering the many facets of a reader’s life; of a life enriched by reading and other readers; of reading as a means of making sense of ourselves, our world, and our places in it; and of reading as an experience all its own.
So how would this framework help me be a better teacher for Gary, Mary, Sue Ellen, and Cindi (plus all 180 something human beings with whom I read)? Well, these are angles I would take when doing book talks and conferences.
For example, right now, I am reading Towers Falling by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Deja is in 5th grade and living in a shelter with her two younger siblings, mother who works as a waitress, and father who is sick. Her new school has a view of the Manhattan skyline (15 years after 9/11), and they are learning about why history matters. The book asks many questions that might entice readers: What does it mean to live in a shelter? What does it mean to be a big sister/brother? What does it mean to be Muslim living in New York on the anniversary of 9/11? What does it mean to be the new kid in school? What does it mean to feel like you are the only one in the dark? What is home?
Reading Towers Falling can be an unconscious delight or autobiographical, and it can be a vicarious, speculative, and aesthetic experience, too. There is no either/or. What matters when matching readers and books is that the teacher (or peer) engages in some kind of conversation about what that experience could be and, later, was like for the reader as an individual. What did this book do for you?
Patrick Ness, author of A Monster Calls, said in this Yarn podcast,
I get asked a lot what do I hope the book does or what do I want the book to do.I have reservations about that…I don’t want to tell anyone what to feel about a book, and that comes from …being a reader. I am very quirky about reading in that I believe it is so private…I can say I’ve had this experience, but I have no idea what your experience might be…For me, a reader’s reaction to a book is that private, that valuable, that true — because it is yours.
I wouldn’t assume that any of “my students” would or would not like Towers Falling. It may not be what Gary reads typically, but he might want to read this with Mary and talk about it, and maybe Mary would do some extra research on 9/11. Sue Ellen might like the family storyline, but the writing might be too easy for her (and for the others), but I’d admit that it is a quick read and would love to hear what she thinks of the book (because while it was easy for me, I connected to the family dynamics, too, and maybe we could talk about our families). I don’t know (yet) if the ending is happy, so I’d ask Cindi to read this one with me and tell me what she thinks of the ending, and I’d admit that it is not really one of those gritty books she typically reads, but I have an idea for her next book. I’d expect any one of my students, after 20 pages or so, may like or want to abandon this book, and that would be okay. We’d find something else; they’re experience would be part of our matching process.
Readers will want books to do different things for them at different times. I may be in a place where I want to understand injustice, so I would want to find my way to All American Boys or a speech by Sojouner Truth or Mary Lou Hamer. I was in a place last year where I really wanted to understand what it was like for my sister growing up gay in our big Catholic family, so I read Boy Meets Boy, I am J, and Parrotfish. I am not sure how I’d feel if a teacher gave me Towers Falling when I was in junior high and said, “I know your dad is unemployed, so this might help give you some insight.” However, I’d accept the book if she said, “This is a great story about a girl making sense of her life and how it is connected to the past. The writing is in prose, but the sentences feel like poetry. I think you’ll like it, but I’d love to hear what you think.” I guess there is an art to the matching conversation, which Lesesne demonstrates in her book talk chapter.
When I meet an incarnation of Gary, Mary, Sue Ellen, and Cindi in the fall, I might suggest these books (but I’d be prepared to be totally wrong).
- Gary: Whiteout and Y: The Last Man Book One
- Mary: Empty Places and Wolf Hollow
- Sue Ellen: The Seventh Wish and A Time to Dance
- Cindy: The Carnival at Bray and OCD Love Story
Four Take-a-Ways
When I finish a book, I don’t always write a blog or make charts of the content, but I do like to think about how that book helps me in my becoming, and here are four from Making the Match:
- Our adolescent students are individuals rather than some construction of adolescence.The question of “who are you” can be answered in many different ways and the responses we get and give change as we live.
- I can only know Gary, Mary, Sue Ellen, and Cindi if I “see” them and engage them in real and virtual conversations about themselves and what they need, want, and wonder.
- By reading widely and attending to the many reasons we read and what reading does for and to us, I can be a pretty good match maker, but I don’t have to do it alone. If I do this “right,” then students will help each other make the match.
- My life and what I read influence how I relate and what I recommend to students. I have an ethical responsibility to be conscious of those implications.
How would you answer this question: What would your English teacher have to know about you to match you with that “just right” book? What do you think of my graphic? What would you add or change?