How Good Readers Choose Books

When people go to buy a car, they seldom (most likely never) just randomly drive up to a car lot and arbitrarily pick a car. They usually arrive at the lot already having done some research on what makes and models they're interested in. Many already have a good idea what they're interested in. (I'm a Honda guy, for instance.) They'll usually look at several cars, compare prices and features, and then usually ask for a test drive to see how a particular car handles and how smooth the ride is. They may test drive several cars before finally settling on the one they think is a good fit for them or their families.

Good readers are pretty much the same --  they already have a feel for what they're interested in and they always take books for a "test drive" before determining if it's a "just  right" book for them.

Yesterday, we discussed how readers go about choosing books for their reading. Yes, sometimes we're assigned books to read, but how do we go about selecting books when we have the choice to read what we want in our independent reading? To get them thinking about that, I put an unfamiliar book in each student's hand and asked them "How would you know if this book is one that you would choose to read or not?" I then told them to silently spend two minutes with that book and do whatever they needed to do to answer that question.

Walking around the classroom, I saw students reading the back covers, staring at the front cover, flipping to the first page (some even skipped to the end!). At the end of the two minutes, I asked, "Now, how many of you would be interested in reading the book in your hand?" A few hands shot up, some enthusiastically so. I followed up with the question, "How did you determine whether the book in your hand is one you'd want to read or not?" and then recorded their answers. Here's what my classes came up with:

Pretty good lists! The point is that good readers are deliberate in their reading choices -- that they have strategies in place to help them find books that are the perfect fit for who they are as readers. In the following days as I confer with students about their reading, the first question I'll ask is, "So how did you go about choosing _________________________ to read?" Hopefully, they'll draw upon what we learned in class to help answer that question!