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Author and school librarian Jolene Gutierrez shares her best tips for encouraging young learners to read. To start, she helps them find books that feel comfortable for them.
Avi’s 2025 Summer Blog Series Pam Muñoz Ryan From Avi: As I have for the last three summers, (summer of 2024, summer of 2023, summer of 2022) I’ve invited 13 admired authors to write for my blog for the next three months. I hope you’ll tune in each Tuesday to see who answered this year’s question,
Having been a high school and middle school writing and English teacher for decades, I’ve had an up-close view of students and their reading habits. I’ve taught kids who couldn’t stop reading. There were also students who proudly told me, “I hate to read.”
As head teacher of a small school in England and as a volunteer working with children at an “asylum seekers center” in Germany, I created a safe harbor environment, where children could share the joy of reading together, without judgment.
I was impressed and thrilled by the idea that one of our teachers was composing his own music and sending it in to become a published piece. I had never met anyone who would dare to do such a thing — he was that serious, that committed about his art.
Sure, we can visit classrooms, chat online, and answer fan mail, but I think the most important thing we writers can do „,
“I tell them this — If you read something you’re interested in, you’ll get interested in reading.”
For this summer’s blog series, I’ve asked other writers, “What is your favorite strategy for encouraging young people to read?” Here’s my answer.
Have you read a good book lately? A cookbook? For many of us, this is the kind of book we read more often than not. Sometimes on a daily basis. But, in my experience, we rarely talk about them as books, how they are written, or if they are indeed readable.
Before I could make a living as a writer, I was a librarian. No surprise, books are in my home today.