How to find a just-right book

& some recent favorites from Belle and Bea

It’s drop everything and read time, at least in Bea’s third grade classroom, where kids are building stamina by reading their chosen books independently. Even in Harriet’s pre-K class, kids who don’t feel ready for an after-lunch nap can choose to lie down quietly with a book.

The big challenge at school, according to Bea, is the sustaining-your-reading part. She says this time of year things tend to get a little chatty after about twenty minutes (that’s really good for third grade, I’ve tried to tell her!). Bea can read for a long time—we don’t do screens in cars, even on long trips, and as Harriet complained balefully on our way home from Mamie and Grampa’s, “There’s nothing to do at our house but pet two kitties and read books!”

As a first, fifth, and high school teacher, I found that maximizing reading time was all about matching the right books with the right readers. I stationed various interest baskets around the room in my elementary classrooms, and I would suggest books directly to readers in the high school classes I taught. I’m constantly losing books I lend to college and grad students, but I don’t really mind—books are one of those things I’m happy to replenish.

Bea reads really widely—fantasy, graphic novels and comics, poetry, realistic fiction, nonfiction, the works—but she also has strong feelings about books, and will sometimes reject the ones I suggest to her. We both love the feeling of having a book we can’t wait to get back to, so I thought I’d ask her advice about helping kids find the “just right” books for them.

Bea, how can parents help kids get or stay interested in reading?

You need to find a book that’s just right for your kid. It doesn’t just mean a book that’s right for their level, but a book your kid is actually interested in. For example, if your kid likes dragons, you shouldn’t suggest a book about Abraham Lincoln. You should let them read about dragons. Everybody learns about Abe Lincoln eventually.

How do you find the just-right books?

Well, you have to know what your interests are. For example, I love mythology and Japan, so books that include those two things are usually going to be great for me. Other people love insects! Or sports! For a while I really loved mysteries. Most kids love graphic novels, like the Raina Telgemeier books Guts, Smile, and Sisters. Harriet loves the Babymouse books.

You can also go to the library at school or the local library, and get a librarian to help . They always have great suggestions—our library even puts out top choices by the librarians, Katy and Kathleen, that can give you new ideas.

What do you think about rereading books? Should parents worry that their kids are reading the same books?

Why would they be worried?

I think sometimes parents want to make sure their kids are staying on track, challenging themselves…

Sometimes reading the same book is comforting, like a friend you know really well. I like reading all kinds of books, even books I read a few years ago. I also like comics like The Far Side and Calvin and Hobbes, and the Nate the Great comics are fun to read too. Or Bad Kitty! They’re not my “reading level” but I like them because they’re funny.

So, what have you been reading lately, Bea?

I just finished The Last Mapmaker by Christina Soontornvat. I read A Wish in the Dark last winter, and I’ve now read it twice. A Wish in the Dark is a fantasy book based on Les Misérables but set in a country like Thailand. I got The Last Mapmaker from McIntyre’s and liked it even more—or maybe I just read it more recently. It’s also a fantasy, but set on an ocean journey this time. It’s about a young girl who pretends to be rich and fancy so she can get a decent job and opportunities aboard a ship. In reality, her father is a con man. She finds out that the queen is offering a reward of 9,000 leks to the first crew to find the Sunderlands, a dangerous land of dragons, and she thinks this is her chance to get a lineal, which would show an impressive family line. I loved the adventure in this book!

The Paola Santiago series by Tehlor Kay Mejia: I borrowed these books from the library because they’re in the Rick Riordan Presents series, which I’ve been reading for a while, and little did I know this one would include one of my favorite scary stories! It’s a continuation of the La Llorona story. Paola is La Llorona’s granddaughter, a twist on the traditional story because in this version, one of her kids, Beto, is brought back to life. This three-book series is a little bit spooky and great for readers who love Mexican legends.

I’m in the middle of Patina by Jason Reynolds, which is a really good realistic novel about a runner named Patina. She’s in eighth grade and is having a hard time adjusting to her new school, which is fancy and private and mostly-white (Patina is Black). The only place she feels welcome is the track team, where there are other kids who have backgrounds like hers (you can read about them in Reynolds’s other novels in the same series). She runs for her sister, who is younger and having an even harder time, and for her mom, who has diabetes and is in a wheelchair.

I also just started: Alliana, Girl of Dragons by Julie Abe. I chose this book because it’s set in a country based on Japan, which is the place I want to visit the most, and because I’d already read Eva Evergreen, Semi-Magical Witch and loved it. Alliana, Girl of Dragons is based on the Japanese Cinderella story and is beautifully written. There are also small drawings at the start of each chapter that are drawn in an anime style that I really enjoyed.

Can’t wait to read: Merci Suárez Plays it Cool by Meg Medina.

From Belle:

I’m reading Beowulf: a New Translation by Maria Dhavana Headley to Bea. It’s really an exciting, modern read-aloud, full of “bro!” swagger and the occasional swear. We both love it.

My favorite book so far this year is Stories from the Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana, a book of linked stories connected by tenants of the same gentrifying building in Harlem. Fofana is a middle-school teacher in the New York City Public School system, and his stories include the wisdom and insight of people you don’t always hear from, like paraprofessionals and behind-in-reading sixth graders. It’s a heartbreaking book in the best way.

Fierce Attachments: another New York City book, this one by the memoirist, journalist, and self-described “odd woman” Vivian Gornick. I’m actually listening to this one on audiobook, read by the author. It’s exactingly written, honest, hilarious, and utterly transporting.

I also loved this interview with Lynda Barry, where she talks about the importance of writing by hand and what we can learn from watching young children play. She says, about adults:

There’s total amnesia of the experience of deep play. When you’re an adult watching a kid playing with a little toy, you just think that kid’s doing that and there’s nothing else to it. But from the kid’s perspective that toy is playing with them. It’s interactive. There’s amnesia about the deepness of that interchange and amnesia about how when you’re making a story or making a painting it’s that same sort of interchange, and having that is what you’re born to do.

Can’t wait to read: The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li

Just started: Tomorrow in Shanghai by May-lee Chai—a book from a North Carolina press that’s getting rave reviews.

What about you? Any new favorites to recommend?

That’s it for us! Sorry we’ve been so slow with posts, Frog Troublers—it’s been a busier-than-normal back to school time but we’re looking forward to getting back in the swing of things.