Inkheart

At work I mostly meet with small groups of students and we do either complex math problems involving multiple steps, or we'll read novels and have lots of higher-level discussions. It's not a bad gig, but most of the stuff we read is pretty dry: standard, main character-learns-an-important-lesson-about-racism/individuality/thinking about others' feelings.

I have this group of 4th graders that's a kind of "side group." Off the radar, not officially part of my gifted program, but we still meet once a week to read a book and do some deep thinking about it. Usually their classroom teachers assign me something to read with them but they were coming up empty so I suggested Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, one of the best children's books I've read in years.

On the first day I passed out each copy to the kids and we opened to chapter one. Since I left the classroom I never get the chance to read aloud so I was really looking forward to this, especially since Inkheart concerns itself with the love of books and stories and the subtle, wonderful art of reading aloud.

The books starts off with a young girl reading in bed at night, while the rain lightly falls outside her window. She notices a man standing outside in the yard and runs to get Mo, her father. Mo opens the front door, peering out into the darkness, and calls out, "Dustfinger!"

At that point one of the girls in my room jumped about three feet into the air and we all had a good laugh. There was an audible sigh from the group and one or two even said, "You're really good!"

Now that, ladies and gentlemen, is just about the best compliment I can ever receive from a student.

I love reading, and I really love reading aloud to students, but I hate teaching reading. It's become so clinical, so cold, all about strategies and appropriate texts. And the appropriate texts are usually so bland and watered-down that there's no guts to anything the kids read any more. Nothing too scary, nothing too edgy. They're not even allowed to read about dog scrotums these days.

Yesterday a girl was in the library asking for a good "scary" book because she had read everything she could get her hands on. I happened to be in there as well and suggested Neil Gaiman's Coraline, which one time got a raised eyebrow from a learning center director (in another school) when I mentioned I used to read it aloud to my students.

You read Coraline? And no one complained?

I can't wait to find out what that girl in the library thought of it.