Product reviews for Reading for Pleasure

Reading is something that so many of us take for granted. We fail to consider those for whom it is a struggle or how reading lacks appeal after trying and failing to access the worlds and experiences that books are supposed to unlock. Kenny Pieper seeks to put us in the shoes of those who don't, or can't, rush into the library or bookshop to devour page after page of whatever or whoever is our latest literary obsession. He makes us consider the - often complex - ways that we could help these children to be as excited and comfortable with immersion in a book as others and, most likely, we are.

Kenny's writing is gentle and encouraging, rather like how you feel his lessons would be to the reluctant reader, but the book is not without comment that is both educational and political. Kenny explores the crime of illiteracy and what this means for people's ability to engage with the world and the political landscape around them and looks at the methods and strategies employed in schools, both now and in the past, that may have put off exactly those people they were supposed to encourage.

This is no bombastic ego-driven polemic designed to gain notoriety or attention for the writer but a genuine exploration of what it is that prevents young people from engaging with reading and, importantly, what we can do to help break down these barriers. Kenny offers ideas and suggestions but doesn't ram these down your throat or at any point suggest that he is the font of all knowledge, preferring instead to share what's worked for him and see if you might like to try it. Everything from reading programmes to e-readers is discussed fairly and carefully, with seventeen years of experience of both readers and the act of reading in mind, by someone who clearly holds the written word dear and wants to open up the beauty of it to all. 



Kenny's blog is entitled -˜Just trying to be better than yesterday' and the humility of that title is also evident here in this book. It's a humility that many others in education could take a lesson from. In this case it's unnecessary - read this and take the ideas he suggests into your classrooms and your schools and we'll all be far, far better off than before.