When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do: A Guide for Teachers 6-12

When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do by Kylene Beers has been inspirational and life-changing for teachers in our district. As Language Arts Instructional Specialist, working closely with the Middle Level Coordinator for a large school district, we are constantly seeking methods and materials that will enhance reading instruction and advance literacy. When Kids Can't Read provides hands-on strategies for improved reading instruction that our teachers embrace and implement immediately in their classrooms. Teachers in our district have used this book as the focus of professional literary circles, as a guide in reading classes for reluctant readers, and as the foundation to improved reading instruction across the curriculum. I have read this book cover to cover; it is an essential book for all educators striving to make a difference one struggling reader at a time.

I am a librarian who finds this book to be of great use for teachers in my school who are trying to reach struggling readers. Her ideas are practical, grounded in research and adaptable to individual curriculum and school needs.
I was surprised to see that someone who had not read the book was making comments on a small section of appended material. Yes, errors do occur in all texts, and that is regrettable. However, neither of the examples of the mistakes in Appendix M would keep students from locating the books mentioned. As a school librarian I constantly have kids asking me to help them locate books. Sometimes I am lucky if I get a clue such as "I think it had a blue cover" to go on. I certainly could show students how to use an OLCC to locate books by either author or by title or through other methods. Plus, I have a storehouse of knowledge as the librarian about good books and authors. Dr. Beers has provided some excellent titles, several hundred of them as I recall, to motivate reluctant readers. I compliment her for including such an exhaustive list in a text aimed at practical strategies to help assist kids in becoming readers.

I have not read this book, but I was given Appendix M as part of a list of suggested books for Summer Reading. As a librarian, I am appalled by the number of errors in this list of titles and authors. Students will have trouble finding several of these books when the authors' names and the titles are spelled incorrectly. How can we expect the best from students when we give them a sloppily edited list from which to choose their reading material? One example is "Zusack, Markus. Fighting Reuben Wolf", which should read "Zusak, Markus. Fighting Ruben Wolfe." Vivian Vande Velde's book is "The Rumplestiltskin Problem" not just "The Rumplestiltskin." This book is in desperate need of better editing before teachers use it to select books.

This isn't just revolutionary; it's revelationary. This is a book to make any teacher who has ever taught from 6 th grade on up have hope once more. It arms you with weapons of mass instruction, specific mass instruction. It brings a reader to the land of read and reread, much as the writing project brought the writer into the land of rewrite. So many techniques, so many strategies, so many ok methods that beguile the mind and break the heart of the retired teacher: 'where were you when I needed you'??????

One of the reasons I floated slowly downward in the grade levels the longer I taught was the diversity of reading levels. Had I known that it's okay to reread, to real aloud, to think aloud, to say something aloud about what you are reading, I might still be teaching.

Kylene's book is full of devotion and passion and subtle but strong excitement: there is hope for the adolescent reader, the dependent reader, the below grade level reader. There is hope.

Read Kylene's book and share the hope!

Passion. Voice. Soul. Reality. This book has all of this and more. It has substance. I wish I had been given this book when i was teaching Middle School and High School. I wish I had known then what I have now learned, now that I am a retired teacher after 37 years of teaching.

This is a book that makes sense in all its many pages, as to what teachers can and ought to do, WHEN KIDS CAN'T READ. I loved the idea that 'it's okay to reread a book!' duh. (Why didn't I think of that?) I loved 'think alouds'. I loved 'say something'. I loved all the methods given because I know they work--she presents the word for word classroom dialogue to show how they work.

Here is a book that reaches out and touches you, no, more, it reaches out and grabs you by the eyeballs to look, to look again; to read, and read again; to model the methods and model them again.

Am I being paid for this to say this? No! Do I even know Kylene Beers? no. Do I love this book and think it is a savior to poor adolescent readers everywhere? A resounding YES !!!