The Work of Pleasure; The Pleasure of Work

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. Haruki Murakami Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light. Vera Nazarian Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. Author Unknown There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him. Maya Angelou The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. Oscar Wilde A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it. Edward P. Morgan Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all. Abraham Lincoln There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. Joseph Brodsky Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. Frederick Douglas

Two Kinds of Value Instrumental - helps us accomplish something else (Reading is valuable because it helps the student develop reading and writing skills, improves vocabulary, improves comprehension, creates a positive attitude toward reading, and makes it more likely that the student will read for pleasure later in life.) Intrinsic - on its own, without respect to anything else (Reading is valuable because it is a pleasurable activity.)

Our findings... [suggest] that children’s leisure reading is important for educational attainment and social mobility... and suggest that the mechanism for this is increased cognitive development. Once we controlled for the child’s test scores at age five and ten, the influence of the child’s own reading remained highly significant, suggesting that the positive link between leisure reading and cognitive outcomes is not purely due to more able children being more likely to read a lot, but that reading is actually linked to increased cognitive progress over time. From a policy perspective, this strongly supports the need to support and encourage children’s reading in their leisure time. (34) Sullivan & Brown, “Social Inequalities in Cognitive Scores at Age 16: The Role of Reading”

Ludic reading - state of blissful engagement that avid readers enter when consuming books for pleasure Requirements: reading ability positive attitude to reading an appropriate book “If those antecedents are in place, a reader will choose to begin reading. Once a reader has begun reading, he or she pays a kind of effortless attention to the text (the continuing impulse to read), employing both automated reading skills and consciously controlled comprehension processes.” Wilhelm & Smith 21

Reasons students “like” a story: They like the surface features of the story. They like the experience of reading the story. They like the effects of the story. Wilhelm & Smith conclude that “adolescents gravitate to texts whose surface features match an existing interest. Once they pick up those texts, they value the quality of the experience that they have while reading. The texts that they like the most are ones that stuay with them in some way once the reading is over.”

Two Sources of Pleasure PLAY: There are cases where action is direct and immediate. It puts itself forth with no thought of anything beyond. It satisfies in and of itself. The end is the present activity, and so there is no gap in the mind between means and end. All play is of this immediate character. WORK: A child engaged in making something with tools, say, a boat, may be just as immediately interested in what he is doing as if he were sailing the boat. He is not doing what he does for the mere sake of an external result—the boat—nor for the mere sake of sailing it later. The thought of the finished product and of the use to which it is to be put may come to his mind, but so as to enhance his immediate activity of construction. John Dewey, qtd in Wilhelm & Smith 24

More Pleasure Intellectual pleasure: The pleasure of figuring things out Social pleasure: Engaging with and learning about others When can this pleasure occur? Before reading During reading After reading (ex: anticipating the next chapter or the next book in the series) (ex: “getting lost” in the book; escaping for a while (ex: thinking about the book or discussing it with friends)

PLAY (intrinsic pleasure)

increasing vocabulary building endurance as a reader improving comprehension skills gaining knowledge of history and culture Learn (“by accident”) about WWI politics Escape from stress of school (cheap therapy) Anticipate next volume in series Compare fiction to actual events What “incidental” learning did you gain from this week’s book?

Reading journals can disrupt reading. World of the NarrativeWorld of School

BREAK After the break: commercials, trailers, and reviews. Discuss historical fiction in the classroom & class library. Moving on to multi-cultural books.

Next week: More from Reading Unbound. Commercials, trailers, reviews. Discussion of multicultural books. Looking ahead to book civil rights books.