My Real Life

Every night, after the boys go to bed, Monkey Girl and I read together. 

Usually, she reads her book and I read mine, and we snuggle up next to each other in literary bliss.

However, last week she saw the commercial for the new movie The Lightning Thief.  She thought it looked like a good movie and asked if we could go see it when it comes out.

Flashback to a few years ago.

I was teaching 8th grade Social Studies and when teaching my unit on Ancient Greece, I stumbled across the book, The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan.

I read it and fell in love with it.

Then, I thought, it’s an excellent book, full of ancient Greek mythology.

I’m going to read it to my class.

So, I started reading this book aloud to my 8th grade Social Studies classes.

My students, 13 and 14 year old boys and girls, were completely rapt.

They literally ran to class every day and sat at the edge of their seats to hear more of the book.

I was in heaven.

I started getting phone calls from parents saying, “I don’t know how you did it, but my son, who has never read a book for pleasure in his life, asked me to drive him to Barnes and Noble last night because he wanted to buy the book, as well as the sequel.”

The next year, I extended what I was doing, a bit, because I knew that the truth of the matter is that reading aloud to the class isn’t really best practice in teaching.  Instead, by this time, quite a few of the kids had read this book, and perhaps the second in the series, but the third had just been released.  So, in my Social Studies class, we started book clubs where the kids chose what book in the series they would read and then had excellent, in depth discussions surrounding both the story, but also the mythology involved, and what mythology did for ancient civilzations…what purpose it served.   We got the literary piece and the historical piece and had a great few weeks.

That grew, and we eventually created an enrichment class called “Mythology” where we went into even further depth into Greek mythology and did book groups on the entire series (which grew to five books) and connected to the ancient Greek studies we did in Social Studies.

I loved those days.

Anyway, that was a really long story to say that when Monkey Girl asked to see the movie, I said, “Actually, we own the books.  Let’s read the book before we see the movie.”

And so, we do.

After the boys go to bed, Monkey Girl and I now read, together, aloud from The Lightning Thief.  She brings it to school with her, and during her free reading time, she reads it and carries Post-It notes with her, on which she writes questions she has for me, or thoughts that the book is evoking from her as she reads, then we talk about it at night.  (To clarify, she suggested the Post-Its, as it is what they do in school.)

Harry Potter, The Lightning Thief, The Golden Compass… all of these, books that have inspired kids to read.  They have inspired kids who have never read before to read, and in the instance of The Lightning Thief, to learn along the way.  I don’t care how old you are, I suggest that everyone pick up one of these books.  Currently, I’d recommend The Lightning Thief, since the movie is on its way.  Kids book, adult book…who cares?  If it’s a good book, why not pick it up?