The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child
Publication Type:
Web ArticleYear of Publication:
2009ISBN:
978-0-470-37227-2Abstract:
"This book is chock full of literacy wisdom that I myself would like to see schools embrace as they look for strategies that will boost student achievement in reading but also bolster students’ reading dispositions," says reviewer Cindi Rigsbee. "In classrooms like Miller’s, students are learning to love reading and to adopt literacy as a life-long habit."
Full Text:
The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child
Donalyn Miller
2009 (240 pp./paperback)
Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 978-0-470-37227-2
$22.95
Reviewed by Cindi Rigsbee, NBCT
I was excited but a little nervous as I pulled the brown envelope holding Donalyn Miller’s book The Book Whisperer out of my mailbox. As a reading teacher, I have been familiar with Miller’s work for a couple of years, having read her Book Whisperer blog upon occasion. But my new role as book reviewer made me reach for that envelope with trepidation.
How could I possibly be unbiased? The book would contain commentary on my very life…would how I teach reading be questioned? Would I see myself on those pages and have my work affirmed, or would I feel threatened, my teaching techniques rejected by another teacher, half the country away?
But upon pulling the book from the unassuming envelope, I found myself wanting to whisper: “You had me at the cover…you had me at the cover.”
The cover represents all things good and beautiful – a clear blue sky, a princess dress, beach sand, and the focal point…an open book. Immediately I wanted to be that little girl standing on that shore in my princess dress, sun beaming on my face, wind lightly blowing the pages as I read. Yes, Donalyn Miller, you had me at the cover.
The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child was recently released by Jossey-Bass and can be seen advertised on numerous education sites and e-newsletters, with its pretty blue cover beckoning to teachers across the country. And well it should, as this book is chock full of literacy wisdom that I myself would like to see schools embrace as they look for strategies that will boost student achievement in reading but also bolster students’ reading dispositions. In classrooms like Miller’s, students are learning to love reading and to adopt literacy as a life-long habit.
I did find my practice validated as I turned the pages of The Book Whisperer. Ms. Miller and I have similar ideas about what a classroom should look like and feel like when it comes to reading. I, too, have studied the works of Atwell and Fountas & Pinnell and agree that one classroom plus one book times six weeks and a pile of comprehension worksheets is not the way to go. Miller does an exceptional job of describing the logistics of her classroom, which most likely looks different from what many would picture.
Teachers in my own school have asked, “But how can my students all be reading different books at the same time?” The Book Whisperer explains in detail not only how this type of classroom can happen but also how students learn to love reading and even perform better on those pesky standardized tests as a result (not one of Miller’s students has failed her state’s reading assessment in four years!).
The Book Whisperer, ironically, spoke to me loudly. For example, I was highlighting early into the book and this quote on page 18 struck me as something that should be on a poster:
Ms. Miller does the job of changing children’s lives through reading in her classroom. She tells them that “reading is a university course in life,” and then she enrolls them in that course and leads them to be successful in it, day by day.
There were many times during the reading of this book that I nodded in agreement (Round Robin and Popcorn reading do not work!), and there were times when I cheered out loud (Miller called Accelerated Reader “the worst distortion of reading I can think of.”) There were other times when I questioned my own teaching. Miller’s desire for teachers to think about the cute activities that we’re so proud of, activities that have little literary merit, made me squirm as I thought of the Life Saver airplanes my students make when we read about the Wright Brothers.
And there were times when I wished that Ms. Miller was sitting right with me, and we were just two reading teachers having a conversation, because I did find myself questioning some things as I read. My classroom is full of what Miller calls “Developing Readers” (they’re called remedial in my school) – and I feel that the example of Kelsey whose mother reads “to her and with her” doesn’t fall in line with my student Devon who refuses to read and instead draws pictures of his brother’s tombstone in class. (He doesn’t have a mother reading to him.)
And Devon, like most of my students, but unlike Miller’s, gives me one-word answers to questions on my reading survey (an answer to “What kind of books do you like to read?” would elicit “None” from a student like Devon.) I have my own tricks that I use with Devon, of course, but I would love to know more about what Ms. Miller does in her classroom to motivate students who could be defined in a category even lower than her “Developing Readers.”
And although Miller does a good job of describing her “vast library,” I still can hear the pushback from classroom teachers who will say, “I don’t have thousands of books, and I can’t afford to buy them. What can I do?”
These are questions I hope to ask Donalyn Miller someday, as we pursue the teacher-to-teacher conversation that started as I read The Book Whisperer. I found Ms. Miller to be a flexible (so what if her students don’t read all 40 books as required?) and knowledgeable educator (she knows the research that literacy scholars have conducted and she understands the results of the “action research” from her own classroom).
And like all good books, The Book Whisperer leaves the reader wanting more. I’ll wait patiently for the sequel while I re-read Whisperer during my school’s Book Study (I’ll be sharing her idea with my principal immediately).
Thank you, Donalyn, for showing us what literacy instruction can and should be. My hope is that The Book Whisperer will change the teaching of reading, even if one classroom at a time, and that every teacher who sees this book will be invited in, as I was, by the very cover.
Cindi Rigsbee is a literacy teacher/coach at Gravelly Hill Middle School in Durham NC. She blogs at The Dream Teacher and was a finalist for 2009 National Teacher of the Year.
