Readicide

This book is worth a read to any English teacher either in-service or preparing to be.  I admit that it does read a little obsessive in places.  Mr. Gallagher is very passionate about his position and this is obvious throughout.  This being said, his points are highly valid and useful. 

His advocation for ingraining a love of reading in students through a press towards recreational reading and a lessening of focus on test taking is a golden image that I would love to see happen.  Even he admits it is a difficult road to travel though.  Current and pre-service teachers are already aware of the politics and budget constraints of schools and districts, so I won't go back into that here.  What I will say is that I agree it is worth the struggle to create proficient readers who actually enjoy the task.

I appreciated how Mr. Gallagher interspersed his position with quotes and figures to back in it.  One such interesting fact, beginning on page 39 and continuing to be used throughout the book, describes the scientific effects that reading or the lack there of causes in the adolescent brain.  Basically the study that is quoted states that if a child is not adequately stimulated through varying type of reading and information acquisition, then the frontal lobes of their brains will not properly develop.  It is not simply schema that is left in the dust from the lack of reading, it is also the physical development of the brain.  This is something I will be chewing on for quite some time.

But thankfully, as the book continues, Mr. Gallagher gives the reader options on how to avoid this problem.  I appreciate the appendix in the back of the book that includes a list of books that his actual students have found interesting and worthwhile.  These are books that adolescents have actually read, will actually read, and that I am glad to have listed for me to use in my future classroom.