Book Recommendations for Reluctant Readers: Thinking Outside the Box [by Nicole Winters]
The typical recommended young adult (YA) reading list on the internet will usually consist of classic titles, along with recent big successes in various genres with proven popularity or staying power. While there’s nothing wrong with mentioning these books (they are a safe bet) I would argue that they’re missing an untapped gold mine of exciting books, including adult and nonfiction, when they’re branded as “recommended books for reluctant readers”.
The people who create YA book lists are readers themselves, which makes sense as they have a rich background of reading and enthusiastically want to share what they themselves have enjoyed. Naturally, on some level there is a bias towards the literature that they either grew up reading or currently like. The problem is that this leads to recommended reads that cater to the enthusiastic reader, which is not necessarily the intended audience. If you were to take the 496-page novel Before I Fall and hand it to a reluctant reader, it would likely remain untouched, or worse, have the opposite effect of building a one-on-one relationship between the reader and the written word.
Nicole Winters is a YA author. Her first novel, TT: Full Throttle, a fictional motorcycle road racing story, debuts September 2013. Follow her on Twitter @nicolewintersya or visit her website, nicolewintersauthor.com
To clarify, I’m not talking about creating a list of short high-low books for ESL students or teens with low reading levels. I’m talking about books for the A to C-average student who does not like to read.
How do I know this? As a teenager, I was one of those C-average reluctant readers. I can recall my classmates excitedly discussing the characters in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, so I checked out a copy at school’s library, and it quickly turned into a Did Not Finish (DNF). I just couldn't get into the anthropomorphic animals. The same held true with The Hobbit, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and The Lord of the Rings. I couldn't understand why kids liked these books so much, and I wondered if something was wrong with me because I didn't.
All that changed when I was assigned to read S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. I consider it a turning point for me because I finished the book in one day. This is an enormous feat for someone reading a book because they have to—not because they want to. It left me wondering: why this book? Where did the time go? Why did these characters resonate with me for days after? I didn’t comprehend it then, but now I know that the right kind of book can engage anyone, even the most reluctant reader.
After getting hooked on The Outsiders, I begged to be taken to the library where I devoured the other books by S.E. Hinton, then moved onto Judy Blume and Beatrice Sparks. After finishing those works, I ventured into the adult stacks where I discovered Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Benchley, Anne Rice and John Saul. Along with horror, I also read nonfiction and devoured books on crafts, baking, camping, photography, sign language and autobiographies. I owe a lot to nonfiction: it kept me interested in reading and helped me understand more about the world around me.
When I look at a typical recommended reading list for teens, I can’t help but think it’s for the young person who already enjoys reading – I almost never see nonfiction titles (like sports or hobbies), horror, or graphic novels. This leads me to wonder why it’s assumed that teens only want to read fiction. Why target classic novels and popular books? If the goal is to promote the love of reading, then recommended YA reading lists should be broader in scope, reaching beyond the usual boundaries of YA literature to bring books to readers that will reflect their interests and engage them in a relationship that sets the stage for a lifelong love of reading.
I suppose the question is: how do you turn a reluctant reader into a voluntary one? If you’re a teacher, the ideal would be to have a massive school library brimming with a vast selection of books covering all sorts of interests. But many school libraries are subject to budget cuts and the classroom reading curriculum is school board assigned literature. Could there be some room for additional self-selected reading? Reading is an unspoken contract between author and reader, and it happens in a private, intimate, internal space. By welcoming diverse material into the classroom – from biographies, fact-based books, well-illustrated non-fiction, graphic novels, novelizations of the movies or shows – it would at least provide an opportunity for further self-driven reading to take place.
If you’re the parent of a teen who’s a reluctant reader, why not visit a bookstore together? Give your child some time and space to look through the shelves on their own to discover a book that interests them. If they find something they want to read, exercise a brief and reasonable review for content (if that’s your preference), but avoid commenting on their taste or the topic. They don’t want to hear your judgment or dissection of their choice. Remember, it’s about fostering that intimate relationship with the written word, one that you hope will trigger a further interest in reading and develop into a life-long love of books.
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