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The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

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How do you awaken the inner reader in someone? You teach them to read for pleasure. It sounds like such a simple concept really. Forcing spinach down a kid's throat doesn't make a kid love spinach any more than forcing boring books down a kid's throat. But serving that spinach in a souffle and giving a kid a book that they enjoy just might work.

The author pulled me in from the beginning by being a reflection of what I'd like to see myself be as a literature teacher. Mainly, she's able to turn non-readers into readers and to turn book loathers into book lovers. Her 6th grade class is challenged to read 40 books each year and most go even beyond that goal. But I work with adult ESL students in an American literature class. Could her methods work for them as well? In one week, I've already noticed an excitement from my book loathers when I announce that it's time for pleasure reading in class. They know that if they don't like something, they're not going to be forced to read it for "pleasure". And that seems to make all the difference to them.

I felt the need to underline passages and write in the margins of this book (a rarity for me) as I read. Miller talks about how important it is that students read to become good readers. This is why she feels so strongly about giving free reading time in class. She also feels that teachers should re-evaluate class activities to determine whether such activities are accomplishing anything or are mere busy work that could be replaced by reading time. She also expresses the importance of reading leading to private dialogue or "whispering" between student and teacher and between student and student. This whispering can be accomplished through letters back and forth between student and teacher and from individual student-teacher conferences. It can also be accomplished through book reviews and class projects like book commercials.

Miller seems to have reached many of the same conclusions I've reached within the past couple of years. For example, I recently added a class library from among my own books and let students choose their own novel to read rather than reading a group novel. However, many of the things I've felt haven't been working for my class but have had no solution to are things Miller was able to find a solution for. For example, she gives alternative ideas to students stumbling over reading aloud in class round-robin-style. And she discusses alternatives to reading logs which students aren't likely to keep up with. I also added many of her beginning-of-the-year interest survey questions to the survey I had been using to give me a deeper insight into my students' minds.

I'm excited by the possibilities this book has offered me for the teaching of my class. I feel that every reading and literature teacher should take the time to read this book. I think that any open-minded, book-loving reading teacher with enough time can use the strategies in this book to help their students develop a genuine love for reading.

Donalyn Miller gets it. She understands perfectly why many of our kids don't like reading any more, and she has the answer. You'd think Congress would be knocking down her door by now. Let's hope it happens soon.

In the mean time, anyone who considers himself or herself a teacher needs to read THE BOOK WHISPERER. It's a book that gets right to the heart of what makes us readers and how to instill that love of words and stories in our kids. Miller goes right after so-called "tried and true" methods like comprehension tests, book reports, whole class required novels, and test preparation workbooks not just with empty criticism but with solid research that supports reading time and student choice. More importantly, she provides a healthy list of more kid-friendly, reading-friendly alternative strategies that teachers can use in their classrooms right away.

Truly, this book is a model for getting kids back to books they love, and it provides a great model for classroom teachers to follow. For those who aren't sure where to start, there are plenty of anecdotes, sample student interactions, and useful classroom forms to get new teachers started.

I'm both a children's author and a National Board Certified middle school English teacher, and I found myself nodding my way through these pages to the very end. Miller's ideas -- and they're ideas that smart teachers all over our country are using in various ways -- have the power to make a real difference in education.

Books are criticized all the time for what they lack. Even prolific and enormously successful J. K. Rowling has been bashed for everything from selling out to commercialization to satanism and devil worship. How gratifying to find in this tight book lots of reasons kids should be reading and lots of ways to get them to do so. Miller's approach is a bit different. She wildly embraces the concept of kids making their own reading choices and reading independently. No moronic worksheets for comprehension or cribbed book reports here, just lots of suggestions for the classroom library and lots of ways for kids to talk about their choices intelligently to adults and especially to other kids, spreading the word quite literally. Courageously, Miller even admits to developing her classroom library entirely at her own expense and invites others to do so as well. She says it's really the only way to create a sufficiently extensive library with ever shrinking school budgets and shrunken head administrators who are more interested in competency testing scores than in children learning to read. She also provides some inexpensive and even free methods of acquiring books. This is great stuff, highly recommended, and THE reading inspiration book for this genreration.

As a reader and a teacher, I loved this book. I was actually put off by the title (could we stop with the "fill-in-the-blank Whisperer" titles, please?), but once I started the book, I had a hard time putting it down. As a teacher, everything Miller said made sense. She is spot on in terms of the studies she cites--yes, the most important thing we can do to make our students better readers & writers is to simply let them read--and she presents her material in an engaging, fluent voice. My classroom, I believe, will be revolutionized by her suggestions. My high school kids already have a time for silent reading, but I will be implementing many of Miller's techniques come the new school year, which I think will enhance our 15 minutes of SSR. I'm thrilled that I stumbled upon this little book, and I recommend it to all teachers, especially those hard-working elementary school teachers. Put it on your summer reading list! It's a must read!!

Donalyn Miller's passion for reading is quite obvious when reading this book. She reminds me of myself: I am an avid reader who carries a book wherever I go just in case I can "steal" a few minutes reading while waiting for an appointment, a traffic jam to unwind, etc.

She also loves being a teacher. She loves her job, respects her students and shares her love for books and reads with her students. She learns her students' personal reading preferences by making them fill out surveys at the start of the school year. Those who don't like to read learn to love to read by the end of the school year.

Her tips make a lot of sense. She suggests the reading teacher do the following: develop a personal library, create reading workshops, initiate book groups, allow students to read books they enjoy and don't demand book reports, have a reading corner with comfortable furniture available, and give the students some empowerment by working with their personal reading interests. If a student can read at least 30 minutes a day then the student is on its way on becoming a book whisperer.

One good tip for teachers: read more children's books and take recommendations from your students on what you should read.

According to Miller, there are three types of readers: the Developing reader, the Dormant (reluctant) reader and the Underground (gifted) reader. All can overcome their hesitance to read if teachers allow them to choose their own books to read. Her class day starts every day with fifteen minutes of "Independent Reading" where students can read whatever they want, a book, a magazine, a picture book, silently. If a book doesn't interest them after a few minutes, they can try another book. If they want to read an old favorite they have already read, they can read it again. She is there to mentor the students. And she reads in class as well, to be a role model.

Although the students chose the books they want to read, Miller does have a few requirements that they must follow: of the 40 book requirement, five must be poetry anthologies, five must be traditional literature, five must be realistic fiction, another five historical fiction, four must be fantasy, two must be science fiction, two must be mysteries, four must be informational, two must be autobiographical, and nine must be chapter-book choices. She then discusses various genres and lets the students define the individual terms. This is how she adheres to her state's required curriculum standards.

What works for Miller is that she also teaches social studies. If her class is studying a time such as World War II, she suggests reading books that deal with that war. This helps students become more engaged in all aspects of literature and history.

But there is more to just silent, independent reading. Instead of dreaded book reports (She prefers book reviews); she has her students discuss the books they have read. She discusses genre, writing styles, themes, content. (Is there a book she hasn't read?) Students are also required to maintain a reading notebook journal.

All these tips make sense, but my question as an educator is how can these tips work for the middle and especially the high school student? I taught six grade once and the students were still in love with reading, but a few grades later, plagued with hormonal overdrive, reading got replaced with texting, iPoding, and emailing.

One thing that is crucial to implementing Donalyn's strategies is having a principal and a school district that will support these reading endeavors. Yes, reading what one enjoys reading does develop a stronger reader and a more compassionate and civic-minded citizen, but this is harder to implement when most class hours are 60 minutes or less. In Miller's instance, classes were 90 minutes long; long enough to have independent reading before marching on to other requirements.

My two questions, however, didn't get answered. Can a teacher make a student who has poor English comprehension, become an avid reader in an English-speaking classroom? And how can we get teenagers in high school to learn to love reading?

No doubt Miller is an excellent teacher and her school should be proud of her, but I go away from this book resigned to the fact that her style and her advice are best for elementary school teachers. For someone like me who deals mostly with high school kids, this book is not quite helpful enough.

Still, her book was a great read. Her love for her students is very obvious.

This book by a Texas sixth grade teacher confirms what I've long believed, as a teacher myself: that books are way under-rated. I tutor students from first grade to college, and I consistently find that students don't read enough real books for pleasure, usually. The ones who do become the good students, and they usually read outside of class, on their own time. Many students' lives are so crowded with busy work--a.k.a. homework--that they don't have time to sink into a great book and read for long periods of time.

It's amazing how teachers whose job it is to teach reading don't actually use real books to teach reading: they use interminable worksheets, exercises, vocabulary drills, reading primers, anything but a real book. Recently I was tutoring a first grader who is slightly behind in his reading skills. His mother is very worried. All I did was show him a book that emerging readers love: Bears on Wheels. Pretty soon he could read that book. Then he read Hop on Pop. He was so excited! I had told him that the books were library books. After our tutoring session, he ran up to me in the parking lot and said, "Shannon! How much do those library books cost?" Imagine my pleasure in telling him that they were completely free.

I was surprised, though, that he had not been to a public library yet. It seems that many parents don't avail themselves of this wonderful free resource. But teaching a child to read is not rocket science: all it takes is a pile of picture books, a lap, and some time. Yes, phonics is important; but it's a means to an end, not an end in itself. The end is reading pleasure.

Ms. Miller requires her sixth graders to read forty books during the school year. And they do! One secret to her success is simply having a lot of books in her classroom: two thousand to be precise. These are her own books, and she can loan them as she likes to students. She has an index card system for tracking who has the books, but she doesn't worry about it too much. Also, she doesn't make them do book reports, vocabulary quizzes about the books, etc. They keep a notebook on their responses to the books they are reading, and they voluntarily do "book commercials" where they tell the class about a book that they loved.

She does not have the class read a book together, with everybody reading the same novel, as most English teachers do. But she does read aloud to her students, so there are certain books that they all are following and can discuss together.

In this way, she establishes in her students a habit of reading, which she hopes will last a lifetime. The results are impressive: students who have repeatedly done poorly on standardized tests start to do well on these tests for the first time. It turns out that endless test-taking drills are not nearly as effective in raising test scores as simply letting students read for pleasure.


I wish more teachers would throw away their worksheets and book report assignments, and just let students read, and read, and read.

As a book lover and a homeschooling parent, I am always interested in books on books or how to get children interested in reading. I was recently at a closing Borders store and saw this book. I briefly glanced at it and decided to buy it, without reading the summary on the back, so I bought it not realizing that it was for teachers.

That being said, for teachers, I feel that this is a must read, particularly for teachers that teach reading, or even history and social studies. I personally didn't get that much out of it, as she was preaching to the choir, sort of speak. Several of the problems she states with schools are on my list of reasons for homeschooling. Also, her book is aimed for teachers in a classroom setting, so a homeschooling parent, or any parent really, won't really be able to use much of the book for their children, other than encouraging your children to read on a daily basis, even if it is books that they may like, and you do not.

Donalyn Miller is an avid reader and she started teaching reading as she was taught to, with whole class novel reading, filled with book related activities and worksheets, book reports and tests. After she realized that that method wasn't working, she consulted her students. Now she allows them to read whatever books they please, although she talks to them and has them fill out reader surveys and tries to recommend books she thinks that they would enjoy. The only requirements that they must follow are: of the 40 book a year requirement, five must be poetry anthologies, five must be traditional literature, five must be realistic fiction, another five historical fiction, four must be fantasy, two must be science fiction, two must be mysteries, four must be informational, two must be autobiographical, and nine must be chapter-book choices. She seems like a wonderful teacher, whom I would have loved to have had.

Miller's suggestions aren't rocket science. She says for the children to pick books that interest them, have them read independently in class, have book groups and book reviews (as oppose to reports), have them recommend books to one another, and to keep a reading book journal. For the teachers part, develop a large personal library, create a reading corner (if possible, but not entirely necessary), and most importantly, read, read, read current children's literature and popular books. She often discusses reading books that her students recommended to her.

As Miller says, she has a very supportive principal and school district, yet not all teachers have this support, even though there are multiple studies to show independent reading benefits. Unfortunately, too many schools have to "teach to the test." (And before I get any comments by teachers telling me what I don't know, I am simply repeating what teachers have told me, and I know that this doesn't mean ALL teachers.) Another thing that might make her approach difficult for some teachers, is that Miller has a 90 min block for her classes, while many classes are still around 45 min, which make it difficult to give students a 30 min reading time and still have sufficient time to do all the other work necessary. While one could cut the reading time to 15 min, this obviously wouldn't be as effective, so some schedule juggling would be needed. Also, I think that she could have more specific about some of the activities that she does.

While I recommend this for teachers, I would say that homeschooling parents (or just parents in general) could give it a pass, or maybe borrow it from the library. Instead I would recommend: The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease, How to Get Your Child to Love Reading: For Ravenous and Reluctant Readers Alike by Esmé Raji Codell, and What to Read When: The Books and Stories to Read with Your Child--and All the Best Times to Read Them by Pam Allyn (in that order).

This is a book primarily aimed at teachers, but as a parent of a soon to be sixth grader and a public library employee working with children, I found much to enjoy here. The author does a great job of pointing out some of the problems inherent in the public school system and it's failure to promote a joy of reading, and points to a real world solution that some might see as just common sense, but is in fact an important philosophy that I hope more people will listen to before we lose an entire generation of readers.

I picked this book up because it seemed to be offering a solution for older students. Most studies these days seem to be focused on young children, and I think that many educators and parents have adopted an attitude that says if their children haven't established themselves as effective readers by third grade then they are never going to become an effective reader and are certainly never going to enjoy it. As an avid reader myself, this has always bothered me, and I am glad to see that this author's approach is working.

I spend quite a bit of time in my job recommending books to children and talking to parents about how to help their children become readers and I will use some of the information offered here to reinforce what I always tell kids; reading is like sports, the more you do it, the better reader you become, and the more you will enjoy it. This book is very inspirational. Purchase it if you are a parent wanting to help your child. You can pick up some great tips that you can adapt for use at home. Certainly purchase it if you are a teacher - I wish I could purchase it for every teacher I know. Buy this book if you work with children and are looking for some confirmation that you can also change lives by being a Book Whisperer. You'll be helping to create a whole new generation of readers who will not only know the mechanics of reading but also the joy.

In the past 7 or 8 years, I've reviewed over 350 books on Amazon; however, prior to college I could count the books I had read on one hand. All through school I never learned to enjoy reading or how to choose books I would like. Reading was just something I had to do when it was assigned--unless I could get around it.

Donalyn Miller seeks to change this very situation by helping her students learn to love to read. Based on her results, she is extremely successful in developing life-long readers, something that is unfortunately not the norm in our culture. In The Book Whisperer, Miller shares how she helps her students love to read.

The audience for this book is mainly teachers. I think Parents like me will also find this book worthwhile and enlightening. Teachers will probably see things in the book they already now, and they will see things they didn't know and can employ in their classrooms. Miller contradicts some standard teaching methods for 5th-8th graders. For example, Miller helps students choose book based on their tastes and interests rather than making all students read a classic novel together over several weeks. She has her own extensive library in her room. Students help one another pick out books. Also she shows how independent reading time in class is important and effective for students.

Her most significant attribute for writing this book is her own love for books and reading. She knows books, especially books for students. She includes a list of about 100 books that her students recommend for other children. For parents and children, this list is helpful to have.

Miller provides practical suggestions of how to implement a practice like hers in your classroom. She shows what works and what doesn't. She teaches how to track students' activities and progress.

If you want to learn how to awaken the "inner reader" in children or students, this is a good place to start.

Craig Stephans, author of Shakespeare On Spirituality: Life-Changing Wisdom from Shakespeare's Plays

This book is almost a fit for all educators. That being said, if you are looking for full, formal lesson plans and worksheets, this is not your text. What this book is, is a quick, forthright read about what has worked in a classroom. Miller acquaints us with what didn't work for her and then leads us through her successes. She has evolved into a "coach" as a reading teacher and takes many of the strategies that you may have encountered elsewhere in professonal training sessions and explains how she has put them together and added her own personal approach to make them work for her. For educators who struggle to synthesize the different reading components and approaches, such as: "required texts", workshop model, reading lists, read-alouds, independent reading, etc. this is a helpful read. What makes the book engaging is the small quote boxes from her students, the fact that the recommended book list is of their making, and Miller's anecdotal evidence about her students. The tone of the book is as though you are hearing a colleague speak of their experiences or getting sage advice from the veteran teacher at your school. For those who want take-aways, the book does have a few student forms and the afore-mentioned book list. Mainly, the benefit of this book is the way that it inspires you to be more excited about reading and helps you shape your thinking into strategies what will enable you to share that excitement in a concrete and successful way in the classroom. My favorite part was the quote where a student talks about being "caught" by a book and having to finish it. What a phenomenal way to phrase it and what a great gift Miller gave this child and so many others.