Here are a few summer programs that provide incentives for students who reach their reading goals.  Continue reading...

I'm an avid reader, and when I was little, I'd ride my bike down to the library bookmobile at the start of June and sign up for the summer reading program. Each week I'd read book after book, make the pilgrimage and watch my goal chart fill up with stars.  Continue reading...

"I love your idea of reading 52 books a year," said a colleague last week. But the modifier  "theoretically" hung in the air. "How do you ever manage it?" she added.

In truth, I adore reading so much I don't find it difficult. I was the kind of kid who read the backs of cereal boxes at breakfast.  Continue reading...

Literature is everywhere. Well, literary allusions are everywhere, that is.

Students of today live in a time where they have always known cable television, computers and cell phones. Movies come in the mail or via the Wii. Yet that doesn’t mean the classics of literature have faded away. They are around — often referenced in new forms or adapted completely.  Continue reading...

Teacher/novelist Michele Dunaway writes, "as much as I preach individual choice in reading, I do believe there should be some literary works that everyone in middle and high school reads and experiences." Here Michele shares some of her favorite teaching touchstones.  Continue reading...

The modern, and somewhat cynical line on poets is that they should not quit their day jobs. Poet pay is dismal or nonexistent; the opportunities for contemporary recognition, minuscule; and the chances for posthumous celebration, hardly to be taken seriously. We’re taking a contrarian view in the Lounge this month, as we dust off the Poetry Corner and pay a visit to a poet who never really had a day job, but who left an enduring imprint on the language, echoes of which can still be heard every day throughout the wide world of English.  Continue reading...