by Pam Withers
News flash! The Children's Writers and Illustrators of British Columbia (www.cwill.bc.ca) just donated 216 children's books to Keen Readers. They were part of a special collection at the University of British Colombia that was being disbanded, and the board members of CWILL BC voted to hand the entire collection over to Keen Readers so that we can donate them to needy children's reading programs across North America. Tony and I are deeply grateful. The children who receive them thank you. A special thanks to all the authors and illustrators at CWILL BC.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Being a struggling reader all over again
by Pam Withers
If I’ve always been a keen reader, that means I can never truly understand someone who is a struggling reader, right?
Wrong. I just spent the past two months struggling mightily with reading a young adult novel, never mind that its vocabulary was supposed to be at a fourth grade reading level. I had to use a dictionary to look up words I didn’t know several times per sentence. It took up to an hour to get through each of its very short chapters. Numerous times, I nearly gave up. Never mind that it was a novel written specifically for reluctant readers. And never mind that I wrote the novel myself.
When Orca Soundings had my novel Breathless translated into Spanish – Respira*, I was delighted. I decided to take on the challenge of reading it in Spanish. With two years of Spanish classes under my belt, I thought I was up for the task.
Here’s what I have to report: The novel took me two weeks to write back in 2005, but two months to read in Spanish just now. I jotted down each Spanish word I didn’t know as I went along, and they added up to more than 200! Still, I finished it, and the victory was sweet. Now I just have to read it another half dozen times until it starts to come smoothly, right? Exactly as struggling readers have to do. (It helps to have short sentences, short chapters and a plot that moves. I guess that’s why they’re called reluctant reader books.)
I can now recommend that anyone who finds their patience dwindling while working with a struggling reader, try what I just did to get it all into proper perspective.
And no, I’m not going to tackle Breathless in Serbian, nor my Orca Currents novel The Daredevil Club (Les Casse-Cous) in French, though I’m pleased they’re out there.
*http://www.orcabook.com/searchproducts.cfm
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