Why "For the Love of It"?

One of our favorite bloggers, Brian Wilhorn, says that once teachers ensure kids aren't illiterate, they need to ensure they aren't alliterate. His goal, and ours, with UVU’s Forum on Engaged Reading, is to get the best books into kids’ hands – books they’ll want to read without being told to read.  

In his stirring book, Igniting a Passion for Reading: Successful Strategies for Building Lifetime Readers, (Stenhouse, 2009) last year’s keynote speaker, Steve Layne, quotes a reading methods textbook written 100 years ago: “It should be the teacher’s aim to give every child a love of reading, a hunger for it that will stay with him through all the years of his life” (p. 6). 

A recently published book looks at what teachers of adolescents can do, and inspires us in ways similar to how Steve Layne’s book has inspired the elementary crowd. In Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers (Stenhouse, 2012), Penny Kittle makes a powerful case for stepping up our efforts to put the right books in the hands of teenagers and help them have book experiences that show them how books really can change their lives forever.

These ideas are are what the UVU Forum on Engaged Reading is all about – helping us all -- parents, librarians, and educators at every level, to instill a life-long love of reading in the lives of the young people we care about. 

The Forum Planning Committee members continue to search the books, the blogs, and the national bylines for the movers and shakers who can inspire us to do this in more ways, in bigger ways, and in better ways than ever before.  We hope you’ll join us for a retreat, a renewal, and a recommitment to this cause at our new location – the Chateaux in Deer Valley, Utah.  And we’re convening at a new time - just as the leaves are turning from green to gold, and just as our children and students are turning from the green fields of summer to the golden pages of autumn.  Join us September 19the & 20^th for the best of what’s new in books and their creators, for the best of how to get good books into the hands and hearts of those we love, and especially, for the love of reading.