{"id":24217,"date":"2018-01-12T08:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T13:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=24217"},"modified":"2018-01-12T08:00:36","modified_gmt":"2018-01-12T13:00:36","slug":"24217","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=24217","title":{"rendered":"Too Long, Too Short, Just Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I may have previously mentioned that my oldest son, Nikhil, started kindergarten this year. It’s been an adjustment for all of us. I work a lot with schools and librarians, but this is my first experience being a part of a school family. There are a lot of people and programs that all intersect to build a school community, and there are a lot of ways to\u00a0get involved as a parent volunteer. It can all be a little overwhelming (and gives me new admiration for the dedicated PTA bookfair volunteer chairs that we work with around town).
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Not too long, not too short, this Goldilocks needs a book that’s just right!<\/p><\/div>
\nOne of the programs I’ve gotten involved in this first year, though, has been\u00a0really rewarding. Our district participates in\u00a0a literacy program that pairs volunteers with struggling readers for\u00a0a reading session each\u00a0week designed to give them a little practice and to make reading fun. I have been partnered with two second graders for\u00a0the last few months, and I love it. I stop by the class every week, and each reader joins me in the hall for 15 minutes back-to-back.\u00a0For each session, the first reader\u00a0brings out a book he or she has been reading in class and reads it to me for about 6 minutes before we chat about it a little bit. Then I read from a book I’ve brought for about 6 minutes and then chat about it a bit. Then the kids switch and we do it again. The program has had great results for the school, giving kids who need a little extra one-on-one attention a boost, and I love doing it. I have also found the slightly tricky task of book selection\u00a0stretches my bookselling brain in a\u00a0neat way too.
\nFor someone with a large selection of books at my disposal, I find myself really going back and forth each week about which books will fit best with both our timeframe and what I think will draw out the kids for discussion. With a mission to maximize reading time without cutting the discussions too short, I bring\u00a0a handful of books per session and let the kids choose what looks good to them. The kids relish the special attention, no matter what we read, and the dynamics are not\u00a0surprising (funny books with bold illustrations shine, who knew?), but the compression of our time\u00a0is the challenge. At the outset we’re cautioned against reading\u00a0longer stories over multiple meetings, and I think that’s right. These sessions do better with a beginning and an end, and with a week between meetings (not to mention school breaks), it just doesn’t make sense. So my goal every week is to find a single story that I can read in almost exactly six minutes\u2014not much more, not much less.
\nThese are smart second-graders, so I want to bring books that have complexity\u00a0as well as humor. Since the kids consistently gravitate toward full-color picture books with engaging covers, that has meant (mostly) picture books. I’ve definitely gone slightly astray on occasion\u2014Arnie the Doughnut <\/em>easily\u00a0takes ten minutes to read well, ACK!\u2014but here are six six-minute (ish) winners that have totally worked.
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