CMIS Evaluation Fiction Focus

The literacy debate rages, certainly throughout the English-speaking world. Here in Australia, a new title by Monash University’s Associate Professor Ilana Snyder has made front-page news in The Australian newspaper. The Literacy Wars : why teaching children to read and write is a battleground in Australia took up many column inches on the weekend of 2-3 February. A CMIS review will appear in the Resource Bank soon.

In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has launched the National Year of Reading - an initiative designed to put reading high on the national agenda. And that’s reading for everybody, not just people at school.

Now in the US, a school librarian has put his spin on what he feels are the reasons teens are reading less. We are all reading less, he argues. ‘How long is it?’ has replaced ‘Will I like it?’ in school libraries because the information overload tipping point has been reached. These days we all skim in order to survive. We have become a culture of searchers, not readers. It’s a thoughtful piece, well worth reading. But if he is right, does it mean that reading for pleasure will soon be the preserve of those with the leisure time to ‘indulge’? Hooking kids into books is one of the most satisfying aspects of the teacher-student relationship. Making sure that keeps happening is more important than ever.