The success of Lake Cowichan author Teresa Schapansky’s Coinkeeper – The Avery Chronicles, a high-interest, low-vocabulary series designed to capture the attention of emerging or reluctant readers, brought to mind a student in a Grade 8 “modified” class I taught in the 1970s.
His name was Hans and on our first day, Hans was at my desk telling me:
“You know, I can’t read.”
“That’s OK, Hans. That’s why we’re here.”
“But I can’t read at all.”
“Not at all, not a word?”
“That’s right, nothing. I can’t read.”
I fished out an illustrated version of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not for kids and gave it to Hans.
“Well, have a look at this anyway and then we’ll talk.”
Within 30 minutes, Hans was back at my desk.
“Did you know that the tallest man in the world was Robert Wadlow. Look — he was 8 feet 11 inches — it says so here.”
“I thought you couldn’t read.”
“I can’t but this is interesting and I understand the words.”
Somewhere along the line, Hans had become convinced he couldn’t read, possibly by being required to read beyond his reading level, and his idea of himself as a non-reader had stuck like a bug on the windshield of his views about books and reading in general.
That could have been the beginning of a spiralling series of failures now that Hans was in high school, where his courses would tend to be textbook-heavy and accompanied by the instruction “read pages 20-27 and answer the questions.”
And my guess is that Hans was not alone in his confusion and dislike for reading. There are other kids like Hans out there and that’s probably why the first two books, volumes one and two, of Schapansky’s Coinkeeper – The Avery Chronicles series have been bestsellers and reached No. 1 on Amazon’s Hot New Releases section.
It’s not the first time her work has seen the top of the charts — there is clearly a major market for high-interest, low-vocabulary books that ease kids into reading.
In my own case, it was the Classic Comics series that featured well-illustrated, low vocabulary adaptations of literary classics such as The Three Musketeers, Les Miserables, Moby Dick and even The Iliad.
Those stories were the beginning of an interest in reading the actual books, an interest that has lasted a lifetime.
There are still Kindle or paper versions of Classic Comics Illustrated available on Amazon.ca.
With their large print, an illustration on every other page and excellent classic stories such as Treasure Island, Oliver Twist, Anne of Green Gables and Pride and Prejudice, kids (like me) ate these books up. Written at approximately a second- to third-grade level, they are excellent for both the young reader and the older reluctant reader.
Schapansky’s series fills the same need in the classroom and at home. Her work provides early access to books for kids ages nine to 12 who have lower levels of reading, but need a reading experience that captures their attention with magic and wonder.
Reading, of course, is not a simple process. It requires the reader to understand text at least at three main levels: literal, inferential and critical.
Reading at the literal level means the reader understands the words and their obvious meanings.
Reading at the inferential level means that the reader understands the text in the larger environment of the rest of the chapter and the rest of the story.
This level requires the reader to draw on prior knowledge of a topic and identify relevant text clues (words, images, sounds) to make an inference.
Inferential comprehension is often referred to as “between the lines” or “think and search” comprehension.
Reading at a critical level moves the reader further beyond the text to making judgments and decisions, such as whether the text or author is accurate and reliable, or whether a statement is a fact or opinion.
It begs the question “why did the author write this?” and “why is this meaningful for me?”
As long as I have been involved with kindergarten to graduate-level education, educators and researchers interested in literacy have reminded content-area teachers to include regular and explicit instruction in reading to support adolescents’ content learning and literacy development.
In other words, it is just as important to be able to read a math or physics textbook effectively at all three levels as it is to be able to effectively read a novel or history text.
Starting kids off with books like Schapansky’s is a way of opening the door to a lifetime of educational and, subsequently, personal success.
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools.
