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Getting Lost in a Book: Unconscious Delight and Lifelong Readers
Readers are made and not born. The research of experts such as G. Robert Carlsen, Anne Sherrill, Ken Donelson, Aileen Pace Nilsen, Margaret Early, and others describes stages in the development of lifelong readers. Lifelong readers are those individuals, like all of you reading this journal, who read because they want to and not because they have to. Our school system does a good job of developing school-time readers, but lifelong readers are still too rare. How can we encourage more of our kids to become lifelong readers? An examination of the stages in the development of life-long readers, as well as some books that might ignite those stages, seems a good start.
One of the stages in the development of lifelong readers is unconscious delight. During this stage, we become lost in a book. Reality slips away and we fall into the story to such an extent that we lose touch with the world around us. As a young reader, I helped Nancy Drew solve mysteries and assisted Cherry Ames in her nursing duties, oblivious to my mother calling me to set the table for dinner. Even now, I see kids in airports oblivious to the noise and turmoil around them as they devour the latest Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket. I mention these tides specifically because unconscious delight is often tied to some sort of serial reading. We might elect to read books in a particular series, such as A Series of Unfortunate Events, or to read books in a serial manner-books by one or two particular authors or books of certain genres-to the exclusion of others. Certainly we see some evidence of serial reading any time we wander into a bookstore. Prominently displayed are books in series such as Gossip Girls, The A List, and The Clique. Advance sales for books by Christopher Paolini and J. K. Rowling speak to another type of serial reading. And mystery is the genre most often preferred by both male and female readers in middle school.
The world of YA literature can help readers experience unconscious delight over and over again. As a matter of fact, I often find myself lost in the latest offering by...