So I was posting to Instagram the other night and decided to play with tags. Our tag for the summer has been #summerreading when we post to Twitter/Facebook, but I noticed that on Instagram, the tag was #summereading so I clicked on it to see what the people are posting.
It’s mostly teens posting images of the books they are being forced to read this summer and talking about how terrible the book is. And, honestly, most of the books are the same old crap everyone has been forced to read over the summer for the past 20 years (though I did spot a few lucky teens with Jurassic Park and Book Thief – wanted to comment but thought that might be creepy). Anyway, I just think teachers and parents need to realize that any ASSIGNED book is automatically a dumb, boring, long, badly written book. I really wish they summer reading assignments would just be to READ. Because, let me tell you, most of the books that were assigned to me in high school? I’m only JUST NOW understanding them. Most of the classics do not resonate with teenagers today and they really won’t do anything except make them hate reading. Reading them during school, when a teacher is there to guide them through the language and the themes is a better idea. Instead, give them choices of MODERN titles that might touch upon the same themes. There are plenty of ‘Catcher in the Rye’ stories that were written in this past year, believe me. Have them read Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother” over the summer then draw parallels when you make them read 1984 in class.
side note: 1984 must feel to these teens as far into the past as the future felt to the original readers of the title.
OH! And then I was like “hey, I tag a lot of my post as “librarian”, let’s see what else is in that tag. This tag is mostly populated by girls wearing Tina Fey glasses. When I did my initial search, I got an image of a girl on her bed trying to take a photo of her shoes she said made her “feel like a librarian” but mostly ended up a picture of her butt. **sigh** The tag has been repopulated now but there are still more random glasses than actual librarians. “librarians” has more pictures of staff, maybe we tend to photograph ourselves in groups?