7/5/2023 0 Comments Looking for me betsy rosenthal![]() ![]() ![]() Can’t you see the papaya seed when you read these lines from Thanhhà Lại’s Inside Out & Back Again? Poetry expresses meaning through the graphic placement of words on the page. Novels in verse can be especially appealing to reluctant readers because they use so much vivid imagery, and I have found that many reluctant readers are visual learners. (He also said, “You didn’t tell me it was sad!”) But what really matters is that a reluctant reader felt successful. He came back the very next morning, excited, with a huge smile on his face, surprised - and proud - that he had finished it. I told him he could probably read the book in about an hour. I opened the book and showed him the pages: words only on the left-hand pages, written in verse blank right-hand pages. I recently told a young man, an eighth grader who loves baseball, that he should try Hard Hit by Ann Warren Turner. ![]() Compared to a conventional novel, a novel in verse has perhaps half the number of words per page - and isn’t that half the battle with reluctant readers? These readers often look at a page filled with words and think, This is too much! And quit before they begin. Novels in verse have earned their place in the mainstream of children’s and young adult literature - Exhibit A: Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover winning the Newbery Medal - and this is good news for reluctant readers, especially reluctant middle-grade and middle-school readers. ![]()
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