The New York Times wants us to know that “the future of reading” or, at least the “latest thing in classroom gimmicks this fall,” is teachers letting students read what they like.

Fans of the reading workshop say that assigning books leaves many children bored or unable to understand the texts. Letting students choose their own books, they say, can help to build a lifelong love of reading.

“I feel like almost every kid in my classroom is engaged in a novel that they’re actually interacting with,” Ms. McNeill said, several months into her experiment. “Whereas when I do ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,” I know that I have some kids that just don’t get into it.” [Read more…]

My son Timothy, age 11, devoured a book this week, a magical mystery featuring a boy wizard written by Kaleb Nation, age 20. The book, Bran Hambric: The Fairfield Curse, was published just a few days ago, and, judging from sales and Timothy’s enthusiasm about the book, I suspect we have, if not the “next Harry Potter” (how many times have we heard that prediction?), perhaps another Artemis Fowl or Percy Jackson. Which would be very good news indeed.

The recommended age range for the book is 9-12 so I thought you might be interested in Timothy’s thoughts about the book which he wrote up this afternoon as a Hogwarts Professor guest post. He read all 464 pages of Bran Hambric in three days and has this to say: [Read more…]

The surest way for an American to display just how provincial and how ignorant he or she may be of English life is in saying profoundly silly about Cricket, the historical UK national pasttime. The Super Bowl or Olympic equivalent in Cricket ‘Test Match’ play, for example, is the England-Australia biennial match called ‘The Ashes’ — and it’s the rare American who knows about it, or the runs, bats, innings, and bowling of this game which have almost nothing to do with what we daft Yankees think they might. (Really, Quidditch is much more the magical equivalent of Cricket than to basketball or soccer in its relatively esoteric pitch dimensions and rules of play, no?)

To give you an idea of what a big deal The Ashes match play is, the actors who play Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy in the Warner Brothers films franchise derived from the books made an appearance at The Oval this year — and the show went on without the usual celebrity moment. I mean, this is bigger than Wimbledon.

The big play in this year’s Test, which, remarkably, England won, was a spectacular run-out by a legendary British All Round player who had announced in July this would be his last appearance for England. His name — and how he got his nickname — makes me think he is an Ashes stand-in for Marcus Flint, the Slytherin Chaser and Quidditch captain. [Read more…]