The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller

It had been a while since I read a teacher book, so I decided to tackle one of those next for my True Books 2020 Challenge. I picked up Donalyn Miller's The Book Whisperer at a Scholastic warehouse sale about a year ago. For the uninitiated, the Scholastic warehouse sales are basically like a school book fair on a massive scale. Teachers get to walk around their gigantic warehouses, stocking up on books for their classrooms at pretty good sale prices. It's basically my Graceland. Anyway, they have a small selection of books for educators available at these things, so when I saw this one, I snapped it right up. Getting teenagers to love reading is the most important (and difficult) part of my job, so I was hoping that I could get some good tips and resources here to nudge my kiddos in that direction.

Miller's main purpose in this text is to convince teachers to embrace a workshop model for reading instruction. The workshop model is a way of teaching that allows students to select their own reading materials and spend a lot of time independently reading in class. This would take the place of traditional whole-class novel units in which every student reads the same books together with the teacher. Miller supports her position with a mix of research-based data and personal anecdotes about her own classroom. She shares that her student testing data has been extremely high since adopting this way of teaching (she claims that none of her students have failed their state assessment test for four years running now, and 85% of her kids score in the 90th percentile), but even more importantly, she believes that her methods have created many lifelong readers. 

Throughout the book, Miller details some of the procedures she implements in her classroom and provides resources such as student handouts and a suggested novel list for teachers to use. I bookmarked a few pages as I was reading for possible use in my classroom. Most of the chapters. however, are focused on promoting the philosophy of the workshop model. Miller is obviously genuine and passionate when it comes to discussing her methods, and her love for both the magic of reading and her students is obvious. 

Overall, I thought that The Book Whisperer was an okay resource. I agreed with all of Miller's points and I liked seeing a teacher advocate so strongly for making reading enjoyable for students again. I think this is a great starting place for any teacher interested in learning about the philosophy behind the workshop model. For me, however, a teacher at a school that has fully embraced this way of teaching, I didn't learn much from reading it. I was hoping to pick up some specific tips for my classroom, but I found most of Miller's explanations to be somewhat vague. In comparison to the materials my school purchased for me on readers workshop, this did not give a lot of concrete, helpful information. Furthermore, this book is pretty short. At around 200 pages, it was a quick read and really more of a broad overview of a topic that I already knew pretty deeply. 

One might question why I picked up this book in the first place if I already had read comprehensively on the topic. The reason is simple--nowhere on the cover or back of my edition does it say the words "workshop model." Instead, the summary calls her methods, "powerful but unusual." It made me believe that Miller's strategies were self-designed and unique, not a very common and trendy instructional style that many schools, including my own, have adopted. I don't think she was trying to be deceptive or anything, but I do think that whoever wrote the text on the back cover was not as specific as they should have been as to what the book was actually promoting.

To be clear, this book was not a bad read by any means. Miller's ideas about effective reading instruction make sense and her dedication to promoting students reading for pleasure is admirable. I simply didn't realize that I already was very familiar with its subject matter when I picked it up. This would be great for new teachers or teachers that are new to the workshop model. As it is, I think I will still be able to take a few things from it into my classroom and I am not upset that I read it. Miller was basically preaching to the choir with me, but sometimes it's nice to read something that confirms your beliefs.  

Challenge Tally

True Books 2020: 9/14


Total Books Read in 2020: 46