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"Anyone who loves to read and wants our young people to develop a similar passion will savor" Better than Life "- an enchanting, beautifully written, and wise book."--Regie Routman An essential guide to helping children discover the pleasures of reading! In "Better than Life," Daniel Pennac shares the secrets that all book lovers treasure. Delving into his experiences as a parent, a writer and a teacher, he asks, how does the love of reading begin? How is it lost? And how can it be regained? This remarkable book explores simple ways to create a life-long devotion to reading: how reading aloud can ensure that a love of books beginswhy it is important that children develop a private relationship with bookswhat "The Reader's Bill of Rights" can do to guarantee children value reading This book reads like a novel with gripping anecdotes from literature and fresh insights into creating and nurturing enthusiastic readers.
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Unexpectedly, Better Than Life picked up where The Reading Zone left off. Better Than Life, like RZ, includes the Reader's Bill of Rights; in fact, it is Pennac's creation. Pennac looks at readers from the eyes of their parents, their teachers, and their society. You can see that Pennac and Atwell are philosophically one.
Pennac focuses in this book on his own experiences with his son as a teenage reader. He is frustrated with his son, but, more, with the reading assignments his son is given.
The book reads like a novel, yet Pennac has lots of opportunities to jump up on the lecture stand and talk to those of us who work with readers, warning us of the grave consequences of trying to force people to read and to read what must be read instead of what one wants to read.