Better Than Life

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.