The moment I start to talk about vocabulary, the moment I start to talk about character, the moment I start to talk about tone to any child below the age of about fourteen is the moment I kill the reason the book was written for
and the kids are turned off. They
The writer’s purpose is ruined because the book is being taken apart for a different reason other than entertainment, information, comfort and the real reasons that that book was written for.
You know, it drives me insane when people make vocabulary lists out of my books because it’s totally unnecessary. It is totally unnecessary if the book is read over and over and over again. If it’s a book for older kids and they stumble over a word that they may not — like a word that I used a while ago — “intractable”
That, you know, you come to that in the book and it says “intractable” and you explain what “intractable” means. Very quickly you just explain it cause you don’t want to spoil the story. So you quickly explain “intractable” and then you move on, but to make vocabulary out
Well, just vocabulary lists drive me mad anyway. They just drive me absolutely crazy because they are not in a sentence of beauty that a child will remember. They are not in a sentence of anguish that a child will remember. They’re not in a sentence of such shocking information that a child will remember it.
It’s a vocabulary list. It has no emotion and it will not be remembered for any good reason. It will just kill literature. If we read more books, if we focused more on good literature in our classrooms, if our classrooms were flooded with books or flooded with read alouds, if we weren’t ashamed of reading aloud, if we realized that reading aloud is the greatest teacher of literacy, we would do more of it in the classroom. This is my credo that the people who wrote the literature are the best teachers of literacy.