I picked up this book after getting a number of recommendations from various people, including my great teaching partner (Hi, Melody!) and a number of my students. Donalyn is a middle school language arts and social studies teacher at a school in Texas. She has a very innovative way of looking at providing reader support for our burgeoning young students: let our kids choose what they will read, and they will find success. The fact that her students regularly score high on the standardized tests meant to measure reading skills indicates that her ideas do work.

The basis behind Miller's theories is the fact that if you let a child choose what he or she is reading and provide a welcoming environment that encourages positive experiences, the young person will slowly grow a fondness for reading and books. In the process, you are doing what you would do with any muscle or skill: allow practice to strengthen it.

Miller highlights the fact that we spend so much time building assignments that will measure reading comprehension skills and practice grammar and literacy rules out of context that we are actually preventing the children from having much time devoted to actual reading. As a result she has tossed aside book reports, mindless worksheets that are more time-fillers than literacy support, and one-book lessons that overpower a child with vocabulary words and other aspects and force the reading to go so slowly that it takes weeks or even months to finish a single book.

In their place, Miller has filler her room with great books and has blocks of time dedicated each day for both her and the students to just read. Each child records responses to the books they have read in a journal and often provide booktalks that help suggestive sell the titles to their classmates. Miller, who is an avid reader, thinks it is important to read with the students so she can model reading behavior, and she has no shortage of suggestions for her students if they are struggling with picking a book. She also has a (flexible) requirement/goal that all of the students will read at least 40 books over the course of the year. Most achieve the goal, and even those who don't, read far more than they have in previous years.

Miller is also very support of the school library. She talks about the fact that many teachers view taking their students down to the library as a waste of valuable class time, but she points out that this is also indirectly saying that selecting books is a waste of time.

The book is filled no shortage of tried-and-true suggestions for activities and methods that she has used to create a supportive reading environment for all readers ranging from avid to reluctant.

The content is presented in a comfortable writing style, allowing the other to talk from the heart. She shares examples from both the classroom and her home. Miller also supports her theories with information from a number of professional resources in the field of literature, librarianship, psychology, and education.

My goal is to get this book in the hands of as many teachers as possible, particularly those who work to build onerous summer reading lists. I complete support the ideas presented in the book about how to help make every child a reader. This is a must-read for any professional who works with young people in the areas of literature and reading.