A Passion for Reading

I'm in a bit of a reflective mood today, so I decided to blog about motivation to read. I have a confession to make....and I know as a teacher this is a sacrilege.....I don't really like to read. I know, right!?! Personally, my relationship with reading became a bit strained as an adult. As a child and teen I always had my nose in a book. I can remember getting to school early and sitting in the hallway reading. Sitting at the public pool we'd visit daily throughout the summer---reading.  When I got older and had to read so much for my job, reading wasn't fun anymore. I'd buy books and I'd start books--but rarely get very far in them. However, as part of my job, I believe that it's important to inspire in kids that passion for reading.

 I have written before about the book The Book Whisperer and how much it has inspired me to give kids more independent reading time in class. I adore this picture I snapped this year during silent reading:

She is reading to our plant (which we affectionately refer to as Ivy).  I love the thought that kids will read to anyone anywhere! I facilitate for a student book club-one for K-2 and one for 3rd-5th. This year we had 80 kids participate altogether! Can you believe that many kids volunteer to stay after school to read and discuss books! Most of our list is made up of Bluebonnet titles and the rest are classics that the librarians recommend-so they are even quality books. I love their enthusiasm and discovering new books myself every year. They start asking me the first day of school when are we going to start and complain when I say we are ending for the year. Even my Kinder students would get excited-every day they'd ask--is today book club? :)

 After reading the Book Whisperer and seeing so many people on Twitter taking the challenge of reading a book per day (I can never picture myself being able to do that, but it's a goal to work up to)--I began reading again for fun. Last summer I read about 5 books--I read the Hunger Games series, The Book Thief (which I believe has become my all-time favorite book) and Gone Girl. I started my summer reading list early this year and have already read 2 books (my goal is 10 plus some of the children's literature I need to get a jump start on for book club:

Which I really enjoyed. It's basically like reading a bunch of short stories that are interconnected.

A perfect book for me--I had to read to the end to find out what happened, just enough suspense.

And now I'm reading:

Which so far isn't too interesting, but it's extremely intelligently written (I've even learned some new words) and the attention to the details she has as an author is really incredible.

So how do you help develop that passion for reading in your kiddos?