Voices of Readers:How We Come to Love Books (Carlsen & Sherrill)

One of the best books on creating readers is Voices of Readers: How We Come to Love Books.  It was published in 1988 and is out of print, but you can read it on ERIC, and it's well worth the purchase price if you can find a used copy online.

G. Robert Carlsen is a former professor for preservice English teachers.  Each semester of his thirty year career, Carlsen's first assignment was to ask students to write a reading autobiography.  The prompts were simple.  "What did they remember about learning how to read?  Who, if anyone, had been important in developing their attitudes toward reading?  When and where did they read" (Introduction, x).

Carlsen saved every paper, and toward the end of his career, these autobiographies numbered in the thousands.  Anne Sherrill, a doctoral student, assisted Carlsen in rereading each, cataloging the responses, and documenting patterns of experiences that were either instrumental or detrimental in creating readers.

Voices of Readers is the delightful result.  The book is packed with anecdotes of covert reading under the covers, warm memories of parents and teachers reading aloud, and frustration of being forced to read certain books at school. As you read it, you'll recognize yourself and your own journey as a reader.

Carlsen remarks on his surprise in the similarity of the students' experiences in becoming readers.  After all, his career spanned the mid 1950s to the mid 1980s and included universities in Iowa, Colorado, Texas, Hawaii, and Tennessee.  Maybe the love of reading is inborn, Carlsen muses.  But if not, he continues, "The voices in this book...give us hints of how to go about developing and encouraging readers..." (Introduction xi).

One of the great pieces of the book is the two-page chart, "Experiences Likely to Create Readers" which categorizes these experiences by age (p. 152-153).

For example, in the 12-14 year old age group, Carlsen lists the following as likely to create readers:

• Setting aside time for reading
• Having a teacher show interest in the individual's reading
• Having teachers read aloud
• Being exposed to a variety of reading fare
• Receiving help from librarians (!) 
• Owning books
• Sharing books with friends
• Participating in reader-centered discussions of literature
• Generating nontraditional book reports
• Being allowed freedom of choice in reading fare

If we affirm that creating readers is high on our list of really important stuff, then Voices of Readers is a critical piece in the canon of our professional reading. 

Many thanks to NCTE for permission to use this work here.

Carlsen, G. Robert and Anne Sherrill.  1988.  Voices of Readers: How We Come to Love Books.  Urbana: IL:  National Council of Teachers of English.

Copyright 1988 by the National Council of Teachers of English. Reprinted with permission.