Introduction
I really did look around a lot before I decided to write this. The goal was to find something to share with adults who wanted to get into the habit of reading but found literature intimidating. There’s actually plenty of that, and I certainly don’t do it better than the sorts of people who go and write a book in Amsterdam for a year. The other thing I needed was something free and open, so that everyone could have access. And there’s the rub, right there. The free stuff was either too old or I didn’t like it. And the stuff I liked wasn’t free.
So I either had to complain about it or I had to write it. I decided to complain about it. This lasted a while, and then I got tired of that, and decided to write it.
This book is a little bit for classrooms. I want it to be a companion to lessons about literature. I want teachers to be able to assign it to the whole class without having to worry about the budget or how to get a hold of copies. I want adult learners working on their high school equivalency diplomas to have something that helps them practice that doesn’t feel daunting or stuffy. I want teachers to reuse and remix this so that you can have it for your own classroom purposes- just make sure to include a note that I was the original author.
This book is also for my friends, students, and family. If you know me personally, you’re the audience I’m writing this for. I hope it makes you laugh. I hope it makes you want to keep reading. If you know anyone who says “I want to get back into reading,” I hope you’ll tell them that your friend wrote a book and it’s light and easy to read and you should try it because it’s free anyway.
A Companion to Open ELA
This book is also a companion novel to Open ELA: A Complete Course in Reading and Language Arts. I’ve linked the first eight chapters of this book to the Understanding Literature unit of that one. Each chapter will include an interactive version that connects to concepts in Open ELA, hopefully helping students to understand major concepts in modern fiction. If that seems worth your while, then flip to the Interactive Chapters section. If not, you can just read the book, no harm no foul.
Dedication
For Nika and Grace.
