Breathing New Life into Book Clubs: A Practical Guide for Teachers

Sonja and Dana have both a confession and a challenge to teachers. Managing classroom book clubs can be hard. Real hard. But honestly, is there any better way to get students vested in reading? When book clubs work, don’t they create a culture of reading unlike anything else? One that brings out the very best in our students?

With both infectious enthusiasm and a realistic perspective, Sonja and Dana take on teachers’ doubts and concerns about book clubs, and build a compelling case for their value in every classroom. They provide all the nuts and bolts for creating and managing successful book clubs, including:

• Dozens of “pitfalls and pathways” minilessons that address common roadblocks
• Tips for using technology to enhance book club work for deeper student engagement
• Suggested “book bins” for book club work, organized by grade level and genre.

Whether you’re looking to breathe new life into book clubs or begin implementing them in your classroom, Sonja and Dana give you essential strategies to make book clubs work. “Because book clubs,” they write, “are where students fall in love with reading.”

Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul's research and work stem from an unyielding commitment to antibias and antiracist pedagogy and practices. She has taught middle school students for twenty years and develops curricula that centers the work of racial literacy in K - 12 schools. Sonja co-founded the Race Matters Committee in her former school district in order to spotlight and center issues related to race and racism and provide faculty and staff with the language and tools to facilitate conversations with students about race. Sonja is the Director of Diversity and Equity at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project (TCRWP) and the host of The Black Creators Series, a collaboration with TCRWP and Candlewick Press. She is the co-founder of the Institute for Racial Equity in Literacy and the Senior Advisor of the Heinemann Fellows. Sonja is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Stamped (For Kids), and she is the co-author of four books published by Heinemann: Teaching Interpretation: Using Text-Based Evidence to Construct Meaning (2014), Flip Your Writing Workshop: A Blended Learning Approach (2016), Breathing New Life into Book Clubs: A Practical Guide for Teachers (2019), and Critical Literacy: Unlocking Contemporary Fiction. Sonja leads presentations about literacy at national conferences and works with educators around the world providing professional development on reading and writing instruction and antiracist teaching practices. Follow Sonja on Twitter @SonjaCherryPaul or visit her website at sonjacherrypaul.com.

Dana Johansen has taught elementary and middle school for more than fifteen years. Dedicated to the ever-expanding applications of technology in the classroom, she presents at national conferences on the use of blogs, digital texts, and flipped learning in literacy instruction. She is the coauthor, with Sonja Cherry-Paul, of the titles Teaching Interpretation and Flip Your Writing Workshop. Follow Dana on Twitter @LitLearnAct.