What Makes A Writer Feel Good

They read it with this cover!

Dear Todd,

I teach 8th grade Language Arts in southern Maine. Two boys in my class this year were really struggling with reading. They were at about third grade level.  "I HATE books!", "Books are STUPID!" were some of the milder comments I got from them.

I decided to pull them in for private reading work. It was just the three of us and I selected a third grade reading level book for us to read aloud together. They hated it.

Rummaging around in a school closet, I found three copies of "Friends Till The End."

"Why do we have to read this?!", "I hate soccer!", "It's prolly just about nerds!", "sounds like da Outsiders movie you made us watch, greasers and Socs!", "Dumb!"

That was a month ago. We usually cover about a chapter a day. Today one of my students, Nate did not show up for  SSR (sustained silent reading). The other student, Phillip, (who provided MOST of the comments I've quoted) said, "come ON! Let's get started, I LOVE this book!" I said, "really?" "YEA, it's not some nerdy, boring book. It's about real people that I can relate to. I LOVE this book! I'm gonna see if the author has any other books. Do you think he does?"

Well, I've googled you and was I happy to find that you do have a few other stories. ;-)

I just thought you'd like to know that you've made a tremendous difference in the lives of at least two young, now proficient and steadily improving, readers.

Thank you.

Kevin Neely  Sanford Junior HS Language Arts 

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful." -- Albert Schweitzer