Portable mobile technologies and high-speed access to the internet has led to the development of new online-first reading materials such as Korean Manhwa or webtoons, designed for quick consumption on mobile devices. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 11 adolescent girls aged 14 to 15 years old, this study examines why and how adolescents read…

Recreational reading is in a decline for upper elementary aged readers, and along with this decline comes consequent declines in students' ability to make meaning from what they read and their acquisition of different language forms, including the acquisition of new vocabulary words. However, one reading format is increasing in popularity: graphic…

It has long been thought that encouraging children to read is likely to be beneficial for the development of their literacy skills. However, a lot less attention has been paid to the issue of whether what students read matters for their academic progress. This paper therefore considers the association between the frequency young people read five…

This study examined the extent to which a range of child characteristics (sex, age, socioeconomic status, reading skill and intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation) predicted engagement (i.e., time spent) in different reading activities (fiction books, factual books, school textbooks, comics, magazines and digital texts). In total, 791 children…

National surveys reveal that graphic novels are perhaps the most popular recreational reading choice for adolescents--especially among boys. Graphic novels cover numerous topics, and this variety, along with their enormous popularity, makes them enticing and useful resources for teaching and learning in virtually any classroom. Since the…

As a middle school librarian in Austin, Texas, the author has been running weekly book clubs for years, which covered many genres that appeal to a wide cross section of kids. When approached by a group of Latino boys from low-income families, the author was inspired to run a Bluford High book club for reluctant readers. The author shares how she…

Research indicates that there is a strong relationship between leisure reading and school achievement, but the leisure reading habits of urban adolescents have rarely been studied. From their investigation of the leisure reading habits of 584 urban minority middle school students, the authors identify these key findings: (1) More than two-thirds…

This article addresses graphic novels and their growing popularity in academic libraries. Graphic novels are increasingly used as instructional resources, and they play an important role in supporting the recreational reading mission of academic libraries. The article will also tackle issues related to the cataloging and classification of graphic…

The purpose of this study was to explore whether or not adolescents who are deemed underachievers and who struggle to read school-assigned textbooks will engage with popular culture texts of their own choosing (e.g., magazines, comics, TV, video games, music CDs, graffiti, e-mail, and other Internet-mediated texts). The 60 student participants,…

Graphic novels help all different types of learners. For children who are incapable of visualizing a story, the artwork helps them create context. Graphic elements also attract visually dependent readers, who then freely read the text, and help reluctant readers understand the plot of a story. Finally, graphic novels cross gender lines. In this…

This publication offers the 57th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (NRC). This Yearbook begins with a preface and presents profiles of two awardees, John E. McEneaney and Scott G. Paris. Included in this Yearbook are the following papers: (1) The Education of African-American Students: Voicing the Debates, Controversies, and Solutions…