Our Secret | Adopt An Author

The secret to our success inversely illustrates how school curriculums are failing our reluctant teen readers:
  

I was a reluctant reader, so were two of our four children. Think back to when you were a teenager in high school. The school district/your English/reading/language arts teacher just handed you a menu of books to choose from… many are the same books we read 40+ years ago:

 

  • The Scarlet Letter: (1850) The story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter through an affair and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity in their 17th-century Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony.

 

  • The Great Gatsby: (1925) The story of a mysterious wealthy man and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, set in the 1920s.

 

  • The Catcher in the Rye: (1951): Two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, he searches for truth and rails against the “phoniness” of the adult world. 

 

Which one of these “classics” appealed to you back then? How about your kids? How about your grandchildren? And what if your reading level was behind that of your classmates?

 

Now let’s add one more title, a novel named #1 book for reluctant teen readers by the Young Adult Library Services Association… and the inspiration for last summer’s #1 hit movie:

  • MEG: (1997)  Jonas Taylor, a former Navy deep-sea submersible pilot, now a marine paleontologist, sets out to prove that a population of Carcharodon megalodon – a prehistoric 70-foot Great White shark – escaped extinction to inhabit the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest most unexplored gorge on the planet. Taylor accepts an offer to return to these crushing depths on a scientific expedition, only his quest for personal vindication becomes a desperate fight for survival, when the most vicious predator that ever existed is freed to once-again hunt the surface.

Not surprisingly, teens hate the classics and love the MEG series, and when reading becomes fun even the most reluctant readers will keep up… or even read ahead. Science teachers use MEG in marine biology because the stories include the most up-to-date scientific theories.

  
QUESTION: Why are so many American high schools still using books written 68 to 150 years ago?

  
ANSWER: Tradition… and the curriculum is already prepared, which saves time and money in preparing new quizzes, tests, study guides, homework assignments…

  
Enter Adopt-an-Author. Problem solved.

All of our titles come with free curriculum materials, along with the added bonuses of book trailers, interactive websites, and direct contact with our authors via email and skype.

  
But that’s not the secret to our success. Our secret is reading about 70-foot prehistoric Great White sharks and a really nasty Loch Ness Monster is fun. And when teens read for fun they will continue reading on their own.

Kim Alten

Kim Alten

Assistant Director, Adopt-An-Author
kim@adoptanauthor.com