Have you discovered Pernille Ripp?

“We hold the future of the world in our hands when we teach children and our teaching should reflect that weight. That is why I teach, so that every child will have the opportunity to live fully realized, to be safe, and to be valued. It starts with us, every day, and how we can give back power to the children in our care and co-create change to live up to the expectations kids have of us.”

The Author Village

Pernille Ripp is an educator now living in Denmark. Here is the link to her blog - it is well worth dipping into her wisdom about reading and access to books and time and all the things I 'bang on about' here. You can read her bio here. Her latest post is: It’s Not That They Can’t Read… – looking at imposter syndrome and reading identity.

If you know someone who is new to teaching make sure they read this post: 10 Myths for New Teachers.

This is a very recent podcast interview with Pernille Ripp and The Human Restoration Project podcast.

I highly recommend her post entitled: A Few Ideas for Building a Whole School Reading Culture.

Here are a few points that resonated with me:

Readers as Role Models and Community Builders

• Student reading ambassadors: Choose students who can share book recommendations, host quick booktalks, or lead reading events across grade levels. Their excitement will hopefully spread.
• Staff reading showcases: Create a “We’re Reading…” wall where teachers and staff post photos with their current reads, along with a short note about what they love about them. Let students see that reading isn’t just for kids – it’s for everyone. Or do it individually, I have shared my “Mrs. Ripp is currently reading and loving…” wall many times.
• Cross-grade reading buddies: Pair older students with younger ones. Let them read aloud, share favorites, and have conversations about books. It’s about connection and mentorship, not just fluency.

Reflection and Building Reading Identity

• “Why I Abandoned This Book”: Normalize that not all books work for everyone. Students can reflect on a book they didn’t finish and why and create a bulletin board. It’s a great way to build critical thinking and give permission to stop reading what doesn’t click.
• Reading Playlist Pairings: Invite students to create a short playlist that pairs with the vibe of a book they’re reading. Share the playlists with classmates – a creative, multimedia way to share bookish identity.
• “Who am I as a reader?” activities: Structured exercises where students think about their favorite genres, their reading goals, their best reading memories. This builds ownership and identity.
• Meaningful reading goals: Move beyond page or book counts. Encourage goals like, “I want to find a book that makes me think,” or, “I want to reread an old favorite and see if it still feels the same.”

And this one: Why Picture Books – 5 Reasons Why They Belong in Every Classroom

• Picture books give us a common language.
• Picture books can teach us complex matters in a simple way.
• Picture books can make us feel successful when we have lost our way.
• Picture books relieve stress.
• Picture books can make us believe that we can read well.

Pernille is also involved with the Global Read Aloud - check it out and here are the 2025 books:

Stories bring hope. Even as we turn another page filled with despair, our heroes emerge victorious, bruised and battered, but forged by fire. And so this year’s choices are once again books meant to spark hope. To create change. To push questions and inspiration. Perhaps even to spark anger as we search for a path forward. But I also hope they bring you joy, connection, and a renewed sense of togetherness because in a world where powerful people seem to be hellbent on tearing us all apart, books can create a bridge, if even for a moment. So if you like the choices for this year, join me as we kick off the Global Read Aloud on October 6th, 2025.

Back to school - Read to your class (please)

In a couple of weeks children will head back to school here in Australia. I have seen posts on social media nearly every day with teachers asking for books to read to their class.  This might sound bossy but it is not rocket science - teachers need to read books too!  If you love a book - your class with love that book. BUT perhaps it is time to think about moving away from the popular books the children can easily access from stores like Target etc and instead select books that your students might never experience. 

How will you find these books? 

• Step one visit your school library. 
• Step two talk to the Teacher-Librarian. 
• Step three gather up a bundle of books that look appealing and read. 
• Step four - ask other teachers (but remember the book you share with your class needs to be one YOU love).
• Step five - look for more books (there are tons of lists to explore BUT to repeat myself remember the book you share with your class needs to be one YOU love).

I am not talking here about books linked to a syllabus or curriculum outcome or a grade topic from your class content (History; Geography; English).  This post is about the joy of reading to your class - the joy of just reading a wonderful book (novel as a serial each day or a picture book or a poem or two) with no hidden agenda, no written tasks, no busy work just reading and sharing wonderful books. 

Why read to your class?  

I found this fabulous list of six reasons every teacher should read to their class from OzLit Teacher. Please take a few minutes to read the full article but here are the six reasons explored by Narissa Leung. I have added some highlighting and tweaked the order :

Read-alouds immerse students in the joy of reading for pleasure

Read-alouds expose students to new authors, texts and genres

Read-alouds provide a shared experience

Read-alouds provide students with a model of fluent reading

Read-alouds give students access to books outside of their independent reading level

Read-alouds Expose students to new vocabulary

These quotes come from Reading Books aloud - Teaching readers, knitting hearts

When a committed teacher chooses books carefully to instruct, inspire, evoke feelings of empathy and action, students come to understand the skill required to engage readers with texts. 

Kids come to see and experience how readers read with accuracy, automatically, expression, intonation, phrasing and prosody. 

In the interactive read-aloud where teachers stop at pivotal moments and invite thoughtful discussion matched to specific evidence from the selection, students also begin to understand the finer points of meaning-making.  

Raising an Active Reader by Samantha Cleaver

A ask questions

B build vocabulary

C connect to the child's world

There are many ways to read a book to and with a young or even an older child. Above all the experience, should be an enjoyable one. In the school setting books are sometimes "killed" by over analysis and through dreaded worksheets which are often meaningless or busy work or simply require no deep thinking. There is a wonderful movement in some schools now, especially in the US, to simply read a picture book every day.  No complex discussion questions and no worksheets. Just reading a wonderful picture book, and there are tens of thousands of these, for the sheer joy of a shared reading experience. One aspect of this program that I really like is that the book covers of all the books that are read over a year are put up for display in the classroom. This is a wonderful way for children to make connections between books, between authors, between book themes and between the books they read and their own lives. 

In my school library I read thousands of picture books - every day of every week - for over 30 years. I also watched colleagues attempting to read my favourites with our library groups as my library qualified for extra staffing. Sadly I often despaired listening to others sharing books with classes when I had also read these same books many many times. The extra teacher either didn't scaffold the text prior to reading, or they spent way to long dissecting the book and then had to rush the reading, or they launched into a book without having read it for themselves first and then stumbled over the pace needed for reading. With picture books, even the way you turn pages can be important. 

We talk about teaching for success and one of the things I liked to do with a picture book to assist the students to enjoy the story - to achieve success perhaps - was to scaffold the story briefly prior to reading. Not to dissect it or give to much away but just help the children, again briefly, to develop a field of knowledge if needed, to help with unfamiliar words/vocabulary or signpost things to notice in the story. Some of this comes very naturally through exploring, prior to reading, the features of a book such as the cover, title, end papers, title page and sometimes the blurb (not always because sometimes the blurb can spoil a story). 

Raising an Active Reader: The case for reading aloud to engage elementary school youngsters is the full title of this book and I will pull out one word from this title - active. Synonyms for active might be words engaged through actively participation by making the reading a shared experience. 

Here are a few text quotes from this book:

"It should always be an enjoyable experience to share a book with your child."

" .. kids today need to understand and relate to lots of different issues that they may never experience firsthand ... One solution to a lack of empathy is reading, and meeting many different characters and experiencing lots of different situations in books."

"Reading aloud for fifteen minutes a few times a week is a way to take small steps toward the big goal of raising children who are critical thinkers, strong readers, and who love books."

"There is an emotional quality to reading; we read a story and we feel the sadness of a scene. We ache for a character's loss. We are sickened by the description of an injustice. We feel happy when a character succeeds. In this way, books build empathy by teaching children about the world they live in; that includes experiences that are like their own and experiences that are far from anything they will ever experience."

"When kids are able to think critically as they read, when they ask questions, think about and learn new words, and make connections they are becoming strong readers."

"When your child starts interrupting you to ask about new words, that's great. It means that they're developing word consciousness, or an awareness of and interest in words."  (I would add to this it also means they are following the story, they are interested in what is happening - and yes - your child is engaged).

Here in Australia this is a very expensive book costing over $42 but if you can find a copy in a library or perhaps access an ebook version from a library I do recommend reading Chapter 4 "Ask Questions"and Chapter 5 "Build Vocabulary".  These two chapters have some excellent practical advice relevant to parents and teachers. 

Here is the publisher blurb from Rowman and Littlefield: Parents and teachers know that reading aloud to children is important, and many parents of young children read aloud to them daily. However, when children start to read on their own, parents often stop reading aloud. But, the early elementary school years, when children are learning how to read on their own, is a perfect time to build vocabulary and comprehension skills through read aloud and Active Reading. Raising an Active Reader makes clear the process of learning to read, how Active Reading fits into raising strong readers, and the behaviours that adults can do to encourage strong language, comprehension, and vocabulary in children in grades K-3. This book extends on the ABCs of Active Reading (Ask Questions, Build Vocabulary, and make Connections) as they apply to older children and picture books, chapter books, and novels. Raising an Active Reader provides parents and teachers with the knowledge and skills to engage elementary school-aged children (grades K-3) in Active Reading with examples, clear explanations, and ideas for making one-on-one or small group read aloud sessions a powerful way to build children’s early literacy and language skills, all while creating a lifelong love of reading. 

One final thing - I was excited to read that one of the author's favourite books to read with her own children is Strictly No Elephants.

I would like to be able to wholeheartedly recommend Raising an Active Reader. The author of this book makes some really good points and gives practical examples of active reading but sadly this book is not very accessible. It is printed with a small font and with very text dense pages. I found the format made it hard to read. If intended audience is parents, this book looks a little too much like an academic text.

Here is Samantha Cleaver's previous book which is part one of her discussion. In this first book the focus is children aged 2-5 while her second book, as discussed in this post, focuses on children from Grade 3 and up.