Reading Lessons Quotes

“Sometimes students think there are no right and wrong answers in English, that you can make a poem mean whatever you want it to mean, but this isn’t the case. Reading closely, reading carefully, is a matter of tact: working with the words on the page, what we know of their authors and their historical contexts, and the echoes they have in our own day and age. It takes time to develop the kind of understanding you need to be good at English: there are no quick fixes, no easy wins.”
― Carol Atherton, Reading Lessons: An English Teacher’s Love Letter to the Books that Shape Us

“It’s that stifling, world-too-small feeling of having been in the same place for far too long, of needing to reinvent yourself.”
― Carol Atherton, Reading Lessons: An English Teacher’s Love Letter to the Books that Shape Us

“Our relationship with books can change over time. Sometimes, as we grow older, we see the value of a novel we'd previously dismissed; sometimes we find out something about a writer that casts an uneasy shadow over their work. And sometimes, a book shows itself to be more complex and problematic than we first realized. This can make us revise our opinions completely.”
― Carol Atherton, Reading Lessons: The Books We Read at School, the Conversations They Spark, and Why They Matter

“This is J. B. Priestley's 1945 play An Inspector Calls, and the message it contains - that we do not live alone, that we live in a society where we bear a collective responsibility towards each other - is one of the most important literary calls to activism that teenagers will encounter.”
― Carol Atherton, Reading Lessons: The Books We Read at School, the Conversations They Spark, and Why They Matter

“Books are mirrors held up to the world, but they are also lights, something we turn to in moments of darkness.”
― Carol Atherton, Reading Lessons: The Books We Read at School, the Conversations They Spark, and Why They Matter

“The books we read at school, and the experiences they gave us, act as touchstones for generations and provide a hoard of shared memories.”
― Carol Atherton, Reading Lessons: The Books We Read at School, the Conversations They Spark, and Why They Matter

“They worm their way into our heads and touch us in a way that's more personal than any other school subject. Their lessons will sit quietly within us for years, until something awakens then: a particular set of experiences, a story in the news, maybe a personal crisis. When we reread them as adults, they can resonate with us in ways that we never dreamed of when we first met them.”
― Carol Atherton, Reading Lessons: The Books We Read at School, the Conversations They Spark, and Why They Matter