Why I Hate Reading Logs (and Natalie Babbitt Agrees with Me)

I have a fifth grader–okay, I used to. She graduated a few weeks ago. That means I’ve been a witness to six years of the current educational practices of northern New England. Specifically, six years of reading logs.

I do not like reading logs.

For the first few years, I just had to fill them out myself, which was not such a big deal. But then she hit third grade, and the rules started to rain down upon us.

She had to fill the logs out herself. She had to write the author’s last name, then first name. Then the full title of the book, even if it was (and it often was) Geronimo Stilton and the Mystifying Midadventure of Mumbling Mansion (with Cheese). She had to write the pages she started on, the page she stopped on, and the number of minutes read.

And there were so many ways to get it wrong. Reading more than two books at once was wrong. Reading a book and stopping halfway through was wrong. Skipping around in a book was wrong. Reading ten minutes Monday and an hour Tuesday was wrong, although reading twenty minutes on Monday and twenty on Tuesday was right.

It drove me nuts. I objected. Frankly, I should have told her teachers we were not filling in the silly logs, but my girl is a rule-follower and doesn’t tolerate civil disobedience well, and the very idea panicked her. (I was a teacher’s pet myself for many years, so I understood what she was feeling.) Doing the logs was anxiety producing, and having your mom call to say you would not be doing them anymore was even worse.

How could it be possible that all of this actually helped anyone develop a love of reading?

Now for a change of subject (bear with me, it’s related):

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Barking With the Big Dogs, a collection of Natalie Babbit’s speeches and essays. It’s marvelous. She raised her children and did most of her writing before the advent of reading logs, but she had quite a bit to say about the way reading and the love of books are taught. So more on this next week….