Over there in the comments, Christine (thanks for the nice words) asks if I really read the whole of The Outsiders to the kids. Ummm, yeah. That’s sort of one of my shticks. Well, more like a hook. As in the fishing metaphor. The Outsiders is the hook I use to draw reluctant 7th graders into English and reading and actual discussions and such, and make them like it. In 16 years of teaching this book, I have yet to meet a 7th grader who doesn’t love it. But if you give it to them and let them go on their own, they will devour it in hours, and while they will still love it, they will miss two-thirds of what the book has to offer. And if you do the whole “popcorn” reading thing…well, no offense, but let me just say that I HATE THAT! The kids have to hear the rhythms and the feel of the dialogue and the writing, and I think one of the big problems kids have with reading comprehension is that many of them read so slowly that they lose the overall meaning. (More on this later.) So unless you have a class full

