{"id":228,"date":"2023-04-21T14:16:18","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T14:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ncte\/?page_id=228"},"modified":"2023-04-27T14:46:15","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T14:46:15","slug":"readers-advisory","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/ncte\/exhibits\/readers-advisory\/","title":{"rendered":"Readers Advisory"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Books must differ as widely as the needs of the individual students. Some are intended to awaken a taste for reading in those who have never read for pleasure. Others are to bridge the gap between trash and good literature…Still others are to stimulate thought, to inspire a worthy view of life, to arouse ambition.”
\nFrom\u00a0Report of the Committee on Home Reading<\/em>, prepared by NCTE’s Committee on Home Reading<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 1911, the National Council of Teachers of English primarily formed because of the undue influence of college entrance requirements on English education. These requirements often included a required reading list of books selected by a college board. These lists, however, differed from year to year and from college to college. To prepare their students for college, English teachers were forced to try to form their curricula based on these wildly diverging lists that often did not hold the interest of their students.<\/p>\n

In 1913, NCTE published its own list of recommended reading,\u00a0The Report of the Committee on Home Reading<\/em>, which would go on to sell over a 400,000 copies. By creating its own list of recommendations, NCTE successfully diluted the influence of college boards and their lists of required reading. In J.N. Hook’s\u00a0A Long Way Together: A Personal View of NCTE’s First Sixty-Seven Years<\/em>, NCTE Past President E.H. Kemper McComb explains:<\/p>\n

“After the reading list, and its revisions, came out, no one in the Council worried about \u2018college boards,’ because an immediate result of the lists was that college entrance requirements were liberalized. The Council took no credit for this, but there is no question that the Council lists assisted in the liberalization of the requirements.” (1979, p. 25)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today, NCTE continues to publish reading recommendations, which has expanded to multiple reading advisory series for different grade levels. To learn more, take a look at the featured topics below:<\/p>\n