Less is More:
Teaching Literature with Short
Texts
Presented by Kimberly Hill Campbell
International Reading Association
May 2008

“Lamb to the Slaughter”
Yet a story’s very shortness ensures its largeness of accomplishment, its selfhood, and purity.
--Lorrie Moore

I believe much of teachers’ insistence that students read innumerable books in one semester derives from a misunderstanding we sometimes have about reading. In my wanderings throughout the world there were not a few times when young students spoke to me about their struggles with extensive bibliographies, more to be devoured than truly read or studied…. Insistence on a quantity of reading without internalization of texts proposed for understanding rather than mechanical memorization reveals a magical view of the written word, a view that must be superseded.
--Paulo Freire

Making the Case for Short
Texts
 More Reading Choices
 More Relevance to Adolescents’ Lives
 More Possibilities for Differentiated
Instruction
 More Effective Writing Models
 Consistent with NCTE/IRA Standards

Embracing Genre with Short
Texts
 Short Stories
 Essays
 Memoir
 Poetry
 Children’s Literature and Picture Books
 Graphic Novels

Essays
The essay can do anything a poem can do, and everything a short story can do--everything but fake it.
--Annie Dillard

Why essays?
 Essays demonstrate to students that this genre exists beyond the world of school.
 Essays provide models for students’ own essay writing.
 Essays allow for the exploration of writing craft and theme in an accessible, nonfiction format.

What moves me most is an essay in which the writer turns something over and over in his or her head, and in examining it finds a bit of truth about human nature and life and the experience of inhabiting this planet.
--Susan Orlean

It is not simply that we need information, but that we want to savor it, carry it with us, feel the heft of it under our arm. We like the thing [book] itself.
--Anna Quindlen

“Three Interesting Lists of
Books ” by Anna Quindlen
 “Ten Big Thick Books that Could Take
You a Whole Summer to Read (But
Aren’t Beach Books)”
 “The Ten Books One Would Save in a
Fire (If One Could Save Only Ten)”
 “Ten Nonfiction Books That Help Us
Understand the World”

A Passion for Books: A Book Lover’s
Treasury of Stories, Essays, Humor, Lore, and Lists on Collecting, Reading,
Borrowing, Lending, Caring For, and
Appreciating Books
Edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan

Recommended Essay
Collections
 Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now by Maya Angelou
 Guys Write for Guys Read, edited by Jon
Scieszka
 Sports Illustrated: Fifty Years of Great Sports
Writing
 “Pop of King” by Stephen King in
Entertainment Weekly
 40 Model Essays: A Portable Anthology, edited by Jane E. Aaron

The goal is to produce, at graduation, every single child in America who can read and read well, and who will read broadly, who will read for fun, who will read for enlightenment, for work, who will read for safety, who will read to get information in emergency situations, who will read for information, who will read to make intelligent political decisions, and who will read for cultural understanding.
--Laurie Halse Anderson