Reading Wide Awake

In his new book, popular author Patrick Shannon examines reading as agency—why reading critically is essential to civic engagement and a healthy democracy. We follow the author on a journey of self discovery as he practices “wide-awake reading” with a variety of everyday texts, from radio programs to legal documents to more traditional books and magazines. Shannon demonstrates how we can and must engage in close reading of the world around us and how teachers, in turn, can help their students make meaning from the information in their lives that often appears to move at warp speed. Reading Wide Awake integrates personal stories, political commentary, and guidance for educators into a fun-to-read book that will resonate with a diverse audience of teachers.

Book Features:

• How to read social objects and events as texts, such as a Little League game, Google Earth, and PieLab.
• New connections between reading comprehension and the role of reading in society.
• “Imagining Pedagogy” and “Reading Theory” summary sections in each chapter.

Patrick Shannon is a professor of education at Penn State University. He has written 16 books and was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame in 2002.

“I was not only tremendously impressed with this book; I was inspired by it.”
—From the Foreword by Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, author of "You Gotta Be The Book"

“This is powerful, beautiful work.”
—Timothy J. Lensmire, University of Minnesota

“Shannon provides clear, richly described examples from his own life to ground his powerful argument about how dangers that live in the texts of public pedagogy impact our lives and shape society.”
—Joanne Larson, Michael W. Scandling Professor of Education, University of Rochester

“Engagingly written, Reading Wide Awake encourages us to read with sociological imagination, and in so doing, we can begin to investigate pedagogical practices that underpin texts, to identify and name the dangers inherent in such practices, and to read toward democracy.”
—Peggy Albers, Georgia State University, Atlanta