Meeting Jason Reynolds

I was lucky enough to snag a ticket to listen to Jason Reynolds and Raul the Third at An Unlikely Story, hosted by Jeff Kinney. 

While Jason was there to promote his newest book, I was there because his book Long Way Down fundamentally changed my class. My resistant readers, 9th graders with elementary grade reading skills, loved Long Way Down. They were reading and reading ahead. They were analyzing poetry and figurative language. They were making predictions and writing what they thought the ending should be. They asked to read more books by him. 

I missed Act 1 of Ty’s play (I saw the whole thing last night), but just being in his presence was something else. For a guy who says “I don’t write to teach lessons, I just write to entertain”, he’s helped a whole bunch of people learn to enjoy reading. 

Forever humbled to have been able to meet him.