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Summer is just around the corner. How do I know? Because at least once an hour, the TV reminds me that summer isn't be worth living unless I drop a size or two; or a National Tutoring Chain assures me my child's brain will turn into a blank slate over the summer. (I especially like the commercial with equations and words tumbling out of the ears of some hapless kid.
    For those of you who don't watch as much TV as I do (guilty, guilty, guilty), the first sign of summer might be The Summer Reading List. I say might because I usually find my daughter's Summer Reading List crumpled under the couch about mid-July. If your child springs forth on the last day of school, waving the SRL and demanding to go to the library right now...which is the kind of kid I was...you might want to skip on down to the Writer's Workout.
     Although I was willing to read what the school district thought every third grader should read, I usually lost my enthusiasm by book two or three. I am an omnivorous reader, and always have been. Yet, somehow, the Literary Poobahs in Curriculum Development managed to come up with twenty of the dullest books available for the grade level; Newbery winners, biographies about Important Men (always men, never women) and "classics" of dubious value. But I had to read at least one all the way through, because the first assignment on the first day of school (after the "What-I-Did-On-My-Summer-Vacation"essay) would be a book report on one of the summer list books. Not once did any teacher ask if I liked the book. The point was that words passed before my eyes at some point of those three months.
     In my child's school district, book reports have gone the way of the Walkman. Reading is "encouraged" by taking computerized multiple choice tests on Certain Books Approved by the Company Who Sells the Test Software. Certain books are assigned so many points. (I will save my opinion of this sort of thing for another day and rant, but I will tell you that I couldn't pass the test on Yankee Girl...and I wrote the book!)
    In short, up until high school, the emphasis is on plot, characters and the odd nitpicky fact. No one ever asked if we liked the book, or not until, my sophomore English teacher. That was a real loser of a year as far as required reading: Silas Marner, A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables (before Broadway ditched all the boring parts and added some great music.)  Where other teachers acted personally insulted when we didn't froth with delight over Evangeline or The Scarlet Letter, Miss Strain cared.  We didn't have to like a book or a character, but we better have a reason why. "Just 'cause" or "It's dumb" were not acceptable reasons. Without telling us, she introduced us to the concept of critical reading.
     Many, many years pass. I become a librarian. I read constantly, almost unconsciously. I taught myself to speed read in college, so I blew through dozens of books a month. When I finished, I sometimes had the feeling I had just wasted my time. Other books, I loved so much I had to force myself to slow down and savor every word. Yet, all the time I recommended books to readers (or not), I could not tell you why I did or did not like a book. I assumed that if I didn't like a book, it must be my fault, that I just didn't get it. After all, this writer had a book published, and I didn't.
    Many years pass and I finally get the guts to enter an MFA in Writing for Children program.  Almost the first thing we newbies are told is that we will be doing a lot of reading. . .and critiquing.  Criticism of the educational variety was something that had not crossed my mind since my days in Miss Strain's class.
    "To be a writer, you have to learn to read like a writer," we were told.
    Uh-oh.  No more read