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Argument - Self Assessment
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An Open Letter to Book Thieves
Dear Students,
You. Yes, I'm talking to you, you booknapper. You text abductor. Paperback pilferer. Hardcover hoarder.
In your room - hidden in the darkness under your bed, discarded like used gum on your desk, lying mouldy under the wet towel in your bathroom, many of you have a book that is not yours. Nor is it mine. It belongs to my classroom library. And it wants to come home. To its home, to its rightful place among its book buddies in M223.
Do you know that song, from Les Miserable? Click on the link. Watch and listen. Do you feel the passion, the longing, the desperation? That book that you abducted wants to come home. It wants to be back where it is loved, nurtured, book talked, signed out, sticky noted, shared. It wants to be read.
You are denying it all of these things. You are neglecting it. When did you last pick it up, and page through it? Do you even know that you still have it? Do you even remember its title? Do you remember that you checked it out a month, or six months, or two years ago? Or maybe you didn't check it out. Maybe you grabbed it off the shelf in a hurry, because when you heard Mr. Townley roar "Independent Reading Time", you realized you had left yours at home. After class you stuffed it into your dark bag, carried it home, and discarded it somewhere in the nuclear bomb site that you call your room. And there it moulders, languishing far away from the love that it craves.
Bring it home.
Even worse, your legacy is to deny access to the most popular titles to the students who will follow you through M223 in the years ahead. Yes, GONE is gone. EVERLOST is ever lost. THE BOOK THIEF has been taken by a book thief. And I'm still looking for LOOKING FOR ALASKA. Students cannot read the books they are desperate for. And do you know why? Because you won't dig under your bed, pick that book up, put it in your bag, and return it to its rightful home.
Bring it home.
There is good news. I am using the full extent of my teacher power to declare a school wide amnesty. Bring them home, and no questions will be asked, no accusations made, no fines imposed. There will be no beating.
The great burden of your literary sin will be lifted from your shoulders, and all will be well as you join me in that rousing chorus from The Sound of Music: "The class is alive with the sound of paging, and we'll read once more."
