Parents who nurture their children’s self-esteem, feeling of control over their lives, and sense of hope.
Personal power • Self-esteem
Sense of purpose • Positive view of personal future
Ten-year-old Bud wants to find family when he sets out on an amazing journey in the award-winning Bud, Not Buddy. It’s the memory of his mother who died when he was six that encourages him to imagine a better future. He remembers the books she read to him at night and “that no matter how long it took she’d read until I went to sleep.”
Having known such love, he can weather hardships. He can recognize the people who will love him, no matter what. At last, Bud finds himself among people who let him be himself:
“All of a sudden I knew that of all the places in the world that I’d ever been in this was the one. That of all the people I’d ever met these were the ones. This was where I was supposed to be.”
He tells the reader; “...something whispered to me in a language that I didn’t have any trouble understanding. It said, “Go ahead and cry, Bud, you’re home.”
A Canadian third-grader’s inability to skim on skates across a rink may be cause for surprise. A third-grader’s inability to skim a page of a grade-level book and to understand its meaning must be cause for alarm.
Recognizing a struggling reader calls for immediate action. A wait-and-see attitude by parents and teachers is no longer acceptable. Experts agree that troubleshooting must begin as soon as possible. Much of a person’s success depends on the ability to do well in school. Reading for meaning is a skill needed in virtually every subject area. Too often, failure to master this skill affects a child’s sense of worth. At risk is positive identity.