Book News

A great review of Follow The River came out in both the Anchorage Daily News and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Below are a couple of snippets from the review. You can read the full review here:

–Greci has the skills to show young readers that, despite our conflicts, we all have shared humanity. It’s a much needed message.–David James, Anchorage Daily News

–Young readers are who Greci is targeting. As an educator, he’s aware of the fact that many boys in upper primary grades tend to quit reading altogether….Greci accomplishes this task by keeping the action moving swiftly. Chapters are brief, and most end in cliffhangers that will keep young readers turning pages. Fortunately, with Alaska, Greci has a landscape that can kill people in any number of ways. And from one cliffhanger to the next, Greci manages to rope in quite a few of them. His ability to find unique new dangers with each book is impressive–David James, Anchorage Daily News

Also, The Wild Lands was included in a list of nine Young Adult Thrillers Get Your Heart Pounding on the CrimeReads website.

The four novels I’ve published in my writing career thus far are all written with the intention of engaging reluctant readers. That said, I sincerely hope that avid readers will enjoy them too. I strive to write page-turners that have depth and complexity, and while the external survival plots move forward, my hope is that the internal journeys of the characters are just as compelling.

Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection, Hostile Territory (Macmillan 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020, and Follow the River (Move Books 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection. You can order all of Paul’s books here.

Thanks for stopping by.

Read Full Post »

Hostile Territory: A Best Book of 2020

In a year of mostly cancelled book events and shuttered brick & mortar bookstores, I got a little bit of good news regarding my book, Hostile Territory, in the Anchorage Newspaper. It was chosen as a favorite book for 2020.

Below is the text of the article regarding Hostile Territory:

“Hostile Territory”: By Paul Greci. Imprint. 352 pages, 2020. $17.99.

Food is on the minds of the four teenagers who find themselves thrust into a survival situation after an earthquake wipes out the leadership camp they’re attending in Paul Greci’s latest novel “Hostile Territory.” What begins as a survival tale, with the kids trying to reach safety from a remote Alaska location, morphs into a political thriller, as they learn there’s a lot more going on than just a natural disaster. Greci is emerging as the state’s best author of young adult fiction. An educator who targets kids in the age range when many quit reading, he keeps them engrossed with a fast-moving plot and plenty of cliffhangers. It’s a formula that will keep adults turning pages as well.

It has been my life’s work as an educator and a writer to get reluctant readers to open a book and keep turning the pages. My first book, Surviving Bear Island, was a Junior Library Guild Selection in the category that’s guaranteed to engage even the most reluctant of readers.

While I hope that my stories will engage avid as well as reluctant readers, when I write I keep that population of struggling and reluctant teen readers I worked with for much of my teaching career front and center. Here’s a link to a post on my thoughts about engaging struggling and reluctant readers.

Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection and Hostile Territory (Macmillan Jan. 28, 2020), an Anchorage Daily News Best Book of 2020. Forthcoming is Follow the River (Move Books 2021) . You can order all of Paul’s books here.

Read Full Post »

Reaching Reluctant and Struggling Readers

Recently an author friend who was scheduled to speak at a school asked for my input on how to connect with both struggling and reluctant teen readers—the student population I worked with for fifteen years. (Currently I am a Special Education Teacher for grades K to 3).

I realize that different teachers will have different styles and also may be somewhat limited in what their school will allow them to do. Given that, here are some things that worked for me in my classroom full of 13 to 19 year-old struggling and reluctant readers.

1. Read out loud to your students w/out requiring them to follow along. Just require that they listen. Make sure it is a good book or short story with a lot of action. Make sure you know how to read out loud. Nothing kills a story easier than a reader who hasn’t taken the time to hone up on their read aloud skills.

2. Have quiet reading time every day at the same time where the students can choose what they want to read. Do not require them to keep a reading journal. No strings attached, just read a book, the newspaper, a magazine, whatever. (My goal is to eventually get them to read books but forcing that up front creates the opposite result. They need to choose it.)

3. Have a wide variety of books available and be an expert on what those books are by having read many of them yourself. You want your students to have confidence in you as someone who knows what they are talking about when it comes to books.

4. Do frequent book talks/teasers where you read a snippet and talk a little about the author or story and then make the book available.

5. Bring the books in that you are reading and share them.

6. As the teacher or person in charge, you also need to read during the silent reading time. This shows your students that you value reading. And, if other adults happen to be in your classroom during silent reading time, they need to read too.

7. Let kids stop reading a book if they want to, just like us adults do when we want to.

8.  If you have a book in a series, make sure you have the rest of them. (I once had a student eat up 13 books in a series he started.)

9. If a student is having trouble connecting with a book, hand-pick a few based on what you know about him and set them on their desk. This personal touch goes a long way.

10. If you see a student is really engrossed in a certain book you might mention another book that is related or similar when they are almost finished.

11. If a student actually wants to read a book that they’ve already read, let them.

12. Bottom line—you have to meet the kids where they are and not try to impose some program on them and expect them to fit into it.

13. Allow your students the time to develop into readers. Every time you get into a power struggle with a kid about reading you are potentially driving them away from reading because of that negative experience.

Thanks for stopping by. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Paul Greci is the author of The Wild Lands (Macmillan 2019) and Surviving Bear Island (Move Books 2015), a 2015 Junior Library Guild Selection and a 2016 Scholastic Reading Club Selection,  Hostile Territory (Macmillan Jan. 28, 2020), and  Follow the River (Move Books Summer 2021), a 2021 Junior Library Guild Selection . You can order all of Paul’s books here.

Read Full Post »