Penny Kittle

President, Book Love Foundation - Plymouth State University
1573521926 V2 Photo CFP 19

Penny Kittle

President, Book Love Foundation - Plymouth State University

Biography

Penny Kittle teaches freshman writers at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years. She is the co-author of 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents with Kelly Gallagher, and is the author of Book Love, and Write Beside Them, which won the James Britton award from NCTE. She also co-authored two books with her mentor, Don Graves, and co-edited (with Tom Newkirk) a collection of Graves’ work, Children Want to Write. She is the president of the Book Love Foundation and was given the Exemplary Leader Award from NCTE’s Conference on English Leadership and has been given ILA’s Though Leader Award for 2020. She regularly travels to work beside teachers to empower young readers and writers.

Engaged in Young Adult Literature:

A Collaborative Conversation with Penny Kittle and Gay Ivey

Penny Kittle teaches freshman composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She was a teacher and literacy coach in public schools for 34 years, 21 of those spent at Kennett High School in North Conway. She is the coauthor of 180 Days (2018) with Kelly Gallagher, and is the author of Book Love (2012), and Write Beside Them (2008), which won the James Britton Award. She also coauthored two books with her mentor, Don Graves, and coedited (with Tom Newkirk) a collection of Graves’s work, Children Want to Write. She is the president of the Book Love Foundation and was given the Exemplary Leader Award

Let Them Read, Please

Adolescents must develop a reading habit that increases stamina and joy in reading, while increasing the complexity of the texts they can independently read. We can transform the culture of reading through books, time to read, and talk with and among readers. We must create a sense of urgency, agency, and responsibility in learners. Success is ensured in a structured classroom where effective, incremental instruction in a predictable progression of skills necessary for students to become critical, thoughtful readers, is combined with accessible and interesting books.