Saturday, Aug. 16, 2008

Rantin: Summer reading books almost due

As her son headed off to the beach for his final hurrah of the summer earlier this week, Georgia Doran held out one final request.

“Don’t forget ‘Seabiscuit,’” she appealed to the 14-year-old seconds before he managed his escape.

“I’m holding up this book that is like two inches thick,” Doran said. “He came back and got it, but he looked at me like I had three heads.”

It’s not the first time Doran has seen that look. As she has for years, the concerned mom was again pleading with her son, Jack, to complete his summer reading assignment before classes begin Wednesday. And as he has for years, the rising Cardinal Newman High School student was cutting it close to the wire.

The Dorans aren’t alone in their plight. While summer reading assignments have become a fact of life for many public, private and home-schooled students, it’s a reality some don’t embrace until the waning days of the summer.

“Why am I so stressed about it? I don’t have to read ‘Seabiscuit.’ I’ve already read ‘Seabiscuit,’” Georgia Doran said.

But she concedes her son’s situation could be worse.

Jack, an advanced placement student, has completed two of his three required summer readings. He was permitted to select three books from a group of 16.

And rather than establishing a schedule that was too stringent, Georgia Doran asked only that her son complete one book before their family vacation in June and the second before the end of July. She’s confident he’ll get the last one read, but she knows her recent plea likely fell on deaf ears.

“Like he’s really going to read it (at the beach),” she said.

Kristen DuBard has had a little easier time of it. Her daughters, 10-year-old Rose and 6-year-old Ella, enjoy reading, but the Blythewood mom admits the prizes that were handed out by the Richland County Public Library this summer didn’t hurt.

“They are neat little incentives for the kids to have,” DuBard said of the awards her two home-schooled daughters received after each completed more than 30 books.

“My kids think that it’s really fun to get rewarded for something like reading. There is a lot of excitement in our house about the summer reading.”

For Lexington High School student Jack McMenamin, not so much. Between his part-time job, wakeboarding outings at the lake and visits with friends, the rising junior has had little time for reading.

Actually, he hasn’t had any time.

McMenamin, a self-described “skilled procrastinator,” hadn’t begun reading the book on his required list for the summer as of Friday. His classes start Thursday, and he said he’ll likely sit down this weekend for some serious reading.

“I’ll probably just knock it out in one day,” he said. “I was actually hoping that I wouldn’t have English until second semester so I could put it off even more.”

Doran said she understands the distractions working against her son and many other teenagers trying to work through the pages of summer reading.

“They just have so many things that they perceive to be important,” she said. “Reading is just in competition with so many things.”

And, she said, it is summer, after all.

As for “Seabiscuit”?

“He’ll have it read. But he’s going to go right up to the wire. He always does.”